Zimbabwe to Kill 200 Elephants 'Because We Have More Than We Need'

For once, Green™ or other activist wannabe world-saver can be bothered to ask: why? Here's what's happening in Africa: drought-stricken and with famines feared, gov't turns to agit-prop

The quip, ‘and now for something completely different’, of 1970s Monty Python vintage, might be quite well-known—but here’s a piece I found a few days ago on Norwegian state broadcaster NRK. It tells the absurd story of (too) successful wildlife conservation in Africa, which will result in the killing of 200 elephants ‘because we have more than we need’.

While here in Europe, wolves casually stroll through suburbs, the anti-human agenda (2030) continues apace:

Eco-Green Reality Check: Wolves Stroll Through Central Europe, Kill Livestock--Politicians Ignore the Issue

As apex predators re-establish themselves in close proximity to human settlements, authorities demand people to ‘live in peace’ with ‘Nature™’. Did you hear about that jogger in Italy who was mauled to death by a bear? According to the BBC (yes, them), this is what transpired:

The local provincial government has argued the bear needs to be put down as she has a history of attacking humans—injuring a father and son while they were hiking on Mount Peller in 2020.

But the Trento administrative court on Friday partially upheld an appeal against the destruction that was made by environmental groups, who claim the bear is innocent [how do they know?]…

Bears are a protected species in Italy, and their population has been increasing in recent years after they were reintroduced to the region two decades ago…

Last month, Trentino governor Maurizio Fugatti said the optimal number of wild bears was roughly 50 and that the province now had around 70 ‘excess’ bears.

So, before you condemn the Zimbabweans for announcing to cull their ‘excess elephants’, dear European readers, please look into the mirror.

And without much further ado, here goes; non-English content comes to you in my translation, with emphases [and snarky commentary] added.

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Zimbabwe to Cull 200 Elephants: ‘We have more than we need’

By Benjamin Vorland Andersrød and Hilde Nilsson Ridola, NRK/NTB, 14 Sept. 2024 [source]

The country has declared a state of emergency and wants to feed its drought-stricken population with elephants. This does not go down well with everyone [let’s find out who’s opposed below].

Zimbabwe plans to cull 200 elephants this year. The Zimparks Parks and Wildlife Department has already been instructed to reduce the population [this looks like it’s only a small step before the same will be said about the number of humans].

‘We have more elephants than we need’, said the country’s environment [sic] minister in the National Assembly this week.

Zimbabwe has declared a state of emergency due to drought.

Food shortages [among people] and a sharp increase in the elephant population are also cited as reasons for the drastic measure [given that food humans and elephants aren’t exactly competing for the same foodstuffs, this is a BS ‘argument].

The 200 animals will be rounded up in areas where conflicts have arisen between elephants and humans [it’s called habitat destruction on part of humans; the elephants were there first, and now they are the ‘problem™’—a classic example of ‘populist’ agit-prop].

Peter Bøckman is a zoologist and explains that it is certainly possible to eat elephants [which is also a highly inane thing to say and deflects from whatever the piece was supposed to be about]:

‘But when they kill elephants, it’s mostly because elephants eat the vegetation in the reserves and contribute to the damage caused by the drought’, he says [see what I mean? Elephant populations in the wildlife reserve have increased, but they are eating plants that humans wish to eat; it’s a classic perpetrator-victim inversion, to say nothing about the non-argument by ‘the expert™’].

Highly Endangered Species

There are also plans to cull elephants in Hwange, where the country’s largest nature reserve is located. Zimparks director Fulton Mangwanya told AFP [this is what the UN/WEF cabal has in store for humans who shall live in reserves—they are called ‘15 minute cities’, and guess what will happen if they are struck by a ‘problem™’, such as food shortages or the like: find out here].

The last time Zimparks undertook a similar operation was in 1988, over 30 years ago.

With its 100,000 elephants, Zimbabwe has the second largest population in the world. Only neighbouring Botswana has more.

