How to save elephants?

How to save elephants?

Unlike other African countries, the elephant population in Botswana has risen sharply from 50,000 in the 1990's to 130,000 today.

How is it that the answer to this question is contrary to common sense? An effective way to preserve a population of elephants and other wildlife at risk of destruction is to permit controlled, large-scale hunting.

Botswana’s President Mokwetsi Masisi recently wrote controversial material for the Wall Street Journal, entitled “Elephant Hunting Helps They Survive.” Unlike other African countries, the elephant population in Botswana has risen sharply from 50,000 in the 1990s to 130,000 today. The country does not cope with such a quantity. “Forced to fight for scarce supplies of food and water, elephants leave their usual habitats and go into more densely populated areas, and the consequences are horrifying,” for example, animals cripple and kill villagers. Hunting will allow villagers to defend themselves, and stray giants "learn to stay away from territories where they should not be." Local communities, if they are allowed to receive their share of the issue of hunting permits, "will be seriously motivated to value elephants, and what a person appreciates, he cares about."

But what about the rest of the African states, for example Angola, where a combination of violent poaching and an ongoing civil war drove the herds out of their territories, or the African savannah, where poaching and, although to a much lesser extent, high population density have reduced the number of elephants by 30%? In these areas, a massive program of controlled hunting would be incredibly useful. Well-known economist Steve Hanke of Johns Hopkins University writes: "Traditional approaches to wildlife management in Africa did not work, as evidenced by the enormous decline in the populations of its inhabitants." Based on the experience gained in Africa, he concludes that “only the implementation of protected property rights to land and wildlife will make these resources truly valuable. Associated markets will develop. Resources will be widely used, protected and protected. Fair use of resources always goes hand in hand with property rights, prices, markets and legal trade. ”

We add that rights of this kind would create even more resources. For example, the population of pigs in the United States will decline sharply, and the remaining individuals run wild if the market for bacon, ham and sausages suddenly disappears.