Government denies media reports of planned elephant hunting

The Mozambique government on Thursday denied media reports that it planned to legalise limited elephant hunting in northern parts of the country. A government spokesperson told IRIN: “There are no plans and at the moment there is just a lot of talking going on.” The reports said that the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries was preparing to submit draft legislation legalising elephant hunting in the north following complaints from peasant farmers in the Niassa province that their crops had been destroyed by rogue elephants. Earlier this month, Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe were given the go-ahead by the UN Convention on Endangered Species (CITES) to sell existing stockpiles of ivory in a one-off sale to Japan. The ivory could only come from elephants which had been culled or had died of natural causes.