Zimbabwe is currently set to allow people buy hunting rights for 500 elephants as they hope that it will boost the tourism of the country.
Despite many people arguing that it is not the right thing to do, the authorities said that the latest move will be bringing more money.
Tinashe Farawo, the spokesperson for the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority, said that the latest move is going to help boost the tourism of the country.
They said:
We eat what we kill. We have a budget of about $25 million for our operations which is raised, partly, through sports hunting, but you know tourism is as good as dead at the moment due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Hunters will have to pay $10,000 to $70,000 to kill elephants in the parks of the country.
the larger the elephant, the more hunters will have to pay in order to hunt it down in a “legal” way, said a report by LadBible.
Zimbabwe currently has the second largest elephant population in the world.
The news comes as it has been declared that the elephant population in the entire world is currently declining.
The latest International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species has proven that the elephant population is declining.
Forest elephants have seen the biggest impact on this.
More than 86 percent of the forest elephants has fallen by 86 percent over the last 3 decades and the savanna elephants population has dropped by at least 60 percent of the last 50 years.
Animal conservationists are not happy with the hunting rights plan that has been announced by the government of Zimbabwe.
Despite that, Farawo, the spokesperson of the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlfe Management Authority, has hit back at the critics.
In a statement that they released, Farawo said:
How do we fund our operations, how do we pay our men and women who spend 20 days in the bush looking after these animals?. Those who are opposed to our management mechanism should instead be giving us the funding to manage better these animals.
What are your thoughts on Zimbabwe allowing hunters to buy hunting rights in the country? Let us know what you think about it by leaving a comment in the comments section below.