Talk about bad ideas! The Botswana government has announced a plan to allow the hunting and killing of elephants and use their meat to make dog food.
You read that correctly. Knowing that the elephant is on the brink of extinction, the Southern African nation has decided to do something absolutely crazy, repeal the ban on trophy hunting. Elephant carcasses would then be harvested for pet food!
Home to one-third of all African elephants, Botswana was once considered one of the last bastions of safety for the imperiled animal. But all that has recently changed. The country — which has 130,000 elephants, the most of any nation — has experienced an alarming spate of elephant poachings. In the past 4 years, poaching has increased by 540%. And from July to September of 2018, 90 elephants were poached — compare that to 14 killed in the same amount of time in 2014.
Yet, instead of creating policies that would better protect the elephant, they are doing the opposite and making it easier to kill them.
Botswana says there have been too many interactions between people and elephants in recent years. But that is no excuse to give the green light to elephant trophy hunting. There are other ways to mitigate human-elephant interactions without having to kill them. And to turn them into dog food is just shameful.
Please sign the petition and tell Botswana you are against their new plan to turn Dumbo into Dog Chow. Tell them to ditch this terrible plan.
