The West belatedly discovers that animal conservation is imperialism as far as the Africans are concerned:
The highly sensitive issue is whether the continent should be free to look after and even sell its own wildlife in the way it wishes, or be forced to bow to Western conservationists, rich celebrities and royals who say elephants must remain in the lands where they are born and be protected.
Next week, the sale of wild elephants such as the five-year-old, and the even more contentious trade in their tusks, will top the agenda in Switzerland at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).
This is the organisation that sets worldwide rules on the sale of wild animals and their products. And impoverished Zimbabwe, which UN officials said last week was ‘marching towards starvation’, will be anxious to hear what CITES says.
In the past few years, Zimbabwe has made £2.2 million from the sale of 97 elephants — including the baby female pinned down in the crate — to zoos, parks and other tourist attractions in China and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
And more deals are in the pipeline because Zimbabwe has announced it will sell the creatures ‘to anyone’. No wonder Fulton Mangwanya, the director of Zimbabwe’s Parks and Wildlife Management Authority, said of the elephant sales: ‘We are fighting tooth and nail so that we are allowed to trade in our wildlife. The main contentious issue is the elephants, which we feel we are not allowed to fully benefit from.’
What, did they think that the Magic Dirt operates at a distance or something?