Hunter pays $50,000 to kill nation’s largest tusker elephant

A trophy hunter shot a ‘tusker’ elephant, a species with huge tusks, in Botswana. To obtain this right, he paid 50,000 dollars (about 46,000 euros), reports Geo.

This male elephant was in his 50s and was the largest tusker elephant recorded in Botswana. According to the trophy hunter Leon Kachelhoffer who shot him, the weight of his ivory tusks reached 91 kg.

A highly endangered species

The announcement obviously sparked a lively controversy, which the hunter did not understand. “When you take a male like that, there is a lot of remorse, there is a lot of sadness, you think of the good life that this elephant led,” said Leon Kachelhoffer. “You know, it’s not just shooting a buck, taking a picture, becoming a hero and all that nonsense. »

Having long been hunted for their ivory, tusker elephants are now very rare. There would only be about forty left in Africa. Former Botswana President Ian Khama, who banned trophy hunting in the country before his successor reinstated it in 2019, himself reacted and expressed his incomprehension.