‘Paradise in Peril’ recounts cost of elephant coexistence
Thalefang Charles | Wednesday November 26, 2025 08:16
A year into the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) administration, Minister of Wildlife and Tourism, Wynter Mmolotsi, has finally entered the contentious debate over hunting, conservation, and human welfare. Mmolotsi was officiating at the premiere of a new film titled Paradise in Peril in Gaborone’s Masa Cinema last week.
Commissioned by the Botswana Wildlife Producers Association (BWPA) and directed by Moabi Mogorosi of Abi Films, Paradise in Peril boldly challenges the international animal rights movement, taking a counter-narrative to the glamorous, animal interest conservation stories often led by Western celebrities.
The film comes at a time when the conservation landscape was still second-guessing the position of UDC government on sustainable hunting. Their predecessors, both President Ian Khama and Mokgweetsi Masisi regimes, were bold about their positions on hunting. It was just last year when the then President Masisi and the late Wildlife Minister Dumezweni Mthimkhulu, threatened to send 20,000 elephants to Germany and 10,000 to London's Hyde Park so that Europeans could “have a taste of living alongside” them.
This was when the West tried to lecture Botswana on elephant conservation by suggesting there should be stricter limits on importing trophies from hunting animals.
So, a year into their term, the UDC government is now openly steering policy away from the hunting ban instituted by former President Ian Khama. The ban, which lasted from 2014 to 2019, was lauded globally by animal rights groups but castigated locally for shattering livelihoods. And the recent return of high-profile anti-hunting conservationists like Dereck Joubert initially concerned hunters who thought the days of Khama’s regime were back.
The Jouberts’ own film, Okavango River of Dreams, which came when Masisi was considering the lifting of the hunting ban, was a high budget “love letter” to the Delta that lobbied international opposition to sport hunting in Botswana.
Paradise in Peril, on the other hand, even though low-budget, is a response that amplifies the voices rarely heard on the world stage, who are mostly rural Batswana living on the front lines of human-wildlife conflict. Viewers are introduced to a widow from Seronga whose husband was tragically trampled by an elephant on his own farm, a limbless one-eyed farmer from Mohembo attacked by a crocodile, and thirsty communities struggling with destroyed water tanks and crops in Phuduhudu. These personal tragedies, among others, are juxtaposed against images of international animal rights advocates, like the Osbourne family, who the film portrays as disconnected from the harsh daily realities in villages like Sankoyo and Eretsha.
There are also the revered animal rights luminaries like the late Jane Goodall, whose claim that “trophy hunting seldom helps conservation,” the film attempts to debunk by demonstrating the benefits of Phuduhudu community from a hunting concession.
The film establishes its emotional appeal by bringing researchers with scientific authority. Professor Joseph Mbaiwa of the University of Botswana’s Okavango Research Institute (ORI) presents a formidable elephant over-population case, citing a new number of “150,000 with an annual birth rate of 7.2%”.
“Keeping so many elephants in Botswana is bad for the elephants, for the people, and even the land,” Mbaiwa argues.
This perspective is echoed by veteran pro-hunting advocate Deborah Peake, who was a rare vocal critic of Khama’s 2014 ban.
“Whilst the hunting sector were able to make changes to accommodate that, the communities were absolutely flattened, overnight they lost everything,” Peake states in the film. She and other experts in the film contend that a well-regulated, conservation-based hunting is a critical tool for managing wildlife populations and providing benefits to affected communities.
Peake also criticises the influence of well-funded campaigns led by misinformed celebrities, arguing that the money funding these animal rights campaigns rarely reaches communities terrorised by wildlife. Instead it remains with campaigners in distant cities that have never encountered a wild elephant.
“To say this is all about animal rights, and not recognise the people that live in those wildlife areas, is fundamentally and morally wrong,” said Peake.
Minister Mmolotsi used the film to articulate the new government’s position of a commitment to conservation that includes sustainable hunting for both ecological balance and community livelihoods.
“Our position is to conserve the environment so that it can support the wildlife population and do a little bit of hunting for sustainability and for sustainable livelihoods,” Mmolotsi declared.
He further stated that the new government has developed the Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) policy into law. This is meant to capacitate communities to sustainably benefit from the natural resources.
Mmolotsi and researchers in the film, linked the previous hunting ban to a rise in poaching, arguing that when communities no longer see direct benefits from wildlife, the incentive to protect it vanishes.
Mmolotsi also pointed to the “ivory in the room”, Botswana’s huge elephant tusks stockpile, which is said to be worth billions of Pula but is still gathering dust in vaults, saying they see the tusks as a potential economic resource. He announced Botswana’s intention to lobby the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) for permission to sell the stockpiled ivory.
“We have a lot of ivory that we can’t sell because of CITES laws. We could get more money if we could sell the ivory... and put back that money into conservation and communities living with wildlife,” Mmolotsi argued.
The minister acknowledges that he is bound by international protocols in the management of natural resources but promises a “serious conversation on the issue” in the future.
Mmolotsi concluded with a firm message to the international community.
“The world must know that we should not suffer for conserving wild animals. If we are not allowed to trade [with them], we would not be able to conserve these animals.”
Narrated by Oratile Jazz Kebakile, the film also closes on a poignant note, with these final words: “Fighting narratives is not their concern; their fight is for survival. For wildlife, Botswana is a refuge, but for Batswana, it has often become a battleground. Yet, they continue to protect nature because they always have.”
So, will the world get to see the film? The film director Mogorosi, who acknowledged that he is also still learning the complex conservation issues, said he hopes both local and international viewers to see the film.
He said: “I want all Batswana to know these issues and those internationally to know that conservation is not a new thing; there has always been coexistence”.