The CEO of the True Green Alliance in South Africa, Ron Thomson – a veteran African game warden and elephant management expert – applauds the new Botswana President – His Excellency Mokgweetse Masisi – for the wisdom and the insight he has shown towards the wildlife management needs of Botswana’s national parks; of Botswana’s grossly excessive elephant population; and of Botswana’s rural people.
Wildlife is a WILD “product of the land” – just as cattle sheep and goats are TAME “products of the land” – and they should BOTH be used wisely and sustainably for the benefit of Botswana’s rural people.
What Masisi has indicated is that he understands the need to create an ecological balance between the country’s soils, its plants and its wild animals, in the interests of the country’s biological diversity – a balance that has been sadly lacking for the past 60 years.
First World animal rightist NGOs – who have no accountability for what they demand of Africa – have been pestering Botswana to abandon its ideas of resurrecting elephant hunting as a wildlife management tool in Botswana; and, in support of these NGO’s demands, they have been fabricating all sorts of lies about Masisi – and praising the country’s recently retired president Ian Khama – in order to gain public support.
Thomson urges the SADC countries not to listen to these NGO rantings because, he says, their designs are merely to continue making hundreds of millions of US dollars annually out of their propaganda. In fact, it was Ian Khama – and his compliance with the demands of his animal rightist friends –that got Botswana into the mess it is in at the moment; and it is Masisi’s design to rectify all Khama’s wildlife management wrongs.
Masisi is exactly on the right track to restore health and vigour into Botswana’s ailing wildlife management scenario. And Ian Khama needs to fade into the background as all retiring politicians should have the gumption and the grace to do.
Thomson goes further:
Botswana is currently carrying between 10 and 20 times too many elephants and, over the last 60 years, they have been trashing the Botswana game habitats; and causing massive biological diversity losses. The damage already done is so great that it needs an act of Draconian magnitude to put the country back on track.
What Masisi is planning to do is exactly that: an act of Draconian magnitude. So, the countries of SADC should learn a lesson from this wise, fearless and dynamic national leader and take their cue from him; rather than from the Western NGOs – who are making demands in order to keep themselves on the animal rights gravy train.
The animal rights NGOs make money out of telling emotional wildlife-related lies to the general public; and they are racketeers – because they keep using the same lies to make more and more money out the gullible public; and THAT makes them, collectively, part of international organised crime (Ref. The American RICO Act – Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organisation Act). The public, therefore, is cautions to think VERY carefully about donating their hard-earned pennies to these people.
He advises: Look up the American RICO Act and make yourself conversant with the legal implications of NGOs “making money out of a gullible public by telling emotion-charge lies about the realities of wildlife management issues”.
During the three years leading up to CoP17 in Johannesburg in 2016, the animal rightist NGOs – on masse – were telling the world that the African elephant was facing extinction – and they solicited hundreds of millions of US dollars out of the public over this period.
This money, they said, they would ‘use’ to save the elephant from this ignoble fate (extinction). Now that we all know that this is a lie – that the elephant is NOT facing extinction – indeed the numbers of elephants living in the collective national parks of southern Africa actually (probably) number in excess of 300 000 (and their numbers are still expanding) – don’t let the animal rightists dupe you (again) when they demand that we should not kill an elephant – not even one – and, the NGOs say, the elephants will control their own expanding numbers themselves.
They must make up their mind what they want the public to believe – that the elephant is declining and facing extinction… or that the elephant populations are expanding but that they will (through some magic in the air) control their own numbers.
They are lying again because they have been hung by their own petard. Nevertheless, they have a new plan of action to make money out of the gullible public… only, this time, the public is starting to understand how they have had the wool pulled over the eyes. Public resistance to animal rights duplicity is growing daily.
If the public want to know WHAT is going on with regard to the elephants in Botswana, they should watch and listen to the prescriptions being put out by Mokgweetse Masisi. He is on the right track.
And if the SADC countries wish to bring common sense back into the wildlife management equation in their own countries, they should watch and see what Masisi is going to do.
Don’t listen to the animal rightist NGOs. And don’t listen to the United Nations organisations – CITES. CITES has been captured by the Western animal rights NGOs. CITES has changed from being an organisation designed to REGULATE the wildlife trade, into one that PROHIBITS the wildlife trade. And, when you try to evaluate the purpose of CITES ask yourself this question: “What good thing had CITES ever done for Africa?” The answer is NOTHING; and that state of affairs is not likely to change. So, the best thing that could ever happen to the world – and to Africa – is that CITES should be rendered, itself, extinct.
