• PugJesus@kbin.social
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    7 months ago

    Because I imagine shipping one elephant would be pretty expensive and I don’t think Botswana is a very wealthy country…

    Botswana is one of the best off countries in Africa.

      • PugJesus@kbin.social
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        7 months ago

        I don’t see why not. I mean, it would be a colossal waste of money, but the Botswana government has a yearly budget of some 4 billion USD.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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          7 months ago

          I honestly don’t know how much it costs to transport one elephant, but it would be a lot unless you were fine with letting it die. To keep them from getting too stressed, you need to move them quickly, which means cargo plane. You have to prepare that plane for the elephant so it will remain healthy during the flight. You probably have to sedate them, which takes a huge amount of sedatives. You also have to arrange transportation to and from both airports. In the case of the threat to the British, from either Gatwick or Heathrow to Hyde Park. I don’t know how many elephants can safely fit into a cargo plane, but let’s be generous and say four.

          That’s something you have to repeat 7,500 times.

          I honestly don’t know that $4 billion USD would cover that.

      • tobogganablaze@lemmus.org
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        7 months ago

        Easily.

        The price for a 20ft shipping container from Africa to Europe is around €12.000 and you should be able to fit two elephants in a container. So you need around 15.000 containers, so aroung €180 million. And you’d probably get a discount for booking half a container ship.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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          7 months ago

          You are ignoring everything I said about providing for the elephant’s health. So I guess you’re assuming they don’t care if those elephants die.

          • tobogganablaze@lemmus.org
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            7 months ago

            You didn’t say anything about health? And I’m pretty sure you can keep an elephant alive in a container for a week.

            • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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              7 months ago

              I honestly don’t know how much it costs to transport one elephant, but it would be a lot unless you were fine with letting it die. To keep them from getting too stressed, you need to move them quickly, which means cargo plane. You have to prepare that plane for the elephant so it will remain healthy during the flight. You probably have to sedate them, which takes a huge amount of sedatives. You also have to arrange transportation to and from both airports. In the case of the threat to the British, from either Gatwick or Heathrow to Hyde Park. I don’t know how many elephants can safely fit into a cargo plane, but let’s be generous and say four.

              That’s something you have to repeat 7,500 times.

              I honestly don’t know that $4 billion USD would cover that.

              I didn’t say that in reply to you, but I did post it before you posted your reply, so it was already there when you replied.

              • tobogganablaze@lemmus.org
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                7 months ago

                So the elephants might be a bit “stressed” but being a box for a week won’t kill them (not most of them anyway), so the plane is not needed.

                  • tobogganablaze@lemmus.org
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                    7 months ago

                    The point was to get 30.000 live elephants to Europe at a price that Botswana can afford, which, ignoring the “why” aspect, is definitly feasible. Just add a couple of extra elephants to account for the ones lost during shipping.