Furious Botswana officials threaten to send 10,000 elephants to London’s Hyde Park

-‘so Brits can try living with them’ amid hunting trophies row

-Campaign team  are in the UK to fight against the Hunting Trophies Prohibition Bill

Furious officials from Botswana have threatened to send 10,000 wild elephants to London’s Hyde Park ‘so Britons can try living with them’ amid a row over hunting trophies.

The dramatic suggestion was made by the African nation’s wildlife minister yesterday as he condemned a proposed ban on UK safari hunters importing ‘keepsakes such as tusks’ from animals they shoot.

Politicians and diplomats from Botswana – along with five other southern African nations – are in the UK to fight against the Hunting Trophies Prohibition Bill, due for its second reading in the House of Commons tomorrow.

They say a trophy-import ban will dry up safari hunt revenue, hampering wildlife conservation, anti-poaching efforts to save elephants, and impoverishing African villagers who get meat, money and jobs from such tourism.

Botswana’s minister Dumezweni Mthimkhulu said: ‘I hope if my offer of elephants is accepted by the British government, they will be kept in London’s Hyde Park because everyone goes there.

‘I want Britons to have a taste of living alongside elephants, which are overwhelming my country. In some areas, there are more of these beasts than people. They are killing children who get in their path. They trample and eat farmers’ crops leaving Africans hungry. They steal the water from pipes that is flowing to the people. They have lost their fear of humans.

‘Elephant numbers, just like those of Scottish stags, have to be controlled. Hunters in the Highlands pay to shoot deer and put their antlers on their walls. So why is Britain trying to stop Africa doing the same?’

Mthimkhulu added: ‘Botswana is the most successful country in the world at looking after elephants, buffalo, and lions. We don’t want colonial interference from Britain.’

The current Bill, sponsored privately by Labour MP John Spellar but supported in the Tory manifesto, is the third time legislation to ban hunting trophy imports has been put forward to Parliament. Mr Spellar this week refused to meet the southern African delegations of ministers and diplomats in London to fight the Bill.

Professor Patience Gandiwa, a conservation director of Zimbabwe Parks, said: ‘We don’t like it when someone wants to dictate to us how to manage our wildlife. If this Bill passes without any changes, it will be a slap in the face for us.’

She said the British Government has, allegedly patronisingly, offered aid to compensate African nations for revenues lost from tourism through a trophy import ban. It is thought hunters, who pay up to £100,000 to shoot an old elephant with big tusks earmarked for culling, will lose interest in going to Africa if they cannot bring home safari ‘keepsakes’.

But Professor Gandiwa said: ‘We want a tourism trade not aid. Gone are the days that we hold out a begging bowl to Britain. We want to determine our own destiny, and that of our people, though managing our wildlife.’

The previous attempt to pass the Bill failed in the House of Lords last autumn despite success in the Commons.