CITES wants to impoverish us - PHK

Kedikilwe was in Parliament during debate on the budget for Ministry of Environment, Wildlife and Tourism on Tuesday. "CITES is just campaigning to impoverish us. Even the elephants will die because of their large numbers and we are likely not to achieve our Millennium Development Goal (MDG). CITES does not understand the situation we are talking about. They just want to control what they do not know," he charged. He said the CITES committee should be invited to Botswana to see for itself what situation the country is facing.

The minister called on the government to cull elephants and nearly suggested that Botswana should defy some of the CITES restrictions. He seems to have remembered he is in government and restrained himself before making more robust comments. Kedikilwe said that despite good rains and promising harvest, his constituents have given up farming because elephants have destroyed their crops.