Commissioners want fatal wildlife attack payouts increased to P1million

Mbongeni Mguni | Monday November 28, 2022 06:00

The recommendations are contained in the committee’s report scheduled to be debated by Parliament. The report follows a four-month countrywide consultation which involved 132 kgotla meetings, attended by nearly 30,000 attendants.

The commissioners’ recommendation of P1 million per victim of a wildlife attack, is above the P500,000 maximum requested by those who participated in the consultative review process.

“Concerns were expressed regarding threats posed by wild animals to human life, particularly deaths and injuries caused by elephants, including destruction to farms and crops,” the final report made available this week reads. “The increasing population of elephants has made the situation worse. “Further concerns were expressed that compensation paid by government for attacks by wild animals was insufficient and not beneficial to the victims and/or to their surviving family members.”

According to the commissioners, Batswana reported that they were unable to work their fields for fear of attack by wildlife, “causing stress and poverty in communities”.

Summaries of the feedback given on the issue indicates that many Batswana believe government tends to prioritise wild animals over human beings. The P70,000 compensation for deaths was deemed insufficient and ineffective to help surviving family members.

“Some added that government should establish social schemes to ensure that victims’ children are taken care of until such a time that they are able to fend for themselves, while others advocated for monthly allowances to families,” the report note.

The commissioners recommended that government establish a social protection scheme for victims and beneficiaries of wildlife attacks.

Human and wildlife conflict, particularly the level of compensation for injuries, deaths and damage to crops, has been a long-running grievance levelled against government by communities around the country.

The country’s large population of elephants is seen as the chief culprit in human wildlife conflict, with frequent reports of villagers encountering aggressive bulls near settlements and other human populated areas.

Botswana Institute of Development Policy Analysis (BIDPA) researchers, in a reported released last year, found that elephants were most responsible for deaths attributable to human wildlife conflict in between 2009 and 2019, followed by hippos.

“A number of plausible reasons explain the unique Botswana human wildlife conflict scenario from the international one,” the researchers said. “Firstly, and foremost, Botswana has the largest population of elephants in the world, a situation that tends to exacerbate the susceptibility of human beings to dangerous spatial and temporal encounters with elephants over habitat and resources. “Furthermore, Botswana is one of the few remaining reserves in the world that harbour a diversity of dangerous wildlife species which include predators in large populations.”

The researchers said the Ngamiland region alone, as an example, had diverse habitats sustaining robust populations of species of 1,061 plants, 89 fish, 64 reptiles, 482 species of birds and 130 species of mammals.

Of the 57 wildlife-attack related deaths recorded between 2009 and 2019, more than 50 percent occurred in Ngamiland, with the district also accounting for one of the highest numbers of injuries.

BIDPA researchers also found that human wildlife conflict has a gendered element, as most victims are men, which “has a negative effect on the social fabric of rural communities” and implications on rural poverty.