Episode 652 - Kenyan Q&A On An Elephant Hunting Documentary

Summary

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The Origins Foundation Podcast

Episode 652 – Kenyan Q&A On An Elephant Hunting Documentary
Recorded at Pridelands Wildlife Film Festival, Mombasa, Kenya – July 7, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode offers a candid, unfiltered recording of a post-screening Q&A session following the documentary A Fine Balance, an exploration of elephant hunting in Botswana. The setting is significant: Kenya banned hunting in 1977, so the discussion is often tense, personal, and illuminating for both the pro- and anti-hunting audiences. Robbie, the filmmaker and scientist, is grilled by moderators and attendees on the ethical, social, ecological, and economic implications of hunting—as well as on the filmmaking process itself.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Meaning of “A Fine Balance”

[04:30]

• Robbie describes the documentary’s title as a metaphor for the nuanced balance between ecotourism and hunting, and between survival and loss for local communities.
  • “It is a fine balance in terms of when ecotourism works and when hunting works… for people on the ground because those people depend so heavily on these activities that we'll frown upon.”
• He stresses that the documentary is as much about the people living with elephants as it is about the animals themselves, such as a girl raising siblings after her father was killed by an elephant.
  • “There’s a fine balance between life and death for people… a fine balance between them being able to put food on their table at the end of the day every day.”

2. Addressing Hunting’s Reputation and Misconceptions

[10:44]

• Robbie acknowledges hunting’s PR problem, especially in countries like Kenya where hunting has been banned for decades.
• He draws a clear distinction between hunting and poaching.
  • “When someone says hunting and poaching are the same thing, it's like saying shopping and shoplifting are the same thing. One's legal, one's illegal, one's selective, one's unselective...”

3. Bias, Perspective & Intentionality in the Film

[12:49]

• Robbie admits the film is intentionally focused on conveying the (often untold) benefits of hunting, based on his interviews with dozens of locals who largely supported hunting.

• The approach was to give voice to rural communities benefiting from hunting, rather than NGOs or strictly anti-hunting perspectives.

  “Yes, it was biased… but it was purposely done that way because… there are benefits that come from this activity.” – Robbie, [12:49]

4. Community Economic Realities vs. Conservation Ideals

[14:13]

• Botswana’s experiment with hunting bans (2014–2019) is cited as a real-world test: communities did not see promised benefits from ecotourism alone.
  • “The people in Poduhudu didn’t get any jobs from photographics… so why can't the community benefit from that area and put a value on wildlife through an activity like hunting?”

5. Habitat, Population Pressure, and Conservation “Toolboxes”

[16:19]

• Robbie frames the greatest challenge for conservation as habitat loss. He advocates for using all available tools, from hunting to ecotourism to wilderness protection.
  • “We should use every single tool in our toolbox to value that habitat… whether that’s ecotourism, carbon credits, biodiversity credits, hunting, or a purely wilderness area.”

6. Oversimplification and the Need for Dialogue

[17:45]

• Both pro- and anti-hunting sides are cautioned against emotional oversimplification and lack of dialogue.
  • “We get emotional, we get fiery… there’s no opportunity for dialogue… and when that happens, there’s no opportunity for, ‘oh, I see where you're coming from.’” – Robbie, [17:45]

7. Filmmaking Challenges in Botswana

[20:47]

• Robbie recounts the logistical and social challenges: operating in a foreign context, relying on local ‘fixers’, government permits, and establishing trust for candid conversations.
• Days of preparation for 16 days of fieldwork.
  • “Knowing who you're going to go talk to, where are you going… there's months of preparation for then 16 days on the road that you just hope is not affected by weather, flat tires…”

8. Authenticity and Editing Choices

[22:39]

• Robbie emphasizes keeping the film authentic, emotionally honest, and not censoring difficult moments, but also not sensationalizing violence.
  • “We don't edit it – like it is what it is. That's what I said. That's how it comes across… That reaction that you saw from me coming up on the elephant, I've never seen an elephant dead ever. And it was super emotional for me…” – Robbie, [22:39]
• On depicting butchering scenes: show enough to make the realities clear, but not to traumatize the audience.

9. Colonial Baggage and African Empowerment

[26:34]

• The discussion acknowledges Africa’s colonial hunting history and the need for community-based approaches where local Africans benefit and gain professional opportunities.
  • “There’s massive opportunity for empowerment of rural Africans… to become professional hunters… There is certainly a recognition that there is a colonial background and there is history there and you have to just recognize it.”

10. Q&A Highlights and Debate

On Sustainability and Quotas

[30:39]

• Robbie provides scientific data showing that Botswana’s national elephant hunting quota (0.16% of the population) is ecologically sustainable and negligible in its population effect.
  • “From an ecological perspective, it's completely sustainable. It has a negligible effect on the population writ large in Botswana.”

On Human-Wildlife Conflict and Valuing Wildlife

[35:10]

• Robbie argues that valuing wildlife—whether through tourism or hunting—creates incentives for communities to protect it.
  • “You have to value something to protect it… there are different tools you can use to get there… I’ll be very clear, I’m not saying hunting is the panacea… but it works very well in certain areas.”

On Why the Film Lacks Anti-Hunting Perspectives

[39:33]

• Robbie admits bias was intentional, as untold benefits were the story he felt needed highlighting. He expresses an openness to more critical perspectives in future projects:

  “Would I build the same film today? Probably not… we’ve built other films that are much less unbiased and poke more questions and holes at ourselves…” – Robbie, [39:33]

On Local vs. External Storytelling

[43:01]

• Robbie encourages local filmmakers to lead the narrative.
  • “Let me bring somebody who's completely unbiased. I'll send you… you experience it, and you tell me.”

