Too Many Elephants? Botswana’s Independence Hunt and the Hard Questions

Can a country have too many elephants? And if it can, is killing some of them the answer, or a sign we’ve run out of better ideas?

These questions came back to me this week when I read that Botswana has authorised the killing of 23 elephants for its 60th independence celebrations. Officials said the meat would go to needy rural communities, with hunting licences spread across several districts. Dozens of antelope were approved for the same purpose.

It’s a story that splits people sharply. So let’s look at both sides honestly.

The case Botswana makes

Botswana is home to an estimated 130,000 elephants, more than any other country on Earth. That is a genuine conservation success. But it comes with real costs for the people who live alongside them.

Elephants raid crops, destroy water infrastructure and, sadly, sometimes injure or kill people. Botswana records hundreds of human-wildlife conflict cases every year and runs a compensation scheme for affected families. The country lifted its hunting ban in 2019, and since then has set annual quotas of between 200 and more than 400 elephants.

The Department of Wildlife and National Parks argues that conservation must bring real benefits to communities who share land with wildlife and help protect it. In 2024, when European governments criticised trophy hunting, Botswana’s then-president famously offered to send them tens of thousands of elephants to manage themselves.

I understand the frustration. It is easy to have strong opinions about elephants from a city far away. It is much harder when an elephant has just flattened your maize. I’ve written about this before: we have to consider both sides of human-wildlife conflict.

The case against

Still, there are serious concerns.

• Elephants are endangered. The IUCN lists African savanna elephants as endangered. One country’s large population doesn’t change the picture across the continent.
• Killing can make conflict worse. The Botswana Elephant Protection Society warns that shooting one elephant can make the rest of the herd more defensive and dangerous to nearby communities.
• It sets a precedent. Former president Ian Khama warned that killing elephants for a national celebration creates an expectation that it will happen again at future events.
• It isn’t the same as management. Quotas set for meat at a celebration are different from decisions based on herd science and land carrying capacity.

Are there better options?

I believe there are, and many already exist:

• Wildlife corridors that let elephants move across borders and spread out, instead of crowding into one area. Southern Africa’s transfrontier conservation areas show how this can work.
• Prevention tools such as beehive fences, chilli barriers and early-warning systems that keep elephants out of farms without killing them. Kenyan farmers have used beehive fences with real success.
• Fair and fast compensation so families aren’t left carrying the full cost of living with wildlife.
• Community-owned tourism and conservancies, where living elephants bring in more income than dead ones.

Over to you

So, do some places have too many elephants? In specific areas, the pressure on land and people is real, and we shouldn’t dismiss it. But I’m not convinced that a celebration hunt is conservation. It feels more like a symbol, and a risky one.

Whatever we decide, the people living beside elephants must be at the centre of it, and so must the elephants’ future. As I wrote earlier this year, wildlife still needs us to speak up.

What do you think? Is controlled hunting ever justified, or should we invest only in coexistence? I’d really like to hear both sides in the comments.

Source: The Climate Watch (Associated Press), 7 October 2026