Thank you for your confidence in Zimbabwe, Hans, and for your support. I hope it will be a good trip for you. I attach another response that I received from a friend and colleague in Zimbabwe to this news article. Many of the questions he asks would have been my questions, too.
1. Having gone through the pictures I notice the pictures are Copyright controlled to David Chancellor he is renowned sport journalists, was he part of the hunt to be so up-close and personnel on this tour or discovery of the corpse of the elephant, he has the pictures of the elephant (1) before the crowd came done (2) had pictures of the crowd coming to the carcass, he has all the pictures, if he had said the boy on the bicycle took the pictures we would all believe in his story. Where was he from the discovery of the carcass all the way to the slaughtering, my hunch this was a hunt he was part of and saw an opportunity to get famous for, he has very close picture of the struck down elephant with not even a single villager in sight??????. The shot of the villagers coming to the elephant is of interest too, he takes the short in the direction the people are going towards the photographer which simply means my guess is as good as yours, standing besides the kill. Obvious after such a hunt you can’t carry all the meat back to Europe, USA so this is a chance to reward the starving community.
2. In one of the pictures referred “Audience: People gather on a hill a short distance away to watch village men get to work” that picture has some semblance of order meaning this was not just a carcass but this was proceeds from a hunting safari. If you carefully look one of the people in the picture is professional hunter, the elephant is being skinned to perfection, why? because the hunter possible Mr. Chancellor himself or a colleague of Mr. Chancellor who took him on this expedition to Africa needs his tasks and elephant skin. Look at how the legs have been skinned if this was supposed to be a chaotic situation there would be no time to sit on an anthill with an empty stomach.
3. In his report he talks about a boy on a bicycle having discovered the carcass, I find that hard to believe and understand what would be a boy on a bicycle be doing in a National Park with the Big 5 but journalist being journalist the story has to have some excitement.
4. Its very interesting the report talks of the elephant being 70 years old, that elephant in the picture by its tasks is not that old possible 30/40 years, the potential lifespan is 60 years.
5. There is a project in Zimbabwe called Campfire, where all some of the proceeds from hunting safari go to the community in the form of trophy fees and eadible meat like Elephant, Buffalo are given to the community am sure you are aware of that, there are numerous websites covering that project.
6. The situation in Zimbabwe is not the best, yes, people need food and those are signs of the need of it in the chaotic manner shown.
7. My description of this article is the “the west making the worst of Africa”.
Am positive if one is to research deep in this matter, you would notice these are but such effects of the business of Hunting Safaris, foreign come to hunt, get very close up opportunities to record, document and write in their context the situation as they want it to be seen not how it happened.
The authenticity of the report is questionable.
Thank you also for posting the articles and videos that you find here, you are one of the people who make this forum so very informative and interesting.
Have a good day, Sabine