In my opinion, SADC should form a new wildlife trade block with the countries of the Far East – where the country’s of SADC can legally sell their legal acquired wildlife products. Eswatini, South Africa and Namibia would greatly benefit from being able to sell their legally procured rhino horn into a transparent Far Eastern rhino horn market. South Africa, Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe would benefit from being able to sell their legally acquired ivory into an equally transparent Chinese ivory market. I plead with the SADC countries to extricate southern Africa from the stranglehold that CITES has on the marketing of these countries’ legally acquired wildlife products. And the only reason CITES has been corrupted is because the accredited animal rightists at CITES now rule the roost at the convention.
“The countries of the SADC region need” Thomson says, “to regain their sovereign rights to practice wildlife management in the manner that they see fit”.
Please stop the murder of elephants.
Dear Nigel,
How about YOU being a little more supportive of what President Masisi is trying to do?
FIRST of all the most important wildlife management action that is needed in Botswana has nothing to do with “making money”. Botswana is currently carrying between 10 and 20 times too many elephants – and has been so doing for the last 60 years – gradually building up to the present very high numbers. This has caused the absolute devastation of the habitats in all of Botswana’s wildlife sanctuaries – which are now well advanced to becoming true deserts. Many plants and animals have already been rendered locally extinct because their habitats and environments have been utterly destroyed (by too many elephants over far too many years). So the most important management action that needs to happen is for the elephants to be reduced in number to a level that the habitats have the chance to recover. THIS is a MAJOR undertaking.
It is my personal belief that tens of thousands of elephant will have to be permanently removed from the game reserve ecosystems in Botswana and it makes no sense not to recover and sell their products (meat; hide; and ivory) and to sell the hunting rights, too. And there are various ways this money can be distributed equitably to the local rural people.
I have spoken to Masisi and I can assure that this is his fervent desire. Have the grace to give him the benefit of the doubt. And, please, publish positive responses. Don’t just mimic the diatribe that the animal rightist NGOs churn out. I am sure you have more sense and pride to “be your own person” in this discourse?
Let’s see what Masisi does with the problem he is faced with. I have absolute faith in him. He WILL do the right thing.
The Safari Club International has NOTHING to do with Botswana’s elephant management dilemma. And ‘HUNTING” elephants is NOT ‘the most important’ wildlife management activity in this complex conundrum. Hunting is merely ONE “tool” of management. Elephant population reduction is the most important objective to achieve.
Kind regards,
Ron Thomson CEO-TGA
Dear Edwin,
Well said. And the TGA will help to get this message through to the big wide world.
Ron Thomson
Sometimes it helps to do your research before making general statements, trophy hunting and just hunting by citizens was temporarily banned in 2014. A government directive authored by the then permanent secretary Mr Neil Fitt, stated that the reasons was so that the wildlife numbers can recuperate. It was never a permanent ban, now if you do your research well, you will realise that before trophy hunting was banned, they were Community Based Organisations like the Sankuyo Tshwaragano Management Trust, Khwai Development Trust, Mababe Zokotsama Community Trust, Okavango Kopano Mokoro Trust, Okavango Community Trust just to name a few, benefited from trophy hunting. The Government only sought accountability of money usage to curb abuse of money by those who had direct access of money within those communities. This money helped the people of Sankuyo, Khwai, Mababe, Ditshiping, Xaxaba, Xuoxao, Daunara, Boro, Xharaxao, Seronga, Gunotsoga, Eretsha, Beetsha and Gudigwa just to mention a few. Trophy hunting was not their only source of income of course, but it generated as much as P7,382,097 against the most publicised photographic safari which only brought only P2, 374,077 in 2008. All these monies went to the communities themselves and jobs were created through these trophy huntings. The hunting ban accounted for 200 job losses and P7 million in revenue that would have otherwise gone directly to community coffers. This money was used to improve the livelihoods of people by providing funeral insurance for all community members, pension for the elderly, bursaries for the youth, cash to the families and food packages. Therefore with the ban, all these vanished. Unless you have a solution that can be discussed, I will be waiting.