On Ecotourism vs. Hunting Economics

[46:34]

• All agree that where viable, ecotourism is a superior economic driver, but it cannot succeed everywhere.
  • “The statistics show in those places where ecotourism is viable, ecotourism makes far more money… But not every place can be an ecotourism destination.”

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• “When someone says hunting and poaching are the same thing, it's like saying shopping and shoplifting are the same thing. One's legal, one's illegal, one's selective, one's unselective...”
  – Robbie [10:44]

• “We should use every single tool in our toolbox to value that habitat.”
  – Robbie [16:19]

• “We get our back hairs raised up, we get emotional, we get fiery, and so does the other side… There are valid points on that other side.”
  – Robbie [17:45]

• “You have to value something to protect it. And so how do you value something? You can value it in different ways…”
  – Robbie [35:17]

• “Not every place can be an ecotourism destination.”
  – Robbie [46:40]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:30 – Episode format/context explained by Podcast Host
• 04:30 – Robbie explains the meaning of A Fine Balance
• 10:44 – The distinction between hunting and poaching; anticipated biases
• 12:49 – Admittance of the film’s intentional bias; reasons for focusing on hunting benefits
• 14:13 – Botswana’s hunting ban case study
• 16:19 – Discussion: Habitat conservation and conservation’s “toolbox”
• 17:45 – The dangers of oversimplification and lack of dialogue
• 20:47 – Challenges of filming in Botswana, community trust, the role of fixers
• 22:39 – Editing, authenticity, and the decision on how much butchering to show
• 26:34 – Addressing colonial legacy, community trusts, and local economic development
• 30:39 – Scientific discussion of hunting quotas and ecological impact
• 35:10 – Human-wildlife conflict and economic valuation of wildlife
• 39:33 – Question about bias, anti-hunting perspective, and film evolution
• 43:01 – Value and need for local filmmakers
• 46:34 – Ecotourism’s greater financial value, but its constraints

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Tone & Style Highlights

The tone is honest, sometimes tense but respectful. Robbie is open about his own background, biases, and the learning process, repeatedly inviting dialogue and self-critique. The audience and moderators are probing but constructive. The language ranges from scientific to conversational and emotional, with moments of humor and vulnerability.

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Conclusion

This Q&A is a rare, transparent exploration of elephant hunting and conservation, where uncomfortable truths, real-world complexities, and diverse perspectives are aired. Whether or not you agree with Robbie’s stance, the episode offers a window into the difficult, high-stakes balancing act faced by communities and conservationists in Africa today.

Essence: More dialogue, not less; more tools, not fewer; and a continual re-examination of our own convictions—on all sides of the conservation debate.

Transcript

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[Podcast Host]

So this podcast is a little different. This podcast is actually from lavalier microphones that I put on myself and the moderator of the screening of A Fine Balance and elephant hunting documentary in Mombasa, Kenya at the Pridelands Wildlife Film Festival. So what you're about to hear is the full length Q and A that came after screening the documentary A Fine Balance. Interestingly enough, the documentary was screened right after another documentary called Coexistence out of Botswana that was about an elephant sanctuary and baby elephants. So we were pretty much teed up to be as controversial as you possibly could be. But you'll find that the questions were actually quite reasonable and it gives you some insight to how I responded to the questions, maybe give you some insights to how you would respond to very similar questions. I apologize for the audio quality.

[Robbie (Filmmaker/Scientist)]

I had to do a little bit

[Podcast Host]

of denoising and change a couple of things to try and work out the background. There was a huge generator happening in the background and we had three different microphones operating at once. So enjoy. I really enjoyed this Q and A. I really enjoyed the opportunity to screen an elephant hunting documentary in a country that banned hunting since 1977.

[Robbie (Filmmaker/Scientist)]

So five years ago, there was a reason why I started this movement. And the truth then is the truth now that we need to champion our narrative. We need to champion the truth around what we do and who we are. There's a sweet spot with a gun, you know, too heavy and it's a

[Audience Member 1]

burden to walk with.

[Robbie (Filmmaker/Scientist)]

Too light and you whipping it. Why is the project so important to the hunting community?

[Audience Member 2]

It's.

[Robbie (Filmmaker/Scientist)]

It's a. I think it's not only important, I think it's. I think it's vital. I think it's. It's just in time. It's like snakes and ladders. You guys are climbing the ladder and then somebody does something stupid and you just slide down. That is such an amazing analogy. Snakes and ladders.

[Audience Member 2]

Yeah.

[Robbie (Filmmaker/Scientist)]

You know, ivory, in my opinion, was the plastic of its age. Okay.

[Moderator (Fiona)]

The expenses were going up.

[Robbie (Filmmaker/Scientist)]

It goes a long way with families.

[Moderator (Fiona)]

We have families that do need it

[Podcast Host]

let me close this door because I

[Robbie (Filmmaker/Scientist)]

have a little wiener dog. What are you laughing because I said wiener? I'm really glad you finished the sentence out. I'm sorry the first happened. What are we doing here today? You're telling the whole world

[Moderator (Fiona)]

just say what the film is, the name of the film by Robbie, and that people will get a chance to ask him questions after type the government at the

[Robbie (Filmmaker/Scientist)]

time didn't believe they needed. Today, Botswana is home to the world's largest elephant population estimates range from 130,000 to about 180,000.

