Botswana's President Mokgweetsi Masisi has said his government will kill 20,000 elephants and distribute their meat to starving locals if Germany does not accept his proposal to send as many jumbos to the European country, Tass reports.

In April 2024, he offered 20,000 elephants to Germany as a way to manage their population in his country.  

"When people are starving," the Russian publication wrote on September 27, citing a report by Bild, a German paper, "we must feed them. […] I’m afraid we will have to feed some of those elephants or even all of them to the people."

The southern African nation has about 130,000 elephants, the world's largest number in any country.  His government has been trying to convince Western conservationists including German authorities, to support its plan for a more robust approach to reduce the elephant population.  The animals, his government says, are posing an environmental catastrophe as they eat up people's crops, outcompete them at water points and destroy their homes.

The human-elephant competition for food and water is worse this year, as Botswana and other elephants range states in southern Africa, is facing their "worst drought" in 50 years.

Botswana has previously translocated 8,000 elephants to neighbouring Angola and 700 to Mozambique.

"We would like to offer such a gift to Germany," Masisi told Bild in April.

A month earlier, Botswana’s wildlife minister Dumezweni Mthimkhulu had offered to send 10,000 of the giant herbivores to London’s Hyde Park so, BBC wrote then, British people could "have a taste of living alongside" them. 

UK legislators had just voted to support a ban on hunting trophies.

Namibia and Zimbabwe announced in August and September, respectively, their intentions to kill hundreds of animals, including the huge herbivores, to not only manage their booming populations but also feed the people who are hungry following the regional drought. 

A bloc of 16 southern African nations issued an international appeal in May for $5.5bn to help mobilise food aid for about 68mn people rendered food-insecure by the drought.

Namibia said it would cull 723 animals among them 83 elephants, 30 hippos, 60 buffalo and 300 zebras and distributing their meat to the needy.

Zimbabwe has an estimated 100,000 elephants, up to 45,000 of which are in Hwange National Park, west of the country.  The total population is twice as large as the country should optimally have to ensure environmental sustainability, the government says.

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, has restrictions on the culling and trade in elephants and elephant products on Zimbabwe, Botswana and Namibia.

Germans should "live together with the animals, in the way you are trying to tell us to," Masisi noted in April. "This is no joke."