This editorial by the president of Botswana appears in today's Wall Street Journal:

Hunting Elephants Will Help Them Survive
By Mokgweetsi Masisi
A phone call from home in Botswana awakened me late one night while I was in the U.S. this month on a trade mission. Balisi Sebudubudu, a man from the rural village of Semolale, had been herding cattle when he was attacked and killed by an elephant.

Many well-meaning animal lovers in the West reacted with anguish when my government announced in May that Botswana would not renew a temporary ban on hunting elephants and other protected wildlife. Others reacted with anger. We were accused of greed, corruption and political pandering, of being willing to sacrifice one of God's noblest creations for a few extra dollars from wealthy foreigners who enjoy shooting and killing things.

The outrage is no doubt genuine, but it is misguided. It ignores the facts of what Botswana is doing and the plight of our rural people, who must play a critical role if elephants are to survive as a species.

Elephants are magnificent creatures -- intelligent, social and so massive that even lions keep their distance. In Botswana we cherish and protect them. Even though their numbers have declined throughout the rest of Africa, our elephant population has exploded, from roughly 50,000 in the mid 1990s to more than 130,000 today. But in the wild they are not the gentle giants portrayed on television and film. As those who live alongside them know, elephants can be aggressive, violent and enormously dangerous.

Experts debate how many elephants Botswana can safely accommodate. Whatever that number is, the current population vastly exceeds it. Forced to compete for scarce food and water, elephants have been moving out of their usual range into more-inhabited areas -- with horrendous consequences.

What happened to Mr. Sebudubudu was not an isolated incident. He was the 28th Batswana to be killed by an elephant in three years. Dozens more have been maimed or injured by elephants rampaging through rural villages. Widespread crop destruction has decimated rural incomes and threatened food security. "Elephants effectively impose a curfew on any human movement after dark," notes local conservationist Gail Potgieter. To go out when elephants are around, she adds, "is life-threatening."

Botswana does not seek to shoot our way to a manageable elephant population through trophy hunting or, even worse, mass culling. Both practices are off the table. There are other, far more humane and effective ways to reduce our elephant population, such as encouraging herds to migrate back to other places such as Angola, where civil strife need no longer drive them away. Angola is now peaceful and has set aside nearly 35,000 square miles of wilderness where, once the land mines have been removed -- a task Botswana has pledged to assist -- elephants can live safely.

So how does hunting help? First, lifting the ban will help local people protect themselves. In the past, when people were allowed to shoot rogue elephants who wandered into inhabited areas, conflict between humans and elephants was rare. If elephants learn that an area is dangerous, they will avoid it.

Because of the hunting ban, elephants have had no reason to avoid villages and farms. It may sound harsh, but if one or two marauding elephants are shot, the rest will quickly learn to keep out of areas where they shouldn't be. Sacrificing a few elephants will allow us to save many, many more, and protect the people of Botswana.

Second, most experts agree that the key to successful wildlife conservation is "community-based resource management." Put simply, habitat loss, poaching and other problems that threaten endangered species cannot be solved without the support of local people. To win that crucial support, elephants need to constitute a benefit, not a burden, to those who live side-by-side with them. Botswana's plan -- allowing limited, tightly controlled hunting, and allocating to community organizations most of the two or three dozen hunting licenses we intend to issue -- is part of a larger economic program aimed at doing just that. Rural communities that have come to resent the elephants will gain a strong incentive to value them -- and what you value, you take care of.

Well reasoned response. A little weak on the defense of hunting but I am not surprised with the outpouring of hate-filled mail and comments on social media by the SM colonialists. Also a little surprised at the number of licenses they will issue... 2 or 3 dozen? Oh well, it's a start.

Good man Mr. Masisi.