Zimbabwe has sold close to 100 elephants to China and Dubai for a total price of $2.7 million over six years because of overpopulation.
This was revealed by Parks and Wildlife Management Authority spokesman Tinashe Farawo in an interview with AFP on Wednesday. Said Farawo:
We have 84 000 elephants against a carrying capacity of 50 000. We believe in the sustainable use of resources, so we sell a few elephants to take care of the rest.
He further revealed that 200 people were killed in the human-and-animal conflict in the past five years.
Climate change and recurrent droughts have resulted in the depletion of the natural habitats of the wild animals.
As a result, SADC countries, namely Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe have called for a global ban on elephant ivory trade to be relaxed due to the ballooning population of elephants.
Meanwhile, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) claims that over the past 10 years, then the population of elephants across Africa has fallen by about 111,000 to 415,000, largely due to poaching for ivory.