Zimbabwe to use elephants for biltong - That is just wrong!
Zimbabwe plans to kill hundreds of elephants and turn them into biltong, a local dried meat snack usually enjoyed with a beer in front of a game of soccer or rugby, officials here have said. “It is in our plans. We plan to start this year,” Zimbabwe National Parks director-general Morris Mtsambiwa was quoted as saying in the state-owned Herald newspaper. At least 500 elephants will be shot, skinned and their flesh dried and processed.”
elephant_slaughterHere are some other versions of this story: Earth Times, Care2.com, and All Africa News.
A worldwide ban in ivory trade has been in force since 1990, to help protect Africa’s ravaged herds from poaching. The ban did not extend to killing elephants for meat, however, and this has allowed the Zimbabwean authorities to gradually increase the shooting of elephants without attracting international censure. Zimbabwe was, until recently, home to one of the world’s largest elephant populations of close to 100,000 animals. Numbers have plummeted ever since the chaotic land reform program, which began in the late 1990s, and resulted in thousands of commercial farmers, as well as game ranchers, being evicted from their land. “If we keep on like this, within the next five years we won’t have any animals left,” said Johnny Rodrigues, the chairman for Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force, an NGO based in the capital of Harare. “I’ve heard the plan is to process up to 6000 elephants for biltong. They are not going to stop at 500 animals.”
You can do something to bring this slaughter of an IUCN Red List species to everyone’s attention! Contact news agencies in your home and make them aware of Zimbabwe’s plans. One of the stories linked above reports they intend to build abbatoirs to “process” the elephants, meaning they are going to factory-farm an endangered species for snack food.
Call or mail the Zimbabwe Embassy in London, and express your concerns for this plan. Don’t just sit there!
posted by Smoo at
16:57
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