Chris Maroldy
This month, the elephant joke made a comeback.
That exemplar of 1960s humor was the second thing I thought of when I heard the news that Botswana’s president suggested he might send 20,000 elephants to Germany to see how the Europeans liked living with the beasts. This after Germany’s Environment Ministry threw its support behind a proposed ban on the importation of hunting trophies from protected species.
Botswana is home to roughly 130,000 elephants, nearly a third of the world’s population, and Germany is one of the largest importers of hunting trophies in the European Union, allowing 26 elephant trophies into the country last year, according to the German government. While elephant populations worldwide and in northern Africa seem to be having a hard time due to poaching and habitat loss, they’re doing pretty well in southern Africa, where Botswana is located, to the point that conflict with people and serious environmental damage is more and more common.
So the *first* thing I thought of when I heard about President Mokgweetsi Masisi’s comments was, “Good for him.”
The second thing was the whole lot of fun I had with elephant jokes when I was a kid. How about bringing the old classics into the 21st century? Let me try this twist on you: “Why do German elephants paint their toenails red and green?” —“So they can hide in Christmas trees…”
Boo, hiss? —Drop off your comments at the Complaint Boxes located wherever you used to pick up your paper copy of Community Sports News.
Some people “get” elephant jokes and some people don’t. Some people get hunting, and some don’t. Some people get trophy hunting, and some don’t. And some people get elephant hunting, and some people don’t.
The fact is that poachers, poverty and habitat loss are a much bigger triple threat to elephants than a few dozen highly regulated hunters roaming the continent each year. And to put things in perspective, sport hunting (as opposed to market hunting) has never caused a population problem for any North American species. In fact, declines in or bans on hunting (for whatever reason) have done more harm than good to the game, the environment, and in some cases the people on this continent. The same thing could translate to Africa.
Get the poachers, poverty and habitat under control, and things would look up for the elephants and for Africa. This is what most conservationists say, and what pro-hunting interests say. All reports indicate that in Africa, there’s an overwhelming sense that the revenue generated by limited elephant hunting is hugely important to the economy and the local people, more so than photo safaris and other eco-tourism. The comparison may or may not be provable, but the power of the money (and the food and by-products) is undeniable, if you listen to Africans.
There is also rising property and crop damage and increasing danger to humans as Botswana’s elephant population has soared after the nation implemented strict anti-poaching measures in recent years, including “shoot-to-kill” orders which have since been rescinded. The country has exported elephants to other African nations, and sees regulated hunting as a no-risk, high-reward tool for selective “cropping” of the resource in a delicate environment which has been plagued by drought.
“It is very easy to sit in Berlin and have an opinion about our affairs in Botswana,” Masisi told the German paper Bild. “We are paying the price for preserving these animals for the world.” Germans should “live with the animals the way you try to tell us to,” he said.
And then he added: “This is no joke.”
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Okay, a few more:
Why is sending elephants to Germany a bad idea? —Because they might work for peanuts, but they won’t work for sour Krauts….
—Because at the pool, they won’t wear the Speedos. They prefer trunks…
—Footprints in the butter…
—You’ll have to take the giraffes out first…
—No soap, radio.
I have a *ton* of them! But remember: Look for those Complaint Boxes if you need them….