[Moderator (Fiona)]

A trophy hunter has killed one of Botswana's few remaining tusker elephants.

[Robbie (Filmmaker/Scientist)]

Thirdly, NG13 has been in global news headlines because of a very large elephant that was hunted in the area in 2012. The statistics and the data say that if it goes over six minutes between encounters between seeing animals, then the area is not really conducive for photographing scat around the. It's not like there's no animals here. Just not seen them.

[Moderator (Fiona)]

Yeah, I'm waiting for the other mic. Okay, so that was a lot. How's everyone feeling about that?

[Robbie (Filmmaker/Scientist)]

Not good.

[Moderator (Fiona)]

It's a lot to take in. Robby, this is for you. But the great thing is that we have Robbie here so we can ask him all of our burning questions. Okay, well, well, well, welcome to this conversation. Okay, Robbie, the first thing I'd like to ask you is about the title. So your film is called A Fine Balance. So what kind of balance are we talking about? A balance between ecotourism and hunting. Balance between power and narrative. What are we talking when we find balance?

[Robbie (Filmmaker/Scientist)]

Well, number one, thank you. I appreciate everyone being here. I know that was super, super controversial. All right? But what we try to portray is that we know, I know my whole job, that hunting has a PR problem. It has got a very bad rhetoric, a bad smell about it. And yes, I don't like elephant hunting either. I'm never going to hunt an elephant myself. And yes, you see the rich white, you know, tourist or American standing behind a dead elephant. But there are significant impacts that come as a result of that activity. And in some parts of Botswana, that's the only thing that'll drive an economic upliftment for communities and people. And at the end of the day, it's the people that it's all about. And so A Fine Balance is actually a very unique title because it is a fine balance in terms of when ecotourism works and when hunting works. And you heard me say there's a beautiful marriage and Botswana is the key to that beautiful marriage. But it's also a fine balance for people on the ground because those people depend so heavily on these activities that we'll frown upon. And the whole point of this film was to introduce you to those people. Like, I met them when we walked into that mud village. And that girl whose father had been trampled by an elephant, that girl's 17 years old and now she's looking after six kids under 14. And so there's a fine balance there that they've got. There's a fine balance between life and death for people. It's a fine balance between life and death in terms of them being able to get a job, fine balance between them actually being able to put food on their table at the end of the day every day. And that's a very strong reality for a lot of people. And for somebody like me coming from the Western world and, and others that are maybe, you know, come from very urban environments, it's also very difficult to understand that because you don't live it, you don't experience those challenges, you don't experience those hardships. And again, the only way for you to see it is to be there. And I wish I could take every single person here and take them to these places that we saw, because I guarantee you that it would change you.

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[Robbie (Filmmaker/Scientist)]

Good luck.

[Podcast Host]

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[Robbie (Filmmaker/Scientist)]

And so the next best thing is to build a film, a storytelling documentary about, you know, what, what we. What we see.

[Moderator (Fiona)]

Yeah, I think that's. That's a great answer. Thank you for that, that explanation. I think that is a really unique title, actually. You know, when I didn't know what the film was about and Fiona just gave me the title, I was super confused. But now that you put it like that, I actually didn't imagine that that would be the whole background of it. And that's great. I think that you're right that maybe if people like how you showed in your film, I think it is thought provoking. So the next thing I want to ask you is that before, I mean, you knew this film was going to be screened and you must have been nervous and you know, because it is controversial and is there anything you felt that people would understand about the film before they watched it? Did you feel like they would come to it with some sort of presumptions or assumptions or biases? What is the main thing that you were afraid people are going to think before they even watch it?

[Robbie (Filmmaker/Scientist)]

Yeah, I think the, the biggest, the biggest nervous factor that I have or anxiety that I have is that if so for instance, in Kenya. Hunting hasn't been in Kenya for 50 years, since 1974. If you watch the film like that, without any context to what hunting actually is, you don't actually understand it or know it. And some of the conversations I've had here in Kenya already in the last two days, you know, hunting is extremely regulated. It's a very, it's a legal activity that is strictly quoted, strictly permitted, very, very strict restrictions on it. And so it's not a willy nilly go out, do whatever you want, whenever you want, however you want. It's very, very, very regulated. I think, you know, when you saw that dead elephant, that was a hunted elephant, that wasn't a poached elephant. And to Francisco's film before mine, which is quite thought provoking because that's coexistence. And a lot of those baby elephants are there because of poaching, not because of hunting. And a lot of people think that that's the same thing. It's not, it's completely different. It's polar opposites and the way that I like to frame it. And this is something that'll sort of stick in everyone's mind. When someone says hunting and poaching are the same thing, it's like saying shopping and shoplifting are the same thing. One's legal, one's illegal, one's selective, one's unselective, one's discriminant, one's indiscriminate. So that's, that's, you know, you need a little bit of background. But hopefully we provided as much context as we could in the documentary time frame because we purposely wanted to keep this documentary under 40 minutes. If you are a filmmaker out there, if you're looking to put films in the documentary space, the 40 minute cutoff is a key cutoff. That is a short documentary cutoff space. Anything above the 40 minute mark becomes a feature length documentary.

[Moderator (Fiona)]

Okay. Yeah, I think it was Quite a. I mean, you covered from start to finish. I think that's great. Do you think that there's. I mean, you're not. You were never like a silent observer. Right. You're an environmental scientist and a filmmaker. So. So do you think that there was some bias you had maybe before you actually went to the field, and then when you got there, it actually challenged something in you and changed your bias? Maybe it challenged that bias.

