UNITED NATIONS, Jan 29 (IPS) – The country’s Environment Ministry is defending the January 29 auction as a conservation strategy, but conservations say the move is based on false population statistics, disputed claims of human-elephant conflict and puts 3% of Namibia’s last elephants up for sale Over 100,000 concerned petitioners have urged the Namibian government to scrap its plan to auction off 170 wild elephants — which include rare desert-adapted elephants — but the country’s Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism said this week that today’s Jan. 29 sale will go on as planned.
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