Botswana to translocate 500 elephants to Mozambique

2022-04-14 - Gaborone, Botswana.

Two years after pledging 500 elephants to Mozambique as a gift, Botswana says the animals are set to be translocated in the near future. This was revealed by President Mokgweetsi Masisi during a three-day state visit by Mozambique's President Filipe Nyusi that ends on Good Friday. Last year, it was reported that conservationists had discovered female elephants in Mozambique's Gorongosa National Park which had been born without tusks.

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World’s Biggest Elephant Herd Opened for Hunters to Kill 287

2021-03-24 - Gaborone, Botswana.

Botswana is offering rights to shoot 287 elephants as the southern African country, which has the world’s biggest population of the animals, tries to breathe life into a hunting industry stalled by the Covid-19 outbreak. Botswana’s neighbors including South Africa and Zimbabwe allow elephant hunting. The hunting season will begin April 6.

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Botswana Wants Angola’s Exiled Elephants to Return Home

2020-11-04 - Gaborone, Botswana. Mbongeni Mguni

Botswana’s tourism industry, which accounts for a fifth of the economy, is heavily reliant on the world’s biggest elephant population, but the animals have become a political issue as there are too many of them and they destroy crops and occasionally trample villagers. Now, elephants are beginning to migrate into neighboring Angola and the governments of both countries are helping them do so by removing land mines left over from Angola’s civil war and tearing down fences.

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Botswana says it has solved mystery of mass elephant die-off

2020-09-22 - Gaborone, Botswana.

Hundreds of elephants died in Botswana earlier this year from ingesting toxins produced by cyanobacteria, according to government officials who say they will be testing waterholes for algal blooms next rainy season to reduce the risk of another mass die-off. The mysterious death of 350 elephants in the Okavango delta between May and June baffled conservationists, with leading theories suggesting they were killed by a rodent virus known as EMC (encephalomyocarditis) or toxins from algal blooms.

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Botswana registers no new elephant deaths since June

2020-09-04 - Gaborone, Botswana.

Botswana has recorded no new elephant deaths since June this year, Oduetse Koboto, the permanent secretary in Botswana's ministry of environment, natural resources conservation and tourism, has said. The southern African country recorded 281 elephant deaths, due to unknown causes, between March and May.
"The number of elephant carcasses found in the northern part of the country remains at 281. No more new elephant deaths have been recorded as of June," Koboto told Xinhua in a telephone i...

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Microsoft Co-Founder Allen to Fund African Elephant Survey

2013-12-05 - Gaborone, Botswana.

Paul Allen, who co-founded Microsoft Corp (MSFT:US). with Bill Gates, will fund a survey of the number of elephants in Africa to help combat poaching that is claiming the life of one of the pachyderms every 15 minutes. The family trust of Allen, who’s worth $15.7 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, will fund an $8 million count of the animals in 13 countries using three fixed-wing airplanes and two helicopters, Botswana-based Elephants Without Borders said today in an e-mail...

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Botswana: A missed opportunity on elephants

2013-11-24 - Gaborone, Botswana.

When word started getting around that Botswana is to host an emergency African Elephant Summit on December 2-4, 2013, residents of Chobe and Ngamiland naturally started rekindling hope that finally the elephant problem is being addressed. It, therefore, comes as a shock that the Botswana government has missed this rare opportunity to include the concern of over-population into the agenda of the forthcoming emergency elephant summit.

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Botswana Gets Green-Light to Sell Ivory. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) has given Botswana the go-ahead to sell 43.6 tonnes of ivory by the end of this year.

2008-04-07 - Gaborone, Botswana.

This is in line with what was agreed last year at The Hague. Information from the Botswana Ministry of Environment Wildlife and Tourism shows that the CITES secretariat in Gaborone gave the country the go-ahead after verifying the government ivory stock earmarked for sale. "Among other things, they looked at the paper trail, data base and the physical ivory to establish its match," reads a statement from the ministry.

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Botswana: Elephant Kills Man

2006-06-09 - Gaborone, Botswana.

Residents of Mmadinare village are still reeling in shock after an incident in which an elephant trampled to death, a 76 year old man on Wednesday in Sasau cattle posts. The deceased had gone to the cattle posts to round up his cattle for Foot and Mouth vaccination when he met his fate. The deceased is reported to have left his home last Tuesday with his children to assess the damage that the elephants had caused to his farm after having heard their noises when they invaded the farm the previous...

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Relocating Elephants Not Easy - Mokaila

2006-02-20 - Gaborone, Botswana.

The Elephant Management Plan has recommended that the Central District should be an elephant-free zone, Minister for Environment, Wildlife and Tourism told Parliament on Friday. However, Mokaila told Parliament that removing the elephants was not easy. "Removing the elephants from this area is a mammoth task, which will require a lot of consultation with the international community because of sensitivities surrounding the killing of elephants," Mokaila observed.

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Elephants Sell Like Hotcakes

2005-07-21 - Gaborone, Botswana.

Citizen hunters have bought 10 elephants in the Mmadinare area after an offer by the Department of Wildlife and National Parks (DWNP). A public notice from the department said the elephants to be hunted in a controlled area CT 27 within a radius of 40km of Mmadinare village were sold for P8, 000 each.

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Botswana wants elephant cull

2005-03-09 - Gaborone, Botswana.

Botswana's president is seeking support from neighbouring Zambia for a proposal that would allow it to cull elephants and sell their ivory, officials said on Tuesday.

President Festus Mogae is expected to ask visiting Zambian President Levi Mwanawasa for support to downgrade the status of elephants under the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species, or Cites, a foreign ministry official said on condition of anonymity.

The official said Botswana ha...

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Botswana"s 20 tonnes ivory trade on hold

2004-10-18 - GABORONE, Botswana. BOPA , Daily News online

Botswana's sale of about 20 tonnes of ivory sanctioned by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) has been suspended because some countries have failed to meet one of the preconditions.

Botswana, Namibia and South Africa were granted permission for a one-off sale of 60 tonnes of ivory in 2002.

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Botswana anthrax "subsiding"

2004-09-24 - Gaborone, Botswana.

The outbreak of anthrax in Botswana's Chobe National Park had claimed the lives of 265 animals, but was now subsiding, an assistant director in the Department of Wildlife said on Friday. Of the 265 animals found dead in Chobe, 248 were buffalo, and 12 were elephants. The carcasses had been disposed of.

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24 years on Internet!

ELEPHANT NEWS was created on 2001 in Munich, and relaunched in Phnom Penh in 2020, with almost 8 000 links to news articles about elephants on the Internet. A number of articles now also have a cross reference to the elephant database, either for individuals elephants and/or to an article about the location holding