[Robbie (Filmmaker/Scientist)]

Yeah, absolutely. Look, there's no doubt that I was biased here because I wanted to show, and that's my job, my job is to show the benefits that come from hunting. And I wanted to show you those benefits because nobody has shown the benefits before. But I will say that when we asked, we asked so many different people. I would stop people literally driving down the side of the road, I would just stop the car and I would ask them, what do you think about elephant hunting? And I think I got three negative responses out of. We filmed and interviewed probably 65, 70 people. So yes, it was biased. It was, it was sort of pushed towards, let me show you what's coming from elephant hunting. But it was purposely done that way because if we didn't, then the point of the film was, hey, there are benefia. There are benefits that come from this activity. I understand you don't like it. I understand that it's incredibly controversial. I understand that all. But I also want you to understand these things that come as a result of it.

[Moderator (Fiona)]

Okay. Yeah, because we did. One of the critiques that we got on your film was that maybe it would have benefited from, you know, including some anti hunting perspectives or interviewing some people that were firmly against hunting. So was that intentional? What was your thought process behind choosing the interview spectrum that you chose and putting that across?

[Robbie (Filmmaker/Scientist)]

Yeah, we chose the communities that we knew. You know, from the context perspective. The reason why we stuck with not interviewing, say, you know, I don't want to assume anything here, but if we, if we interviewed an NGO that was a pro elephant conservation ngo, they probably would have been against elephant hunting. Absolutely. But we already knew and we had a case study in Botswana that's from 2014 to 2019, said, okay, we're going to ban hunting, we're going to do it, we're going to stop it and we are going to make sure that everybody is appropriately compensated and you're going to all get jobs and everything's going to be fine. And it wasn't. You know, the people in Puduhudu didn't get any jobs from photographics. You Heard the Sankuyu people say the same thing. The Mubabi people said the same thing. Now, Mubabi is amazing. Mubabi right now. If you've ever been to Botswana, Mubabi Depression right now is like the new Serengeti. It is unbelievable. It's got one of the largest buffalo herds in the southern African plains. Essentially, there's 3,000, 4,000 buffalo that go into the Mubabi Depression every. Every October. That place is an ecotourism hotspot and it has purposely been segmented. So that block, that Mubabi concession, has actually been segregated. So the Mubabi Depression now is pure ecotourism. And that's where the money is being generated for the community. That's where the jobs are. But inside the depression, 20 kilometers in, it's about 80 kilometers to the eastern boundary. 20 kilometers in is nothing. It's raisin bush and terminalia syracia, and there's elephants, ostriches and sternbuck. That's it. So nobody's using that area. So why can't the community benefit from that area and put a value on wildlife through an activity like hunting?

[Moderator (Fiona)]

Yeah, I mean, you know, I know some people that would say, well, it was the animals land first, and we kind of came in, so what right do we have to now remove these animals for our benefit? So what would you say to somebody that said that to you or had that opinion?

[Robbie (Filmmaker/Scientist)]

I would say, you don't have to have that conversation with me. Have the conversation with the, you know, the young girl whose dad was killed by an elephant, or have the conversation with the person who's benefiting from that elephant and you have that conversation and you're still of that opinion, then that's. To me, it's a. It's a pretty sad opinion, because in today's world, the biggest struggle that wildlife has today is, is for us to maintain habitat. That's it. That is the number one critical thing for wildlife conservation to persist on this planet. It's habitat connectivity and habitat conservation. And we are a burgeoning human population that is pressing and pressing and pressing constantly on habitat. And we should use every single tool in our toolbox to value that habitat. Whether that's ecotourism, whether that's carbon credits, whether that's biodiversity credits, whether that's hunting, whether that's a philanthropic model to protect, and whether that's a wilderness area. Keep all humans out. We should just be focused on what is going to do the best for habitats and for the wildlife for future generations. And here's all the tools available to you.

[Moderator (Fiona)]

All right. Do you feel like maybe there's. What is one dangerous oversimplification that you feel that anti hunting and pro hunting groups often make and you think that maybe it shouldn't be so black and white? What's that one thing that you feel shouldn't be as simple as people make it out to be?

[Robbie (Filmmaker/Scientist)]

Oh, okay. From the hunting side, I think that one of the most hurtful rhetorics that we have, I think there's two the most. One of the biggest rhetorics is that we can do whatever we want, like, leave us alone. You don't have an opinion. And I think everyone has an opinion and every opinion needs to be heard and every opinion needs to be evaluated and looked at and the benefits seen, I think on our side, on the hunting side, I think this is the answer on our side, on the hunting side and on the anti hunting side, emotions will tend to get the better of people and they'll get really emotional, get really upset on this side of the spectrum and on that side of the spectrum. And when that happens, there's no opportunity for dialogue and there's no opportunity for, oh, I see where you're coming from, from our side and from their side. Because I think that again, from what we saw in this film, there's places where things work very well, there's places where ecotourism works very well, there's places where hunting works very well and the benefits are tangible. From jobs, from community upliftment, from uplifting people's lives, from wildlife conservation numbers. They're there, they're black and white. That's. It's facts. But we get our back hairs raised up, we get emotional, we get fiery, and so does the other side. And I think that that is just something that I want to hear, people's opinion. I'm sure there's people in this audience right now that hate me or hate the idea that, you know, I'm a pro, I'm pro hunting. And that's okay. That's okay. That's completely okay. But do they, do we see these, these benefits? If, if not, then okay, maybe I didn't do a good job or maybe they're not actually there and I need to be sort of self reflective on what did I miss or what am I missing? Because there are valid points on that other side, you know, and you know.

