Botswana has made $4 million from the sale of licenses to hunt wild animals, the highest figure since lifting a hunting ban in 2019. The hunting season, which ended in November, was held amid growing opposition from some European countries that want a ban on the importation of African wildlife trophies.

Botswana issues around 400 elephant licenses annually, with most purchased by overseas hunters.

Wynter Mmolotsi, minister of environment and tourism, told Parliament Thursday that millions of dollars were generated through the sale of mostly elephant licenses in villages in wildlife areas.

"In order to manage the wildlife population, the country is implementing a combination of both consumptive and nonconsumptive utilization of our wildlife resources to derive optimum economic benefit, particularly for our communities," he said. "For the 2024 hunting season, the community quotas generated the sum of 42,863,423 pulas. Further, a total of 15,633,950 pulas was realized from the sale of special elephant quotas to support elephant conservation and community-led projects within the elephant range."

In 2023, Botswana earned $2.7 million from hunting licenses.

Mmolotsi, however, says the hunts face increasing Western opposition. Canada and Belgium are among countries that have recently banned importation of wildlife trophies.

"The country is facing opposition from animal rights organizations to our policy of sustainable wildlife utilization of using hunting as a tool and empowerment to our local communities. The ministry, working with the hunting industry and affected community trusts stepped up efforts to counter this growing opposition to sustainable hunting through engagements carried out in the U.K. and Germany," he said.

Siyoka Simasiku, director at the conservation coalition, Ngamiland Council of Non-Governmental Organisations says communities will be the hardest hit if the U.K. imposes restrictions. He has been to Europe to campaign against trophy import bans.

"The U.K. ban is going to be bad on community benefits as the U.K. is an economic superpower and might influence other countries to actually follow suit and then communities might lose the market that already exists as more hunters will not be coming to Botswana to hunt in community concessions due to the trophy bans," he said.

Oaitse Nawa of the Elephant Protection Society is among those who want the hunts to be stopped. He also argues, revenue accrued from hunting does not significantly benefit Botswanans.

"They are giving us figures of the money that they made from hunting, but also let us look at the compensation that they give the people. And also the result of hunting, what does hunting bring to the local people because the animals that experience hunting, they tend to change their behavior and they kill people. That is why we are saying there should be proper research in that regard,” said Nawa.

Botswana, with the world’s largest elephant herd at more than 130,000 elephants has recorded an increase in human fatalities, while crops are damaged.