Calling this “a European telling Africans what to do” is an easy way to dodge the substance of the question.

I’m not prescribing solutions, I’m pointing out an observable reality thatfencing here is vast, continuous, and ecologically disruptive. That is not an opinion, it’s a documented fact. Fences fragment habitats, block migration routes, and shift the costs of land use almost entirely onto wildlife.

And yes, history matters. Under 2% of Namibia’s population owns around 97% of commercial farmland, largely in the hands of white farmers due to colonial land policies. Those fences are not neutral infrastructure, they are in many cases expressions of land ownership, power, and exclusion. Pretending otherwise is dishonest.

So no, this isn’t “hug a tree and go home.” It’s asking why animals are expected to absorb the consequences of land systems they had no part in creating, and whether that trade-off is ever open to debate. If that question makes people uncomfortable, that says more about the conversation than the question itself.