[Moderator (Fiona)]

Yeah, yeah. I do think that the conservation industry would greatly benefit from more dialogue. You're right about the fact that both sides are not open to hearing the other side's argument or their opinions. And I guess that's why films and filmmaking and storytelling is so important. And then having spaces like this. Thank you, Ms. Fiona. Is so important because everyone can kind of, you know, talk about their opinions and everyone can learn from each other. So now that we're past your thought process, we can talk a little bit about what it actually took to make the film. So I want to ask you that, obviously you're not from Botswana, so was there, like, did you feel like it was hard to kind of, you know, go into a community that you're not from and then also, like, earn their trust so that they would talk to you and that, you know, they would feel like you're on their side? What are the challenges you faced in that regard?

[Robbie (Filmmaker/Scientist)]

Yeah, you know, you're not from Botswana. You're in rented vehicles, you've got rooftop tents, you're cooking for yourself in the morning. The cameramen are super lazy in the morning. So you have to make a fire, you have to make coffee for them. Not that they're lazy. They're really great people. We get along like a house on fire. But yeah, we had a fixer. And I think everybody that has worked in Africa realizes the benefits of fixers. And fixers are so, you know, local people that you hire that speak the language, you know, communicate what you're looking to do. But there's also just everybody who's been, who's a filmmaker in this audience knows there's, excuse my language, a shit ton of pre planning that goes into it. Knowing who you're going to go talk to, who are the contacts, who are the people you're talking, where are you going, when are you meeting them, how are you meeting them, where to go. It's, you know, there's months of preparation for, then 16 days on the road that you just hope is not affected by weather, flat tires, getting stuck in the sand, all of that business.

[Moderator (Fiona)]

Yeah. So I guess what you're saying is it's important to have a local person that's on your side and kind of helping you and guiding you through that process. And, you know, that person has the trust of the community, and that person is trust.

[Robbie (Filmmaker/Scientist)]

And even more importantly, above that is the government. You have to get filming permits from the governments and you have to get all of these things locked down and you have to explain to them what you're doing and why you're doing it.

[Moderator (Fiona)]

So it really is a long process and takes lots of time. Wow. Well, I think we can all appreciate that it Took you, I mean, to make an incredible film. And it does take definitely time. I want to ask. I've been curious about this since watching it was there scene like a moment where in the editing process the edit actually changed your understanding of the scene as you saw it. Maybe like you filmed it and you thought a certain kind of way and then when you edited it, it kind of maybe different perspective or something like that. Like that?

[Robbie (Filmmaker/Scientist)]

No, I don't think so. Like, what you saw on there is me. Like, I'm as authentic as it comes. Like, I wear my heart on my sleeve. I am what I am. And when I finish talking on this mic, I'm going to be the same person when I'm talking to you face to face as I was when the camera was stuck in front of my face. So we kept it as authentic as we possibly could. And what you'll find from us, we don't. The editing obviously is paramount, but when it comes to the content, like what's being said in the moment, we don't edit it like it is what it is. That's what I said. That's how it comes across. It is what it is. So, you know, that reaction that you saw from me coming up on the elephant, I've never seen an elephant dead ever. And it was super emotional for me and super like, you know, I had to wrap in my brain, is this again, is this something we need to do? Like, what's going to happen here? This is emotional, you know, wow, am I putting my hand on that elephant? It's difficult to explain.

[Moderator (Fiona)]

Yeah, yeah. And I guess speaking more on that, I mean, we did see the footage of the elephant then being butchered and we saw the meat and the blood. So I think when you see a scene like that, filmmakers can either sensationalize that or they can censor it. Did you have any ground rules on what you wanted to show? And there was maybe a line you didn't want to cross with what you were showing. I noticed that you didn't actually show the entire elephant from far away. And it was like bits and pieces of it. Was that intentional?

[Robbie (Filmmaker/Scientist)]

You can imagine the footage that was filmed in that scene. Right. You know, we. If you saw in the beginning there was a lot of blurring, there was a lot of focusing on grass that was in focus and the elephant was out of focus. You know, you want to. You want to show the actual process, but you don't want to make it off putting. And obviously, you know, if you've never seen a dead animal butchered it can be very off putting, but that's reality for 95% of the world that eats meat. So, yeah, you know, you do have these dilemmas that what am I going to show? How am I going to show it? At the end of the day, you just got to trust your gut and go, okay, that's about enough. We don't need any more.

[Moderator (Fiona)]

So just enough to kind of get it across. But not, not too much because you're not trying to traumatize people, I suppose.

[Robbie (Filmmaker/Scientist)]

No, look, it was, it's not pleasant to watch. I get it.

[Moderator (Fiona)]

Was there a scene that was really hard for you to include? And conversely, was there a scene that was hard for you to exclude? Like, did you leave out any scene that you didn't want to and include a scene that you didn't want to? Maybe.

[Robbie (Filmmaker/Scientist)]

We met with so many community leaders, we. There's, in Botswana, they call them Kotlas. The Kotla is like the town meeting center. We met with probably four or five other community leaders.

[Podcast Host]

Kotlin.

