Botswana’s President Mokgweetsi Masisi threatened this week to send 20,000 elephants to Germany after its Environment Ministry floated the idea of banning the import of trophies from endangered species.
It’s not the first time Botswana has offered up the country’s elephants. When Britain talked in March about legislation to ban the import of trophies, Botswana’s environment minister, Dumezweni Mthimkhulu, suggested filling London’s Hyde Park with 10,000 of the majestic animals — though he later called the offer “rhetorical.”
The root of the president’s rather sharp-tongued generosity is the long-running tension between those morally opposed to the lucrative business of big-game hunting and the impoverished countries that benefit from it — in this case Botswana, home to 130,000 elephants, nearly a third of the world’s population.
Trophies from big-game hunting are regulated by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, or CITES, through a permit system, but animal rights activists have long called for a complete ban on the hunting of endangered species.
Lane warned that creditors may escalate their efforts to control Giuliani’s bankruptcy if their current request is denied, describing that as a possible pyrrhic victory in which someone wins a battle but loses a war.
“The debtor may succeed in fending off this motion, only to be faced with far more draconian requests for relief in the future,” Lane said.
