Photo credit: Conservation Namibia
The Yoruba have a saying that when an elephant is to be killed, several matchets will appear!
This will be true of Namibia where the authorities are planning to kill over seven hundred wild animals and distribute the meat to people struggling with food insecurity as the country grapples with its worst poverty in one hundred years. The animals include elephants, zebras, and hippos.
Specifically, to be culled are eighty-three elephants, thirty hippos, sixty buffalos, fifty impala, one hundred blue wildebeest and 300 zebras, according to the country’s Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism.
The animals will come from national parks and communal areas with “sustainable game numbers” and will be killed by professional hunters.
The aim of the program is to help alleviate the impacts of drought in the southwest African country, according to the ministry.
The country declared a state of emergency in May as the impacts of drought worsened. An estimated 1.4 million people are expected to face high levels of food instability. That is around half of the country’s population.
The culling program will also take off pressure off water resources by reducing wildlife in areas where their numbers “exceed grazing and water.” It will as well reduce potential conflicts between elephants and humans, which tend to increase during drought when animals’ search for food and water can bring them into contact with people.
Namibia is one of the countries across southern Africa struggling with devastating drought driven by El Nino – a natural climate pattern that has led to sharply reduced rainfall in the region – and exacerbated by the human-caused climate crisis.