[Robbie (Filmmaker/Scientist)]

It's, you know, to me it's, it's fascinating footage, but to a documentary, it's boring because we are filming sewer infrastructure going in the ground and we are filming a toilet being built and we were filming a well being dug. And it's like we wanted, we didn't want to over, you know, over push the point. It's like, look, there's benefits here. We don't have to make you sit through another 20 minutes of all these things. Yeah. Or, you know, a water pipe being plunked in the ground.

[Moderator (Fiona)]

That's fair enough. I have one last question before I let the audience ask, is that of course, in, in Africa, there's obviously a lot of colonial baggage attached to hunting. You know, what you said in the beginning is that you always see a picture of a dead animal and there's this rich white man standing behind the animal. Right. So did you, how did you separate these immunity based arguments from actually this violent history that Africa has inherited? It's a tough one, I think.

[Robbie (Filmmaker/Scientist)]

I think that there is opportunity and South Africa is actually way ahead of the curve. So I'll just switch a little bit. There's massive opportunity for empowerment of rural Africans to become people in these hunting spaces, in these hunting operation spaces, to become professional hunters. There is certainly a recognition that, you know, there is a colonial background and there is history there and you have to just recognize it. And there's, there's opportunities for empowerment and there's opportunities for upliftment. And I'LL tell you from everything that we saw, and we saw four or five different community trusts and how they operate things, the NATA Conservation Trust that you saw at the end were head and shoulders above everybody else. Head and shoulders. And they're young Botswanans that had economic ideas, that they had money now to implement those economic ideas to create upliftment in their communities, to create more education, to like, say, okay, we have a special needs program from an education perspective. We're going to build a separate school, we're going to fund separate teachers. We filmed all that too. We didn't include that in the documentary. And it was just to watch these guys and how proud they were of the. Of their work. Like it was them, it was nobody else. To sit in a school classroom with the principal of this school and behind him, the principal was an old Zimbabwean. He'd been there for 30 years. And behind him, I have to remember what it said. It says, like, procrastination is the greatest form of failure or something like that. It was just this amazing individual who was so proud of his school. He had a trophy on his desk and he won the best primary school out of the four primary schools. And the amount of money was like 80,000 puller from the trust. And all the teachers were super proud of that. That, to me, was like the epitome of what something could become. And it was. Again, I wish I could take every single person here listening to me, to those. That community trust, because it was just. It was inspirational.

[Moderator (Fiona)]

Yeah. I think with your film, the way that it's made, I do feel like we all felt a bit transported to Botswana and really as if we were talking to those people and listening to their stories. So thank you so much for being here and thank you for taking our questions as difficult as they may have been. Yeah, I'm gonna actually hand it over to the audience that probably has some really tough ones. Yeah. Okay, let me just bring you them. There you go. Oh, you really wrote them down. Good luck, Robbie. Yeah.

[Robbie (Filmmaker/Scientist)]

First of all, Robbie, I want to

[Audience Member 2]

start by saying, like, he don't hate you, even. And actually, it's a bit the opposite, because I want to thank you for making a consolidation story like this one, which we don't often get to see the MIDI ritual at more complex parts of consolidation. And I think we need to be making four films like they. So my question was, is it even possible to reconcile or how does Botswana reconcile with this, say, given the ecological and emotional sort of significance that elephants have? And to do it like I know there's restrictions. I'm not like hunting X breaker stuff, but are those restrictions you think is it's enough to like be sustainable and is it enough to, you know, like put a vote on man's greed? Like shock? It seems like to me a bit of a scapegoat to solve the economic problem, you know, the government.

[Robbie (Filmmaker/Scientist)]

Yeah, we solve it. Great question, Great question. And now I get to be a scientist because that's what I am. I have a doctorate in wet and ecology and science is my, is my, is my jam. So Botswana has again, 150 to 180,000 elephants every year. They have either 400 to 500 elephants on quota to be hunted. So if you look at that from a percentage perspective, on quota is 0.03% of the population. So hunting has no ecological component to this population. Mike Chase, who's with Elephant Without Borders, just came out with a report saying the hunting quota, 400 to 500 actually is detrimental to the elephant population. And when you actually dig into the quota. So the quota is the amount of elephants that Botswana will allow to be hunted every year, but the quota is never reached. So Mike Chase's report went through an amazing ecological modeling analysis and he suggested that 0.02%. Sorry, I'm getting the 0. It's 0.3% and 0.2%. It's not.0 3.3%. He said you should be hunting at 0.2% of the elephant population. But when you look at the animals actually taken, not the quota, the animals that are taken are about 0.16% of the elephant population. So from an ecological perspective, it's completely sustainable. It has a negligible effect on the population writ large in Botswana. So to your second question, the economics components. So the Botswana government really has no, you know, the Botswanan government is not going to be, you know, dolling out jobs out in the rural communities. That's not their job. They assign concessions. Those concessions are assigned uses. There's a livestock use, there's an ecotourism use, there's a hunting use, there's a wilderness use. And those uses are then tendered out to people who value those uses. And that tendering process is where the government creates some money for themselves and also creates money for the communities. I hope that answered your question. Echo powering squat.

[Podcast Host]

Hi.

[Audience Member 2]

Well, mine is an oppression, but yeah, mine are patient to compliment the work that you have done easily consist behavior. That's not how I do understand being the degree the amount of war education that Guess in tears. So order this thing down. Yeah, I'm usually very shot, but I had to grab this MIP and dare say thank you so much. I really appreciate your words. Thank you.

[Robbie (Filmmaker/Scientist)]

Here we go, over here.

