Botswana - Africa's rare success story of elephant conservation

No sign of an elephant in all of two minutes, a tourist teased a guide at Botswana's Chobe National Park, home to tens of thousands of elephants. A minute later, their vehicle cleared a knot of shrubs and elephants loomed ahead beside the dusty road. Such joking wouldn't be possible in many other parts of Africa, where recent years have yielded dire news about ivory poaching. Poachers killed more than 20,000 elephants in 2013 amid rising demand for their tusks in Asia, particularly China, according to international conservation groups. Botswana is a rare bright spot with estimates of its elephant population as high as 200,000. The southern African country's political and economic stability, small human population and other factors make it an elephant haven, though pressure on habitats and conflict with the human population are increasing concerns. Botswana is a challenging model for other African nations struggling to ward off the illegal wildlife trade, ranked by the United Nations alongside arms, drug and human trafficking because its illicit profits run into billions of dollars worldwide. In all of Africa, there are about 420,000 to 650,000 elephants, according to some estimates. Elephants roam widely outside conservation areas in landlocked Botswana, which has two million people; in contrast, Kenya, under pressure from poachers, has almost as much territory as Botswana with about 35,000 elephants and 45 million people. Elephants benefit from Botswana's ban on commercial trophy hunting on state land that took effect this year to help other wildlife species whose numbers are in decline. Some elephants, who traditionally range across unfenced borders, may also have crossed into and stayed in Botswana as poaching escalated in neighbouring countries, some conservationists say. While official corruption has hooks in African poaching, Transparency International in 2013 listed Botswana 30th out of 177 countries and territories, based on how corrupt their public sector is perceived to be. It led all other African countries and was ahead of nations including Portugal, South Korea and Costa Rica in the survey by the Berlin-based watchdog group. "Peace and conservation success go hand in hand," said Rudi van Aarde, a South African conservationist at the University of Pretoria who studies regional elephant populations. "Warfare and unrest and improper governance go hand in hand with conservation failures." Botswana says its elephant population is growing at five per cent a year. Officials have introduced fencing to keep elephants away from villages and the use of chili peppers is among schemes designed to protect crops from these "intelligent creatures," said Cyril Taolo, deputy director of the country's department of wildlife and national parks. "Elephants being elephants, they quickly find their way around some of these things," he said. In December, Botswana President Ian Khama, speaking at an international meeting on elephant conservation in Gaborone, the capital, said his government had deployed "all our security forces" to help guard against poachers. But some suspects infiltrate across borders. In June, a Zambian poacher was killed in a gunfight with rangers in Chobe National Park in northern Botswana, close to Zambia, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Angola. About 50 elephants have been poached annually in recent years in Botswana, according to Taolo. Poaching statistics are far higher elsewhere in Africa. Poachers, some shooting from helicopters, killed about 70 elephants over a two-month period in Garamba National Park in Congo, the park director said in June. Late last year, authorities in neighbouring Zimbabwe reported more than 100 elephants were killed by cyanide poisoning in the western Hwange game reserve.