Just received an email from a booking agent/friend after I asked how the booking bizz was going these days. She said that Botswana is not renewing any of it's hunting leases as they expire and the eventual outcome will likely be a complete closure to all hunting by 2012. Has anyone else heard of this?

There was a similiar post on AR some time ago, and someone posted an article where the Bots president was quoted as saying that the most endangered species in Bots was the professional hunter. Or words to that effect.

If you want to hunt with a camera you'll be ok.

Botswana has been gradually reducing the number of plainsgame species on license for a number of years. Now that they have discovered that they can fill a photo camp (16 people rather than the 8 allowed in hunting camps, and how often had you really had 8 in camp?) at $1,000 a pop they have clearly elected to move in that direction. You don't think that the planned expansion of Maun airport is to make it easier to bring hunters in do you?.
I expect that the future will confine plainsgame to private ranches. I hope that elephant and Buffalo will continue in the Delta, but I wouldn't make book on it. Go now before it's too late.

I have read, perhaps on AR, that the Elephant population in Botswana far exceeds the land's carrying capacity. How will they resolve that without a furor from their new green customers. Let the Elephant destroy the area reducing the population of other animals? Cull only in the heat of summer? I guess they will have to start "cutting", pardon me, neutering, the bulls, maybe they can weld up an IUD for the cows? Sheer foolishness by a government that otherwise seems one of the best in Africa. Frustrating to see, even from a distance.

President tells Bushmen their way of life is an "archaic fantasy"

12 December 2008, Survival International

Two years after the historic court victory that affirmed the Kalahari Bushmen’s right to live and hunt on their land, Botswana's President Ian Khama has told the Bushmen that their hunting way of life is an "archaic fantasy".

Botswana's High Court affirmed on 13 December 2006 that the government’s eviction of the Bushmen was "unlawful and unconstitutional", and that they have the right to live on their ancestral land inside the Central Kalahari Game Reserve (CKGR).

The court also ruled that the Bushmen have the right to hunt and gather in the reserve. But President Khama said in his recent state of the nation address, "The notion… that [the Bushmen wish] to subsist today on the basis of a hunter-gathering lifestyle is an archaic fantasy."

One of the judges making the 2006 ruling said the government's refusal to allow the Bushmen to hunt "was tantamount to condemning the residents of the CKGR to death by starvation." Yet two years after the ruling, the government has not issued the Bushmen with a single licence to hunt inside the reserve.

A Bushman spokesman said today, "Hunting is not out of date. We want to be hunters and gatherers today. This is the best way for us to survive in the Kalahari."

The Botswana government has approved plans for a diamond mine on the Bushmen’s land, on the condition that the mining company does not provide the Bushmen with water. It has banned the Bushmen from using a water borehole at one of their communities, but is allowing a nearby tourist lodge to pump water for its guests.

Botswana’s President Khama is a board member of the US-based conservation organisation Conservation International.

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I visited the Conservation International website. It seems to me to be more about protectionism than conservation. The only references to "hunting" are negative. I could be wrong, but CI quacks and walks like an anti-hunting organization.

IMHO, Ian Khama will probably finish sticking it to tourist hunters and operators just as soon as he possibly can.

What can you say? That's Africa.

You know, if I knew I could never hunt Africa again in two years, I would stop now. Half the fun is planning the next trip.

I have never hunted tigers, and you know what? I don't miss it.

to quote an old rock song- "another one bites the dust". just glad i got to experience both the Kalahari and the Okavango on a hunt before the bunny huggers shut it down. a truly great tragedy but probably inevitable, considering the current presidents leanings.