An open letter to Robbie Kroger of Blood Origins,
Hi Rob how can you lie so badly and still keep a straight face? How can you get up in the morning, look yourself in the mirror and really believe you are telling the truth to your 100 000 fans? You have a lot to answer for with this post.
I once looked at you as the hope for bringing in sustainable hunting because you seemed to be in it for protecting wildlife, understanding that if land doesn’t pay, cattle will come in, but now you have shown your true colours and made me realize you are sell-out and a liar – certainly not a conservationist. In fact, your African accent fading out and being replaced by an American one is perhaps the indicator of someone who is falling out of touch?
Let me scrutinize your post and see if you are man enough to reply and acknowledge your mistakes. Even a pro-hunter Graeme Pollock calls you out on one point but you happily go along with your lies instead of acknowledging and rectifying your misleading post. He goes on to school you that when trophy hunting is defended that it must be done so with science and be factual – a rare glimpse of hope in your industry these days.
Here is Rob’s post with images he provided:
The #TRUTH
Here is the truth:
– the largest elephant in Botswana just got hunted by Leon Kachelhoffer (@kachelhofferleon ) and Mike Fell (@hornofthehunter )
– it was killed in NG/13 block under Botswana’s elephant management plan. NG/13 is a reduce conflict block for elephants.
-NG/13 is as far away from any ecotourism blocks as you can get (swipe right – top yellow striped block on the northern border). Compare to green block of Moremi.
– NG/13 is 450,000 ha (almost a million acres) that has very little community development.
– There are 400 elephants on quota total in 2022 with only 5 elephants on quota in NG/13
– Current Botswana elephant population is over 100,000 elephants. According to wildlife ecologists the elephant habitat should only support approximately +/- 45,000 elephants given vagaries in climate and habitat condition.
– the current president of Botswana sees the value in limited elephant quota hunting for community uplift, massive provision of protein, and reducing human wildlife conflict. The former President (as per the image) is against hunting and enforced an elephant ban during his tenure.
– the former President stated this elephant was a tourism treasure and was well known/visited. There are no ecotourism operators in NG/13. NG/14 has an operation on the Kwando river an incredible distance from the heart of NG/13.
So it comes down to emotion vs. being practical. Elephant populations are exploding in Botswana. Hunting is NOT a population control measure. Hunting is a mechanism to relieve small amounts of human wildlife conflict and provide meat and income into areas that likely have very little of both.
You will see significant press about this – likely none of which speaks to reality in the ground.
MORE to come. MUCH more to come.
I have decided to point out his lies:
Lie number 1: -NG/13 is as far away from any ecotourism blocks as you can get (swipe right – top yellow striped block on the northern border). Compare to green block of Moremi.
The response:
Firstly, surely as a hunter you should know how far an elephant can walk so you shouldn’t be concerned with distances of 100km as they can easily move that far in a couple of days – I encourage you to look at the distances bull elephants travel in Botswana and can point you to the work of Elephants Without Borders (do you also know that EWB’s Mike Chase research permit has been cancelled – convenient for the hunters isn’t it?).
Do you know what happens on the eastern border of NG13? It is NG14. Please do research and see which company owns it. I will tell you, it is Kwando Safaris, an entirely citizen-owned ecotourism operation with a great game viewing area. So, depending on where in this concession this elephant was shot, it could have been within metres of NG14. So, a successful locally-owned operation has been damaged by a bunch of foreigners, both the hunters and the PH’s.
Furthermore, your map conveniently hides the territory to the north of NG13 which is Bwabwata National Park in Namibia. I encourage you to learn about this park and the work they have been doing to get wildlife populations increasing there. Do you also know that if a poor local that doesn’t know international boundaries had crossed into NG13 from Namibia to shoot an antelope for survival that the Botswana Defence Force would have killed him? Do you not see the problem here? Rich people from the US have $$$ to kill the biggest elephants in the area but a local is treated as a poacher for trying to survive.
Lie number 2: “NG/13 is 450,000 ha (almost a million acres) that has very little community development.”
The response:
Can I send the kml file for concession boundaries so you can open it up in Google Maps? From there you will be able to calculate that the size of NG13 is in fact about 270 000ha. Almost half the size you are claiming. Where did you get your figures from?