In total, there are an estimated 415,000 African elephants [go ahead and click on that OWID link; it’s in the original piece, and it shows how elephant populations are still about a third higher than they were in the mid-1990s when the record begins]. In some places, the population is considered safe and growing, while in others the species is highly endangered and at very high risk of extinction, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) [so, which is it?].

Call for Other Solutions

Plans to cull 200 elephants do not go down well with everyone [do tell].

Zimbabwe’s Centre for Natural Resource Management believes that the authorities need to find other, more sustainable [I almost fell off my chair laughing], and environmentally friendly [perhaps sell some CO2 certificates because…less elephants breath out less CO2?] ways of dealing with the drought [shouldn’t out globalist wannabe overlords be celebrating the drought and all the potential population reduction it might entail? What is the downside here?].

‘There is a risk that tourists will not come on ethical grounds. Elephants are worth more alive than dead’, says director [of Zimbabwe’s Centre for Natural Resource Management] Farai Maguwu [no shit analysis, Sherlock; as a follow-up if I may: shouldn’t people reduce flying to Zimbabwe to ‘combat CO2 emissions™’? What am I missing here?].

The animal protection organisation PETA describes the measure as short-sighted, cruel, and ineffective, according to The Guardian [I recommend that piece because it’s full with additional content omitted here].

‘Other animals will suffer if the elephant population is allowed to grow too large’, argues Chris Brown. He is head of the environmental protection organisation ‘Namibian Chamber of Environment’ [because, as the Guardian piece informs us, ‘neighbouring Namibia said this month that it had already killed 160 wildlife animals in a planned cull of more than 700, including 83 elephants, to cope with its worst drought in decades’—note that ‘the Environment Ministries are coordinating all of this].

Drought Disaster

Around 68 million people are affected by drought in southern Africa, according to the Southern African Development Community (SADC).

The El Nino drought disaster [so it’s a kind of cyclical, natural thing], combined with global warming [of course that was rash], has led to a delayed rainy season.

It’s not just Zimbabwe that has been culling animals to feed its drought-stricken population.

At the end of August, authorities in Namibia said they will cull 83 elephants and distribute meat to people affected by drought. In total, they plan to cull over 700 wild animals.

Hundreds of elephants died in Botswana and Zimbabwe in 2023 due to drought, according to Reuters.

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Bottom Lines: Useful Stuff to Know

So, there you have it: some 200 elephants to be killed in Zimbabwe will make a dent in the drought-stricken food supply problem, it is claimed. How many grams of prime elephant cuts per people might this be? (There’s some 16.8m people living in Zimbabwe.)

The same BS is peddled with respect to Namibia, even though it’s lower population of slightly more than 3m people might get ‘more’ choice elephant meat in per capita terms.

This, too, is insanity-cum-virtue-signalling running amok.

The only thing that makes for slightly less insane reading is the candour with which some Africans are speaking (this is from the above-linked Guardian piece, which the NRK ‘journos’—who presumably translated this piece—omitted: may you guess as to why that would be?):

The move to hunt the elephants for food was criticised by some, not least because the animals are a major draw for tourists…

‘Government must have more sustainable eco-friendly methods to dealing with drought without affecting tourism’, said Farai Maguwu, director of the nonprofit Centre for Natural Resource Governance.

‘They risk turning away tourists on ethical grounds. The elephants are more profitable alive than dead’, he said.

‘We have shown that we are poor custodians of natural resources and our appetite for ill-gotten wealth knows no bounds, so this must be stopped because it is unethical.’ [I’m unsure what that refers to: I suppose they may be saying ‘we’ve screwed up and need some overlords to keep an eye on us?]

But Chris Brown, a conservationist and CEO of the Namibian Chamber of Environment, said elephants had a ‘devastating effect on habitat if they are allowed to increase continually, exponentially’. [remember: humans are next to be classified as such, if this nonsense spreads]

‘They really damage ecosystems and habitats [remember: elephants are in wildlife reserves], and they have a huge impact on other species which are less iconic and therefore matter less in the eyes of the Eurocentric, urban armchair conservation people’, he said [a true point].

‘Those species matter as much as elephants.’