[Moderator (Fiona)]

Going to be here all night.

[Audience Member 2]

All good.

[Audience Member 3]

Thank you. Jesse.

[Audience Member 2]

Hi.

[Audience Member 1]

This documentary, documentary reminds me about an area in Lake Kikilipam, Narok town. And this Narok town, we have elephants always passing, destroying the plants, killing people at one time. And I'm just thinking about this conversation that we are bringing because from my community, we are known to be protectors of the wild animals. And in heart, when talking about the eighth wonder of the world, you always hear that the master is, like people say, is among the eighth wonder of the world. So we are long to care. But again, the animals are also bringing in conflict. It's showing the plantations and all that. I'm just thinking about this conversation and I'm thinking about this. Find balance. Where do you find balance between conflict and nurturing?

[Robbie (Filmmaker/Scientist)]

So I will always answer a question like that and I'll always bring it back to value.

[Audience Member 2]

Okay?

[Robbie (Filmmaker/Scientist)]

You have to value something to protect it. Agreed. And so how do you value something you can value in different ways? You can value it from an ecotourism perspective. So if somebody's coming to see these elephants, and yes, we have conflict with these elephants, but is there a way that we can mitigate the conflict so that we can live with the elephants? Because they're giving us value from an ecotourism perspective. The other value is from a hunting perspective. And so I had a conversation with a young man earlier today in Kenya, and I said to him, and he was very, very just. I can't believe that you said you hunt elephants. And I said, well, let me just couch it like this from a value perspective. If you owned a piece of property in your ecosystem, right, you had 1,000 acres or 20,000 acres, and you were allowed to put wildlife on that property. You can have elephants on that property. What would you do with that wildlife? You would hope that it grows, Right. And how do you make it grow? Well, you have to have money to make it grow. And how do you utilize that wildlife? Well, it's up to you. If you wanted to hunt it, well, that's a lot of money. And if you didn't put wildlife on it, you'd have maybe cattle or you'd have sheep or you'd have goats. And so this wildlife, if you hunted it in certain places, it's going to be 100 times more valuable than the cattle. And Then all of a sudden you've got all this wildlife and you're like, well, maybe somebody's going to poach my wildlife. That's a problem. Well, I'm going to hire people to protect my wildlife now. Well, now all of a sudden, you get to a point where it's like, oh, I've got too much wildlife. My carrying capacity is way too much. Well, now you can sell your wildlife to somebody else and you can make more money from your wildlife. The biggest problem here of what I've just explained to you is the biggest question that is asked of me, and if it'll be asked of you if you do this or anybody, is how dare you commodify wildlife? You're not allowed to put money on wildlife. That's not allowed. Well, it has to be allowed. That's the way the world works, unfortunately. And it just is what it is. If I could change it, if there was a different model that allowed wildlife to flourish and to be sustained and to grow and connect different habitats without somebody putting money on that wildlife or valuing it, okay, where is it? I don't know of something like that. And so it always comes down to value. And value, again, can be seen in many, many, many different forms. If value is just an aesthetic, we just like the elephant there, we just like the wildlife there. What's allowing that wildlife to stay there? Ecotourism? Maybe I'm using it for game meat. I'm selling the game meat. Maybe I'm selling the leather. Maybe I'm allowing somebody to hunt it. That's what's going to give wildlife value. And if that value is generating a lot of money, then that money will plow back into wild and grow more wildlife, which is what we all want at the end of the day, I think, is that we don't ever want to see an elephant disappear. We want more elephants, we want more gazelles, we want more zebras. We want more. We want more, we want more. There's just different tools that you can use to get there. And I'm not saying any one of them is bad. And I'm not saying. And I'll be very clear, I'm not saying hunting is the panacea. It's not the silver bullet, excuse the pun. It's not. But it works very well in certain areas. It doesn't work very well in certain areas and it shouldn't be used in other areas. Oh, here we go. Boss lady's got a question.

[Moderator (Fiona)]

Now you're in trouble.

[Audience Member 1]

Hello.

[Audience Member 3]

So I just wanted to Touch on the fact that you talked about having an agenda going into the film. I wondered why not including anti hunting perspectives is a way you thought would be a calling for this film?

[Robbie (Filmmaker/Scientist)]

Yeah. If we could do a documentary on what we're doing right now, a question and answer session, that would be amazing. Right. I think we had an agenda because we already knew what the other side had to say. We already knew. I knew we had seen it in 2014-2019. And I think I was just. I was just so again, this. I was. I was essentially pissed off at our own community for saying, why haven't we told this story? Like, why are we not showing all these things? And now, you know, again, you go in with a certain, like, viewpoint. And now that you asked the question, I was like, well, why didn't I collect all this data and all this footage and then go and speak with somebody who was anti hunting? Go. But I saw this and I saw this and I saw this and I saw this. If you're anti it, yeah, I think you can always do things better. And we were. Again, when I filmed this about three years ago, almost three and a half years ago now, and I'm not. I'm not a filmmaker, I'm not a photographer, a scientist, and I saw what the facts, and I was like, man, I want to show the facts, but I'm not a documentarian either. Today, four years later, would I build the same film? Probably not. Have we built other films that are on the shelf right now that are much less unbiased and poke more questions and holes at ourselves and sort of introspectively ask questions of ourselves? Yeah, absolutely. And you'll see them. So it's a growth thing. It's a, you know, you grow and. But again, I was just like, man, we just do such a terrible job. That's why we have such a bad problem. That's why we have a PR problem, is that we don't show even ourselves, our own community. I probably get more hate from our own community about elephant hunting than I do outside the community, because I don't understand. And again, that's the problem. We have never decided to communicate these benefits, the impacts, the consequence, because it's not sexy content for my community, for our community, for the hunting space. And I want to. I want to make it sexy. Because if it is sexy, do you think we'd have a rhetoric problem? I don't think so. If we stopped showing dead animals and we started showing people benefiting, I think we could really do some differences. So thanks for the hard question.