Then you are quite correct in stating that the concession has very little community development. But surely this is then an area you wouldn’t want to hunt based on your supposed conservation ethos which I have proven is a lie. If NG13 is sold as a reduced conflict block for elephants why is it in fact stated as one when there are very few humans living there. There is almost no conflict there compared to NG12 which is a big conflict block. And then why would you support the shooting of the largest peaceful bulls instead of the actual problem animals? You know very well that this has nothing to do with conservation or even solutions to human/ wildlife conflict.
Lie number 3: “Elephant populations are exploding in Botswana.”
The response:
Please provide your source here. You have also stated that government elephant figures are over 100 000. However the official census of the DWNP (Botswana government) in the dry season of 2012 found the population to be over 200 000 so in fact if we are to believe the quoted figures, the population has almost halved in the last decade – hardly your proof of an exploding population and one that of course ignores the poaching problem. If you were conservation minded you would also understand that the total population that extends over 5 countries understanding totals is not simple and that carry capacities are also complex to work out. You could really do better – have you studied any tertiary subjects related to conservation because it certainly doesn’t look like it?
So to end off I am really disappointed by you as you were supposedly one of the hunters who was hunting for the right reasons but I have realized the search for the PH who puts conservation first still doesn’t exist!
Robbie Kroger Has Responded and we give respect for that:
Response Received 18th April after some discussions
Hi Nic, Thanks for the letter to me. So I’d like the opportunity to respond to your accusations and statements to me. I’ll take what I said and provide the context for what I stated.
LIE#1.
My Statement: NG/13 is as far away from any ecotourism blocks as you can get (I cited Moremi as an example).
Response: I mistook the Green Protected areas as ecotourism blocks (this has been edited and corrected in my post). I did state that the closest ecotourism area was in NG/14 on the Kwando River.
Your Statement: Distance covered by Elephants.
My response: There is no doubt elephants travel great distances. I don’t know how far this elephant travelled nor do you. I also didn’t infer otherwise. This elephant could have had a very large home range migrating from the Delta to this area and others. It could also have in these latter years confined itself to a smaller home range. I don’t know and I never stated what this home range of this elephant was.
Your Statement: This elephant was hunted meters from NG/14.
My Response: False. It was hunted in the center of NG/13.
Your Statement: NG/14s ecotourism has been harmed by this.
My Response: I, nor you, have no way to qualify this statement.
Your statement: The territory to the North in Namibia wants wildlife population to increase
My Response: Based on research, Songhurst et al., 2015 suggests the border fence between Botswana and Namibia poses a significant barrier to elephant movements between Namibia and Botswana with an additional reference from Chase and Griffin 2009.
Your statement: a poor local that doesn’t know international borders will get shot by Botswana Defense Force for being a poacher.
My response: I cannot respond to policy’s put in place by Botswana
Your Statement: Your map conveniently hides the territories to the North.
My response: The map is of Botswana’s elephant management units. There is no editing or photo-shoping or conveniently leaving things off the map. The map is the map.
LIE #2
Your Statement: The size of NG/13 is 270,000ha not 450,000 ha.
My response: I used google earth to create a polygon around what I drafted as the border of NG 13. I also did the same for NG/11. If I was wrong in this calculation I’ll be the first to admit and change it. Based on what I can find online (Jackson et al, 2008) the size of NG/11 is 5,952 sq/km – thats 595,200 ha. When I compared to NG/13 it visually looks approximately 120% to 130% bigger so that was roughly 450,000 – 470,000 ha. But please send me the KMZ file to robbie@bloodorigins.com and I’ll adjust the information if I was wrong.
Your Statement: NG/13 is a reduced conflict block how given how small a human population there is?
My Response: I assume that’s why the elephant quota for this block is so small (5 elephants). There is still human wildlife conflict regardless of the number of people living in an area. I support hunting the oldest animal possible. I also support hunting an identified conflict animal. This elephant had an abscessed wound in its head that turned out was a bullet wound (could have been either poachers or agriculture conflict) – I cannot tell you nor am stating if this was an elephant that raided fields and engaged in human wildlife conflict. Ideally in a reduce conflict zone like NG/13 the elephants targeted are ones that are identified as those engaging in that conflict.
Your Statement: You have proven my conservation ethos as a lie.
My response: Your entitled to your opinion. Everyone is.
LIE #3
My Statement: Elephant populations are exploding.
