Anger at the Greens: Botswana wants to send 20,000 elephants to Germany

BERLINER MORGENPOST Anger at the Greens: Botswana wants to send 20,000 elephants to Germany ANGER AT THE GREEN MINISTER 20,000 elephants for Steffi Lemke - "We won't accept no" 04/02/2024, 7:48 p.m. • Reading time: 5 minutes Miguel Sanches Chief Correspondent Elephants in the Okavango Delta. There are too many animals, says Botswana's president. He is happy to leave them to the hunters - or alternatively to the Green Environment Minister Lemke Berlin. Environment Minister Steffi Lemke wanted to make the import of some hunting trophies more difficult or prohibit them. Now she herself is being politically hunted. In Botswana, people are not happy with Steffi Lemke. The Green Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection has just received a poisoned offer: elephants. Not specimens for the desk - real elephants. And quite a lot of them. President Mokgweetsi Masisi says: "If you like elephants so much, then please accept 20,000 of them." This political dispute does not only involve Lemke and Masisi, but also the "Bild" newspaper, a member of the CSU and the hunters. There are 436,325 people in Germany with hunting licenses. More than half of them are members of the German Hunting Association. Not everyone is on the hunt for elephants. But many value trophies. Lemke calls the opposition into action Species protection was already a concern for the Greens during the traffic light coalition negotiations. Because they could not reach an agreement with the SPD and FDP, Lemke wants to focus on reducing the import of hunting trophies of protected species as an alternative. Or banning them altogether. This does not go unnoticed by Anja Weisgerber. Weisgerber is a political professional, she sits on the CSU board and has been in parliament for over ten years, in the environmental committee as the Green politician's opponent. The CSU woman is fighting for the shooting of wolves at home and knows exactly how to set an issue. On February 21, the politician from Schweinfurt submitted a question to the Bundestag about the hunting trophies. Lemke had her state secretary Bettina Hoffmann respond that her ministry was working to tighten up EU law, specifically to expand the import permit requirement for hunting trophies. So far, it has covered twelve animal species. In the future, more would benefit from it, "including giraffes and crocodiles." The animals perhaps, but not the countries, not the hunters. The ugly accusation of colonialism A few days later, the specialist portal "Pirsch" took up the matter and quoted the CDU's hunting policy spokesman, Hans-Jürgen Thies. He suspects that the reasons for the intended restriction are anchored in the "personal ideology of Federal Environment Minister Lemke". Her intervention in the sovereignty of African states "has something post-colonial about it." The Namibian Environment Minister Pohamba Shifeta follows on from this. In a letter at the end of February, he accused Lemke of one-sided, illegal and neo-colonial behavior. For "Bild", it is a godsend: "Huge African trouble for the Greens," the tabloid headlines at the end of March ("beautiful animals, ugly accusations"). Now the political death knell is finally being sounded for Lemke. Dispute in the traffic light coalition For many countries, hunting tourism is an important economic factor, including for Botswana. Environment Minister Dumezdweni Mthimkhulu traveled to Berlin specifically to talk Lemke out of her plan. In "Bild", her coalition partner is lending support - for the minister's critics. FDP hunting expert Karlheinz Busen accuses Lemke of causing a diplomatic scandal. "Ms. Lemke must realize that she is not an ideological world police force." Botswana borders South Africa to the south, Namibia to the west and north, and Zambia and Zimbabwe to the northeast. According to the "Democracy Index," it is the most democratic country on the African mainland. Above all, Botswana has a surplus of elephants, a so-called overpopulation. Botswana has too many elephants There are around 130,000 elephants living here, more than in any other African country. That is why 8,000 pachyderms have already been given to neighboring Angola. Anyone who wants to ban hunting trophies is promoting poverty and poaching and damaging his country, President Mokgweetsi Masisi is outraged, of course in "Bild." In his country, people are attacked and trampled to death by elephants, villages are devastated and crops are destroyed. Hunting is, he says, an important means of regulating the population; and a lucrative one at that, as hunters are tourists and a wealthy clientele. The Germans should take 20,000 elephants and live with them "as you are trying to tell us to," he says. "This is no joke." And: "We won't take no for an answer."