DEADLY FAILURE OP-ED: A collar was not enough: Botswana’s failure to protect its research elephants from trophy hunters

The killings of two satellite-collared elephant bulls raise a much larger question than whether their collars were somehow overlooked: what is the point of declaring research animals protected if the state institutions responsible for wildlife cannot prevent hunters from killing them?

Information from Botswana indicates that two satellite-collared elephant bulls were shot by trophy hunters on 3 and 4 September, in separate hunting areas and on separate hunts. Both animals were identifiable research elephants. Both wore collars. Both were apparently observed and assessed before they were shot.

And, extraordinarily, Department of Wildlife and National Parks (DWNP) officials were reportedly present.

That last detail is a serious one because this should not be allowed to dissolve into another convenient argument about whether a hunter could or could not see a collar. This is not simply a question of poor judgement by two hunting parties. It is a question about the ethical and regulatory credibility of Botswana’s wildlife management system… and trophy hunting in general.

If a government official accompanies a trophy hunt precisely because the activity requires oversight, and a protected research elephant is nevertheless selected, pursued and killed, then the oversight has failed at the most basic level.

When it happens twice, on consecutive days, the explanation becomes considerably harder to accept.

Trophy hunting is routinely defended on the basis that it is highly selective. The hunter does not indiscriminately fire into a herd. Individual animals are located, followed, observed, assessed and ultimately selected. Tusks are examined. Age is estimated. Trophy quality is evaluated. The animal’s position is considered. The hunter manoeuvres for an appropriate shot.

That makes the suggestion that a substantial satellite collar around an elephant’s neck simply escaped everyone’s attention particularly difficult to reconcile with the supposed precision of the exercise.

If a hunting party can inspect an elephant carefully enough to decide that his tusks make him worth killing but not carefully enough to establish whether he is wearing a research collar, then something is fundamentally wrong with the standards governing the hunt.

And if visibility is genuinely so poor that the entire neck cannot be examined? Then do not shoot.

The ethical burden must surely rest on those intending to kill the animal to establish beyond reasonable doubt that the animal is legally and ethically available to be killed. The elephant should not bear the consequences of uncertainty. Yet that appears to be exactly what happened.

What makes the latest deaths particularly troubling is that Botswana has already confronted almost precisely this problem.

In November 2019, a collared bull elephant was shot in Controlled Hunting Area NG3 during a licensed hunt accompanied by a DWNP official.