Wildlife conservationists are alarmed by the sharp increase in elephants and other wildlife that Botswana continues to put on its annual hunting quotas, a move they say is detrimental to the long-term term survival of the species.
This follows the publication of a draft wildlife hunting quota for 2026 which increases elephants on offer to trophy hunters from the 410 for this year (431 actually hunted) to 430, and for the first time includes 10 lions and other members of the big cat family. In all, the draft quota lists 2,299 animals spread across 17 species.
The country, which is home to 140,000 elephants — the world’s largest — has also infuriated conservationists by proposing a year-round elephant hunting calendar. Until 2023, the hunting season was just six months from April to September. After increasing the hunting season to nine months in 2024, the country now is proposing to make elephant hunting a year-round sport.
There are fears that that the increasingly cash-strapped government of the southern African nation of 2.5 million people could be resorting to “industrial-scale plunder” of its wildlife resources to fund its budgetary requirements.
Under former president Ian Khama’s leadership, Botswana banned trophy hunting for five years from 2014, only for his successor Mokgweetsi Masisi to lift it. The new president, Duma Boko, who took office in November 2024 has continued with the trophy hunting, increasing both the wildlife species and numbers on the annual quotas, raising an outcry from conservationists.
“What the government is doing is something that is of great concern to us,” Oaitse Nawa, the founder of Elephants Protection Society, an NGO focused on the conservation and protection of Botswana’s wildlife, told DTE.
“It is not sustainable at all. In the case of elephants, 430 might appear like a small number, but it is the gene pool that we are concerned about. At this current rate, some genetics will be wiped out because hunters only target the biggest bulls with impressive tusks,” he explained.
The controversial draft hunting quota was revealed to stakeholders shortly after the publication of a damning Elephants Without Borders (EWB) report, “Scientific Review of Botswana’s Elephant Hunting Programme,” which provides the first ever comprehensive analysis of the scientific basis of the hunting programme. The report concluded that the current elephant hunting quota of about 0.3 per cent of the population is not sustainable since trophy hunters, just like poachers, target mature bulls. The report highlighted that unlike the outdated and flawed model that authorities still rely on, the EWB current modelling shows that maintaining the current quota would reduce the proportion of bulls over 30 years old by 24 per cent, and those over 50 years by as much as 50 per cent, compared to untargeted population segments.
“Why should Botswana be concerned about the population of older bulls so long as numbers are sufficient for hunting?” the report asks. “Older bulls play several important roles in elephant populations. First, older bulls are repositories of knowledge about the landscape. Despite a reputation for being solitary, bull elephants actually spend 63 per cent of their time in groups. Within these groups, older bulls often act as leaders when groups are travelling. Older bulls may know the locations of water in times of drought or safe pathways to traverse human-dominated landscapes. Younger bulls are not born with this knowledge and must learn by following older ones. Second, the presence of older bulls reduces inappropriate aggression in younger bulls.”
Audrey Delsink, Africa senior wildlife director for the Humane Society International, a global animal welfare and conservation organisation, told DTE that the since Botswana resumed trophy hunting, there has been a sharp rise in the elephant hunting quota from 290 in 2019 to the 430 proposed for 2026.
“This means that the quota has increased by 48 per cent since 2019,” Delsink told DTE. “As such, the current level of quotas and the trajectory of increases are unsustainable, and have significant consequences for the mature bull population if such trends continue.”
She said the danger with trophy hunting is that it targets mature bulls that provide critically important ecological and social knowledge and aid the survival of the entire group.
“Elephants have slow reproduction rates, and furthermore, whilst 82 per cent of females survive to age at first calving, only 39 per cent of males survive to age of first musth! Thus, adult bull populations of trophy age are a small subset of the population already. Therefore, excessive hunting of bulls has severe consequences for the demographics of a bull population.”
About the proposed year-round hunting, Delsink pointed out that repeated hunting within migration corridors or key tourism areas could cause them to become a “landscape of fear”, actually preventing elephants from utilising the corridor, thereby refuting their purpose.
“I would note that 76 per cent of elephant populations are spread across one or more national borders, and therefore the majority of southern African elephant populations are transboundary. Therefore, management actions taken at incorrect scale can have massive consequences and ripple effects that extend far beyond the targeted zone, area or population. Therefore, incorrect management choices could have devastating consequences for transient elephant and regional elephant populations.”
Nawa explained that regular shooting of wildlife like elephants causes them to change their natural behaviour, becoming more aggressive, and this, coupled with changes in migration routes as they avoid the “landscapes of fear”, lead to increased cases of human-wildlife conflict.
“The big issue is that the community — the people who are living with these animals — doesn’t benefit much from this hunting except for the meat from the elephants… the benefits are so little… even the ‘compensation’ of 75,000 pula ($5,700) that is paid out when someone gets killed by wild animals is just enough to cover the burial and that’s it.”
While Botswana has always maintained that its trophy hunting policy is primarily a population management strategy to reduce incidences of human wildlife conflict, some of its government officials have also admitted that economic considerations are also at play.
In his speech at the recent CITES summit held in Uzbekistan, Wynter Mmolotsi, Botswana’s Environment and Wildlife minister, said “consumptive and non-consumptive wildlife utilisation continue to exist together” and that the country considers them as complementary to both grow its economy and empower rural communities. Earlier this year, Mmolotsi revealed that the country earned more than $4m from the sale of hunting licences in 2024, compared with $2.7m in 2023.
Botswana, whose economy — for decades — has been anchored on diamond mining, is under severe stress as demand for the mineral has been affected by the flooding of the global market with synthetic diamonds, to such an extent that the government regularly struggles to pay its workers and suppliers.
Analysts says if economic reasons are behind the increase in Botswana’s hunting quotas, some researches have actually shown that wildlife has better returns alive than dead.
“Non-consumptive and non-extractive forms of wildlife use are far more reliant in longevity and return,” Delsink explained. She gave the example of a 2013 study The $200 million question: How much does trophy hunting really contribute to African communities?, a report prepared for the African Lion Coalition by Australia-based by Economists at Large that concluded that trophy hunting is a very small part of the tourism industry in most countries.
“It cited that at the time of the study, the trophy hunting revenue as a percentage of tourism revenue is only 3.2 per cent in Zimbabwe. In comparison, Zimbabwe’s tourism contribution to the GDP was 6.4 per cent. Therefore, investing in tourism-friendly campaigns seems the better strategy to adopt.”
Conservationists are also concerned that Botswana continues to refuse sharing any wildlife data with global wildlife conservation agencies.
In its report, EWB also complained about Gaborone’s culture of secrecy.
“For the past four years, Elephants Without Borders has repeatedly submitted formal requests to DWNP (Department of Wildlife and National Parks) and the Ministry of Environment seeking access to basic, non-sensitive information, such as annual hunting quotas, individual trophy measurements, and the number, age, and sex of elephants killed through sport hunting or PAC (Problem Animal Control). This information, as outlined in Botswana’s Elephant Management Plan, should be in the public domain. Despite multiple letters and follow-ups, none of these requests have received a response. This lack of engagement undermines principles of transparency, accountability, and inclusive conservation governance.”
In a past interview, International Rhino Foundation’s communication director Christopher Whitlatch also expressed concern at Botswana’s reluctance to share data even with including the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).