My response: That statement that I made was false and have subsequently edited it. Elephant populations are at an all time high and not exploding. The 2016 IUCN report cites Botswana’s elephant populations at 130,000 and growing (similarly I have adjusted my population number in the post). The Elephants Without Borders study that covered some 73,478 sq. km in 2010 put Botswana’s elephant population at approximately 128,000. A 2018 census by EWB covered an even larger area—103,662 sq km, —and reported 130,000 elephants. This suggests that elephant populations are still at an all time high but have likely stabilized (this has been corrected).
Final statement: Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and clearly this is an incredibly emotional topic and one that needs significant amicable dialogue. You decided against that approach and launched a personal attack against me, beginning with this letter, and continued barrage of attacks on FB and IG. In my original post I attempted to lay out what I knew at the time on the issue. To the best of my ability data was articulated based on what I could gleam and what I could create. I and Blood Origins are the first to always put our hands up to state when we have misstated something and will correct accordingly. Always.
What bothered me the most in this whole discourse was not the pointing out of misinformation and bringing data to bear that would correct that was misstated, but rather the personal attack directed specifically at me, and the doubling down which you seem to continually do throughout the discourse after you publishing your blog post. You seemed exempt from putting forward actual data, but rather slung statements yourself. For example, you said on Instagram ” the real benefit to the area is almost nil”. The information I received from the professional hunter states: over 350 people lined up to receive the meat from this hunt; over 30 people are employed as a result of hunting in this block; over US$100k is now in the NG/13 community trust for community projects because of hunting. That is not nil. You can likely retort and say I don’t believe anything a PH, especially this one says, again that’s your opinion, but without your own data to the contrary then it’s essentially the pot calling the kettle black to your original letter.
As I stated through IG direct message and through Facebook, please come on our podcast and lets talk, amicably. Hopefully you can approach it level headed and open minded, and discuss wildlife conservation solutions.
Respectfully
Robbie
Response to Robbie’s Response
Hi Robbie,
Thanks for taking the time to respond and credit for trying to explain things better and acknowledge some inaccuracies.
The first thing that stood out to me when reading your reply was another lie straight away. I am not trying to attack you by using this word ‘lie’, I am calling it what it is. These were your words: “Your Statement: This elephant was hunted meters from NG/14. “ —> can you please let me know where I stated this? Should I be surprised by this after calling you out on the original lies. In fact, I have noticed this strategy of changing words with quite a lot of people in the hunting industry. Let me just say if you decide to lie it will be caught out so if possible rather stick to facts (because in the past you have done that on occasion) but now you are either being misled or it was a matter of time until ‘your truth’ was exposed. You have shown glimpses of making a lot of sense and as I stated to you in private you could really make a conservation difference if that was your main aim but I suspect you put hunting first before conservation and ethics?
Then what struck me was lie number 2 in the response. This lie is very subtle but it is there and I spotted it after reading your response the second time. It intrigues me how you think people won’t notice this. Your words in this instance in your response were: “I did state that the closest ecotourism area was in NG/14 on the Kwando River.” —> No you didn’t! You conveniently snuck the word ecotourism in there. Robbie this is the crux of the argument – now in your response when you had the chance to make amends you chose to lie about this as well. You never ever stated that NG14 was an ecotourism block anywhere and that is exactly one of the main reasons I am calling you out on. You said it has an operation – that could be a mining operation as far as your misled followers are concerned!
Then you go on to talk about this elephant and say what you don’t know about it. Yes we generally don’t know about most individual elephants but we have studies . There are plenty of studies on the EWB website and collared individuals, which I have been involved with and followed that will give you ideas about territory size and corridors they use. I do not need to share the link with you – you can enlighten yourself – you can also look at their work where there are a couple of very important corridors between Botswana/ Namibia/ Angola along the Kwando. I have driven a lot of this area and explored both sides of the river.
Then you say: “Your Statement: NG/14s ecotourism has been harmed by this.
My Response: I, nor you, have no way to qualify this statement.“
—> you probably mean to say I have no way of quantifying this statement? Qualifying it is simple – there are a multitude of negative sentiments and statements around the unsustainable hunting going on in Botswana at present. This harms ecotourism.
Then the size of the map – you will probably have received the kml by the time you have reached this. I have remeasured and got 270 000ha and compared to other concessions I know intimately and thus the calibration is roughly on par – even with loss of accuracy or a thumb suck, I could never get anywhere near a prediction of 300 000 ha let alone 450 000ha and then you rounded up to a million acres. Another case of everything always being bigger in the trophy world. These #facts you speak of!