Now, do you see the conundrum?

A few years ago, neighbouring Botswana tried a different ‘solution’, i.e., they sold big game hunting licences to rich westerners, but there’s a teeny-tiny problem (as per the BBC’s reporting from 2020):

‘Hunting is not an effective long-term human-elephant mitigation tool or population control method’, [Audrey Delsink, Africa’s wildlife director for the global conservation lobby charity Humane Society International] told AFP [I’m glad we’ve got this settled, isn’t it; you’ve got any ‘science-ey™’ stuff to back this up?]

Ross Harvey, an environmental economist in South Africa, told the BBC: ‘There is no scientific evidence to support the view of there being too many elephants.’ [oopsie]

‘We know that Botswana’s elephant numbers haven’t actually increased over the last five years, we have a stable population. Elephants are critical to Botswana’s ecology.’

So, it’s a cheap shit-show agit-prop, but I suppose it didn’t cause enough uproar ‘in the eyes of the Eurocentric, urban armchair conservation people’.

Back to the wolves and bears in Europe, though: like in southern Africa with its increasing (?) elephant population, the re-introduction of apex predators, such as bears and wolves is a huge, if ultimately Pyrrhic, ‘win’ for pro-wildlife activists.

Time will tell if humans and such wildlife will be able to more or less peacefully coexist (I doubt it, for the past offers no such evidence). Now, if you’d herd all humans into ‘15 minute cities’ and tell them that ‘there’s dangerous wildlife beyond the city limits’, it might defer the ultimate showdown, but it won’t prevent it: wolves will come strolling through suburbs and later inner city parts—and they will be shot.

It still strikes me as an absurd notion to re-introduce such majestic creatures—of which we know they all use up huge areas of territory (irrespective of them being pack animals like wolves or rather more solitary creatures like bears), and there’s not that much open area left in Western countries. It’s different in other places, such as Canada or Russian Siberia with its vast tracts of sparsely or non-inhabited lands.

Also, let’s not forget that the human aspect in southern Africa is absurd: I freely admit I only clicked on the link because of the elephants, but did you spot any reporting on the drought turning into famine as of late?

Perhaps African governments are using these sensitive issues to extract concessions from Western governments? I don’t know, but given that the numbers (200 elephants killed in Zimbabwe, 83 in Namibia) won’t do anything to curb the drought-induced dangers of famine, let’s stop for a moment and ask: is there actually a drought?

Therefore, I ventured over to the UN-sponsored African Flood and Drought Monitor, which has a link where I took the following screenshot:

So, believe it or not, I’m unsure there’s a drought going on in Zimbabwe or Namibia right now. I’ve also checked in with UNICEF and found the following entry from June 2024:

Currently, Zimbabwe like most Sub-Saharan countries is in the grip of the 2023/24 El Nino-induced drought which has resulted in massive crop failure, depletion of water resources and pastures. Due to the extent of the 2023/24 El Nino-induced drought, the Government of Zimbabwe together with the Replica Partners (WFP and Start Network) will receive payouts from ARC Insurance Limited. Albeit the drought conditions, the country has witnessed the occurrence of sporadic heavy storms, flooding, flash flooding and other trans-boundary hazards. The El Nino-induced drought together with the freak weather conditions have caused compounding humanitarian consequences on food security, nutrition, health, WASH, education, social protection, shelter, agriculture, energy, infrastructure, and cross cutting issues among others.

The Zimbabwean economy being agro-based has been largely affected notwithstanding mitigatory measures vigorously pursued by Government and partners.

Given the foregoing, His Excellency, the President of the Republic of Zimbabwe, Cde Dr E.D Mnangagwa declared a State of Disaster.

Call me a cynic, but this reeks…suspicious.

We all know that Zimbabwe has been wrecked by mismanagement, which once more failed with its interventionist activism—and now receives ‘aid’ from the UN and a variety of NGO partners. I would think the cases of Namibia and Botswana aren’t dissimilar.

The only thing we are told ‘in the West’ is about the elephants.

What does this say about ‘us™’?