Ministers will debate a proposal to forbid UK safari hunters from bringing animal parts home, like tusks.
Highlighting Botswana’s independence as a democratic sovereign republic, President Mokgweetsi Masisi declared that he would be “abhorred, disappointed, and disturbed” if the measure were to pass.
Speaking on The World With Yalda Hakim, Mr. Masisi justified trophy hunting, saying that “culling” carries a sense of “ethical abhorrence,” while “you pick which [animal] you hunt.”
The president made it clear that culling was “not the same as hunting” and that it involved the “indiscriminate elimination of a whole herd, mother, father, and grandfather”.
Dumezweni Mthimkhulu, Botswana’s minister of tourism and the environment, had before stated that “trophy hunting” was a means of regulating the quantity of wild animals in his nation and a source of revenue for local communities.