Then elephant quotas – there is nothing scientific about them – at one stage NG3 had a quota that was almost the size of the total recorded elephant population there. Then Mababe concession quota is huge in an area with almost no conflict – they are just relaxed bulls that hang close to tourists along the Khwai that will be shot. There is interestingly a direct proportion to the number of elephants allocated to how established the lease holder is, within Botswana hunting industry and very little space for non white locals – imagine this in Africa!
Then well done for correcting the elephant population stats. That is a vast change from basically insinuating the population was exploding and killing off all the vegetation. Even the top scientists will tell you there is a lot more to learn so it becomes dangerous when people just throw figures and ideas around to suit their narrative – to me this alone would require a follow up post to your followers dedicated to this huge mistake and the others that misled them. But I guess you do not really see this as a big issue?
When you post to a large number of followers with all these mistakes and correct half of them (only a few days later) means probably none of you followers learnt anything correct here – they still believe and in fact believe more than ever that this is a great conservation hunt because you said so. Does this sit well with you? Highlighting all these errors would be what is right.
Then you are worried about personal attacks – but what is personal – yes I was harsh with words and to the point but there was nothing personal enough that Facebook or Instagram’s algorithms found me to be bullying. It is not nice to call you a traitor or a sellout for sure, but what euphemisms should I have used for these? I am not here to beat around the bush – I do feel you have either lost touch or indeed are spinning a story to suit the ‘let protect hunting at all costs’ and ignore real conservation. As you say though, ‘what bothered you most’ we the insults. So I apologize if they bothered you but if the actual issues were serious to you, then of course a true conservationist would be more worried about the outcomes of selling this as a conservation hunt and all the misleading rather than what someone says to them.
Then you last paragraph: “The information I received from the professional hunter states: over 350 people lined up to receive the meat from this hunt; over 30 people are employed as a result of hunting in this block; over US$100k is now in the NG/13 community trust for community projects because of hunting. That is not nil. You can likely retort and say I don’t believe anything a PH, especially this one says, again that’s your opinion, but without your own data to the contrary then it’s essentially the pot calling the kettle black to your original letter.”
—> I have good info on the PH and he is far from your golden conservation hunter you have tried to make him out to be. After the lies I would be surprised if the 350 people who lined up for meat were indeed that many but perhaps they were. And what is scary is you all think this is empowering people. Ever heard of: “Give a man a fish and feed him for a day – teach him to fish and feed him for a lifetime?”. You seem to feel handouts are going to solve Africa’s problems but handouts are Africa’s problem! If you want to make a difference then empower people but the hunting industry is not good at that. I am also amazed by this operation that employs 30 people – wow so the size of a phototourism camp – when did hunters get so soft and need all of the staff? Botswana traditionally has small staff – cleaning/ trackers etc. Then this hunt did not generate $100k for NG13. That’s what the total was for the elephant – how much went to the Tcheku trust of that after a lot of that money went to the PH and commission? And of that how much of the money that reaches Botswana after such payments is generally squandered on Landcruiser’s for the elite and nothing for the rest. I wish you would come back to Africa and see how it works here – its easy to think its all good from across the ocean. The community associated with NG13 is not happy when the beer an elephant meat runs out – how about actually approaching them and finding out that they are disgruntled with the setup.
So regarding claims – I ask you please don’t claim things when you don’t understand the lie of the land or what is going on in NG13 or Botswana. If you don’t know then don’t guess – also you have not really done any research – you quoted from EWB website which I told you about and then gone on to say I need to do research but I am not the one making up stories here – I don’t even need you to use references, just get the basics right otherwise it is generally not worth speaking in depth about areas you don’t understand because someone will catch you out – in fact there are quite a number of us including fellow hunter Graeme Pollock who called you out for lies an misinformation and quite a few people feeding me info (on top of my own findings) about what is going on in Botswana and sadly it is not the conservation model it could have been, it is the return of the old colonial model.
I am waiting to see how you follow this up – I guess I was a bit naïve to think you would do a new post and really educate them about what is going on here and how hunters should be empowering Africa and doing real conservation. Please expose the #realtruth, rather than the #truth that Blood Origins is becoming synonymous with.
Respectfully,
Nic
