Mokgweetsi Masisi, President of Botswana, just threatened to send 20,000 elephants to Germany because Germans apparently have a problem with hunting trophies, you know, an environmentalist’s save-the-tusked-dolphin-owl kind of thing. Germany, which to my knowledge has not had a pachyderm population since the demise of the mammoths and mastodons wants to save Botswana’s herds by banning elephant trophies. Botswana, in contrast, with an estimated 130,000 elephants does have an elephant problem, a burgeoning population of pachyderms whose numbers it wants to reasonably thin.
I suppose President Masisi’s threat derives from another country’s citizens attempting to interfere in Botswana’s business. He seems particularly irked because Botswana’s effort to curb poaching has led to those growing herds, or as he says, ”It is very easy to sit in Berlin and have an opinion about our affairs in Botswana. We are paying the price for preserving these animals for the world.” *
Masisi won’t carry out his threat to send 20,000 elephants to the land of pretzels, beer, Lederhosen, and Wienerschnitzel. Would he send them by plane to Berlin? By ship to Hamburg? Or have some modern day Hannibal march them from Africa to cross the Strait of Gibraltar and Iberian peninsula, then over the Pyrenees, and into Bavaria? It is an empty threat.
America’s Elephantine Problem
Unspoken threats can be more serious than articulated threats.
In contrast to Germany, the US doesn’t have an articulated threat of forced migration from another country’s leader; it has, instead, the unspoken indifference of Central and South American leaders that quietly facilitate city-size populations of migrants marching into the country.
Americans inundated with illegal immigrants would probably prefer an influx of 20,000 elephants. Sure, they might destroy some crops and trees, but they won’t require free phones, transportation, housing, education, seed money, and health care.
* Nadine Schmidt, Sarah Dean and Ingrid Formanek, CNN, reporting on a story in Bild. Online at https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/botswana-threatens-to-send-20-000-elephants-to-germany-in-trophy-hunting-dispute/ar-BB1l0NVa
I suppose President Masisi’s threat derives from another country’s citizens attempting to interfere in Botswana’s business. He seems particularly irked because Botswana’s effort to curb poaching has led to those growing herds, or as he says, ”It is very easy to sit in Berlin and have an opinion about our affairs in Botswana. We are paying the price for preserving these animals for the world.” *
Masisi won’t carry out his threat to send 20,000 elephants to the land of pretzels, beer, Lederhosen, and Wienerschnitzel. Would he send them by plane to Berlin? By ship to Hamburg? Or have some modern day Hannibal march them from Africa to cross the Strait of Gibraltar and Iberian peninsula, then over the Pyrenees, and into Bavaria? It is an empty threat.
America’s Elephantine Problem
Unspoken threats can be more serious than articulated threats.
In contrast to Germany, the US doesn’t have an articulated threat of forced migration from another country’s leader; it has, instead, the unspoken indifference of Central and South American leaders that quietly facilitate city-size populations of migrants marching into the country.
Americans inundated with illegal immigrants would probably prefer an influx of 20,000 elephants. Sure, they might destroy some crops and trees, but they won’t require free phones, transportation, housing, education, seed money, and health care.
* Nadine Schmidt, Sarah Dean and Ingrid Formanek, CNN, reporting on a story in Bild. Online at https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/botswana-threatens-to-send-20-000-elephants-to-germany-in-trophy-hunting-dispute/ar-BB1l0NVa
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