[Audience Member 3]

Sure. Happy to ask that question. But just one more. I just. I was curious. And by the way, that. That point before is a plug to work with people like us who will help you think about these kind of nuances. The next question is actually for you and Francisco in terms of. It's so obvious because you came out from somewhere else and came to film in that sort. And I wonder what you think a local filmmaker, how they film the exact same films. And this may be it would help

[Robbie (Filmmaker/Scientist)]

to work with locals on top of 1000%. And I already told already, I already told somebody in the audience. I was like, man, your curiosity is so heavy in just what I've given you. Why don't you go be the talent? I don't want to be the talent anymore because I can be looked at as biased, obviously. So let me bring somebody who's completely unbiased. I'll send you. You just go. You see it, you experience it, and you tell me. You tell me. Yeah, so I'd love to, like, I. We've got somebody in South Africa already, so we've already built one team member out in South Africa. So, you know, it's funny you asked that question when you. I've been doing a little bit of research just specifically in South Africa, and you look at, like, some of the top game reserves today in South Africa. They all started as hunting reserves. And so the model that I explained to this lady over here about wildlife numbers building up, I just came out of a place called Qatar 11. So if you thought NG13 was amazing, you need to go to Qatar 11, which is in the Zambezi floodplain. About an hour and a half to charter flight north of Beira in Mozambique. It's probably one of the most dense wildlife populations, I would say, in Africa right now. There's 5,000 sable, 4,000 zebra, 10,000 warbuck buffalo have gone from 1,000 to 35,000. This used to be the Renamo meat locker in the civil wars in Mozambique. And that has. I said to Mark, I said, you're going to get very dangerously close to the next tender process. And ecotourism lodges coming in here and hunting's disappearing because the wildlife is back. Like, the wildlife is. You just drive and you see everything. It isn't behaviorally, it's wild. It's not your typical, like, cruise next to the vehicle, no problems kind of wildlife, you know, in that NG13 block, you know, they hunt so little, and it's a million acres from. I have no backing Just from a thought process perspective, how much influence does that hunting have on animal behavior and whatnot? There's probably some, but I would say it's not negligible, but I would say it's very low. But NG13 is just again, when you looked at that map of where those elephant corridors went by, you saw me put my hand over the top. That was NG13. There's you know, 40, 42,000 elephants. Based on the causes survey in that area, five elephants are taken in NG13. I think in that NG11 is citizen quota of like 13 or 14 elephants. But yeah, I think, I think that there's a little bit of a misnomer of like how hunting affects wildlife when there's lots of these examples. Again, part of my job is to show these examples to be like, look, look how amazing this wildlife is. And it started with nothing. And all of a sudden now we have this amazing wildlife here that then is a jewel and essentially then gets plucked and says, oh, now we want you, we want the nature that's a nature reserve now or that's an ecotourism place now.

[Moderator (Fiona)]

So, and the stats, right, financially, isn't

[Audience Member 3]

ecotourism way better long term than hunting?

[Robbie (Filmmaker/Scientist)]

100%.

[Audience Member 2]

Yeah.

[Robbie (Filmmaker/Scientist)]

The statistics show in those places where ecotourism is viable, ecotourism makes far more money. Okay? But with far more money comes, you know, almost a 660% increase in people. So you, you've got trade offs there, right? You've got carbon footprint trade offs, you've got garbage trade offs, you've got water use trade offs, you've got all these trade offs. Money wise, yes, absolutely. But not every place can be an ecotourism destination. When you, they did a survey generally out of Europe and they asked 100 people, where do you go? I think it was like 85 of those hundred named three places. And so now the rest of the, everybody in those three places was the Serengeti, Maasai, Mara and Gorogoro, Okavango Delta and Kruger National Park. And so you've got 15 people now fighting for every other ecotourism place that's left over. So I think there's just a, again from the film perspective, I think there's a recognition that there's places that just people will never go to like. But NG13 for sure, I think you'd love it. I think overlanders from South Africa would absolutely love it. But is that going to generate enough money to put the community in the jobs that it has right now to generate money into the trust? The way that this very limited hunting is doing NG13. I don't think it's possible. Thank you. All right, I think we're done. Oh, you got one more. Some good pictures scattered out the audience. It's getting late.

[Moderator (Fiona)]

Do you have another, or are we done?

[Robbie (Filmmaker/Scientist)]

I think we're done. Okay, thank you so much, everyone.

[Moderator (Fiona)]

Yeah, those were some really interesting questions, guys. And I think we can say to Robby that some of us might agree with you, some of us might disagree with you, but I think PWFF is all about having those hard conversations and getting all those different perspectives. So thank you for bringing that for us today, and it was great to have you. Thank you.

[Robbie (Filmmaker/Scientist)]

Well, that's it for today. I appreciate you listening. As always, leave a review, share it

[Podcast Host]

with your friends, and most importantly, do

[Robbie (Filmmaker/Scientist)]

what's right to convey the truth around hunting.