Westerners see elephants as pets, said Mokgweetsi Masisi, whose government threatened to send 30,000 elephants to Germany and the UK to demonstrate their dangers
I’m not sure why on earth you think the elephants would do it?
Elephants, like beavers, are ecosystem engineers. They can change the vegetation community, as well as make the terrain elephant-navigable by removing obstacles.
there wasn’t the same level of human occupation.
there would need to be management of other species that may be impacted by moving elephants
Yes, but that doesn’t mean they would be able to entirely make a new habitat habitable for them. You can’t dump a beaver in the Sahara and expect it to survive. Even if they did, like I said the impact on the preexisting ecosystem also needs to be managed or you just trade one problem for another.
You don’t have to do this in Botswana because the elephants are already in Botswana…
Elephants, like beavers, are ecosystem engineers. They can change the vegetation community, as well as make the terrain elephant-navigable by removing obstacles.
And these problems would not arise in Botswana?
Yes, but that doesn’t mean they would be able to entirely make a new habitat habitable for them. You can’t dump a beaver in the Sahara and expect it to survive. Even if they did, like I said the impact on the preexisting ecosystem also needs to be managed or you just trade one problem for another.
You don’t have to do this in Botswana because the elephants are already in Botswana…