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Written Comment on U.S. Support for Reforms to Botswana’s Wildlife Sector

Proposed reforms to Botswana's wildlife sector will serve the conservation and regional security interests of both Botswana and the United States

  • Catherine E. Semcer
  • Several policy reforms have been made, and are under consideration, to Botswana’s wildlife sector that will serve the conservation and regional security interests of both Botswana and the United States.

    PERC research fellow Catherine Semcer is weighing in on the potential reforms with a public comment submitted to the Department of the Interior’s International Wildlife Conservation Council.

    These reforms, including the lifting of a ban on hunting, deserve the full support of the U.S. Department of Interior, its agencies, agencies of other departments, and Congress.

    Unfortunately, these reforms are at risk of being undermined by a global popular outcry stemming from recent reports of mass elephant poaching in the Okavango River Delta. These reports, however, are now in dispute. What is not in dispute is that a half-decade of heavy-handed conservation policies in Botswana, including the 2014 ban on all hunting within the country, have created the kind of socioeconomic conditions where poachers are most likely to thrive, that poaching has increased under policies enacted under Botswana’s previous administration, and that policy reforms are warranted. The United States has at its disposal multiple strategic and regulatory tools to help Botswana restore the successful rights- and market-based conservation programs that the United States helped establish under previous administrations.

    Read Catherine Semcer’s full comment on reforms to Botswana’s wildlife sector before the International Wildlife Conservation Council here.
    Written By
    • Catherine E. Semcer
      Catherine E. Semcer

      Catherine E. Semcer is a research fellow with the Property and Environment Research Center in Bozeman, Montana and the African Wildlife Economy Institute at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. She also serves as a member of the Sustainable Use and Livelihoods Specialist Group of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

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