Europeans care more about elephants than people, says Botswana president

cyu@sh.itjust.works to World News@lemmy.world – 112 points –
Europeans care more about elephants than people, says Botswana president
theguardian.com
30

Yeah, we got people in droves.

Elephants however are rare and majestic.

Also people (as a group, not individuals) are responsible for most of our own suffering, and also most of the suffering of elephants.

One species is helpless against human evils and the other is only largely helpless.

How many people do elephants kill?

How many people do people kill?

People suck.

I was going to say- maybe that's the right attitude?

Elephants are very smart and they aren't destroying the planet.

Yeah, this is definitely a "he's making a point, just not the point he wants to make" kinda thing. Maybe if he said that Europeans care more about elephants than they do about Africans, it would have been a little clearer.

To be fair, elephants would if they could. They're known for knocking down trees so that they can eat the foliage. Turns out they knock down more trees than humans do in the African savanna.

How about globally? Elephants knocking down more trees than humans? What is it, like, 50/50? 60/40?

Did you know elephants clearcut the rainforest to raise cattle? And they invented crack! Heck, they’d vote Democrat if we’d let ‘em.

There's about 400,000 elephants and 8 billion humans, it's not a fair fight.

The amount of people that elephants kill is not 0. Though, most of the human deaths that involve elephants are probably the human's fault.

And immediately preceeded with the local equivalent of "Hey y'all, watch this!"

i mean of course a poacher and authoritarian would think that

Masisi has been accused by some of having authoritarian views, and contributing to undermining democracy in Botswana.[29] > Former President Ian Khama, who has fallen out with Masisi since his election, alleged that Masisi "stifled dissent" in an interview with the Financial Times, and added that Botswana's reputation was being undermined locally and internationally, and that democracy was in decline.[30]

Masisi is in support of elephant hunting in Botswana, and believes that allowing some ivory trading would allow more funding for conservation. In 2019, he presented stools made from elephant feet to the national leaders of Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe, a move that received some criticism from international media outlets.[31][32][33] Masisi reversed the ban on elephant hunting put in place by his predecessor, and removed Botswana's "Shoot to Kill" anti-poaching policy.[34]

Haven’t met an asshole elephant yet.

But elephants are like people and some may be jerks…

Stop that Mr Simpson

Oh, they DO exist... Herd of juvenile males with no adult supervision were running riot. Solution? Bring in some bull males to knock some sense into them. Just like with kids, worked great!

https://beyondthesestonewalls.com/posts/in-the-absence-of-fathers-a-story-of-elephants-and-men

This is why we need male only social spaces like backnin the day. Used to be a way for intergenerational bonding and a lot more.

We seemed to have lost a lot of community over the last 50 years and no-one seems to care. Or worse they think it's a good thing.

The world would be a much better place if we placed nature'at least at the same level of care as we place generalized human need.

"No Mercy" has a great bit where Redmond O'Hanlon wants to try to rescue an orphaned baby gorilla, and his guide absolutely loses his shit about it. He says I do not fucking understand white people. Anywhere we've been, I can take you a mile in any direction and find actual human being people many of them children who need a fuck of a lot of help. If you want to help them, you could always do that, or maybe your government could stop shooting them or taking all their stuff and leaving them starving. But no: You see one gorilla and you're all sentimental and so all a sudden that becomes the overriding priority of this previously non humanitarian mission when all the rest of it you didn't give a fuck about.

(In Redmond's defense, they did also do a certain amount for the people also; he talks elsewhere about it being an actual problem because they kept giving their medicine away to people who needed it, leaving them potentially in a really really bad spot if they wound up needing it later on.)

I think a lot of animal suffering has come from humans. Humans really need to fix this.

In that other case you know it would be seen as the white man coming in to try "fix" the black community. It's been tried many times, even now charities where white people go to Africa and donate time is not allowed on TV used to be a big thing but people cried racism. People are going to complain either way.

Well, yeah, there are 8 billion people now. How many elephants are there? 400,000?

Botswana recently threatened to send 30,000 elephants to the UK and Germany after both countries proposed stricter controls on hunting trophies.

The UK does have a lot of islands. Probably a little cold for elephants, though.

Botswana government also does this, but for different people. Probably most people have some other group or groups they don’t regard as having full value as humans.

Anyway, I thought the suggestion to export the elephants was a good one. I’ll take a herd in my local area.

Elephants taste better than people.

You've tried both?

Well the guide on safari said if I closed my eyes and opened my mouth he'd let me try trunk. It was smaller and saltier than I was expecting.

I'm also pretty sure the elefant had a cold.

Europeans care more about elephants than people, says Botswana president

is a rare English ambiguity construction that means either:

Europeans care more about elephants than Europeans care about people

or

Europeans care more about elephants than people care about elephants

we’ll never know