Wildlife Killed My Livestock: What to Report

Seven days, and it is a criminal deadline

Tap the situation closest to yours for a step-by-step plan.

If a wild animal kills your livestock or destroys your crops: what the law lets you do, what you must report and by when, and what compensation actually covers.

What the law lets you do about a wild animal that has killed your stock or gone through your crops depends on which animal it was. Lions and cheetahs are treated differently from everything else, nine species carry compensation and the rest carry none, and nearly every path through this has a seven-day clock on it.

Tap what happened. Each answer quotes the section of the Act or the 2005 order it comes from, so you can check it.

What happened? Tap the one closest to yours.

A lion killed or injured my livestock

Lions are the one case where you may not simply act. The Lions (Killing Restriction) Order of 2005 takes the general right to kill a damage-causing animal away for lions — so the right in section 46(1) does not apply. And the damage must be reported within seven days whether or not anyone kills anything.

Steps to take

Report the damage within seven days
Paragraph 3(1) of the order: where a lion causes damage to livestock or property, the owner or occupier of the land, or their agent, must report it to the nearest wildlife office or police station within seven days of the event. This is a duty on you, separate from any compensation claim.
A lion may only be killed in two situations
Paragraph 4: where a lion or a group of lions has actually killed livestock, or where they threaten human life under section 47. Threatening your stock is not enough. Where a group is involved, only one lion of that group may be killed.
If a lion is killed, report that within seven days too
Paragraph 3(2). Contravening any of this is an offence carrying a fine of up to P1,000 and up to a year in prison.
Leave both carcasses and the site as they are
Paragraph 6 requires whoever killed or wounded the lion to prevent damage to the lion's carcass and to the livestock carcass, to skin both in a way that preserves the skins for forensic investigation, and to preserve the place where it happened for forensic investigation.
Be able to show you tried to prevent it first
Paragraph 5: whoever kills a lion must show that beforehand they tried to prevent the damage by herding the livestock and by enclosing it in a secure kraal. Paragraph 6 also puts on them the burden of proving that this lion, or the group it was in, caused the damage.

Who to contact

The nearest Department of Wildlife and National Parks office

The only DWNP Maun number we have been able to verify is the Moremi bookings line, +267 686 1265, which is a reservations desk and may not be where a problem-animal report is taken. Rather than print a number that sends you to the wrong office, this page names the office: ask there, or at a police station, which the law accepts for everything except cheetah damage.

Maun Police Station

Phone: 0800 600 040

Toll-free; the station's direct line is +267 686 1125. A police station is one of the two places the Act and the lion order name for a report.

Lion is one of the two species compensated at the full assessed cost rather than a share of it — see the note on amounts below.

A cheetah killed or injured my livestock

The Cheetahs (Killing Suspension) Order of 2005 does the same thing as the lion order: section 46(1) does not apply to a cheetah, so the general right to kill a damage-causing animal is not available.

Steps to take

Report it to a wildlife office within seven days
Paragraph 3. Note the difference from lions: the cheetah order names the nearest wildlife office and does not mention a police station, where the lion order and section 46(2) name both.
Killing a cheetah is an offence
Paragraph 4: a fine of up to P1,000 and up to a year in prison. Section 46(3) also forbids any permit ever being issued for the sale of cheetah meat.

Who to contact

The nearest Department of Wildlife and National Parks office

The cheetah order names a wildlife office and not a police station, so for cheetah damage this is the place. The only DWNP Maun number we could verify is the Moremi bookings line, +267 686 1265, which is a reservations desk — ask there for the right office rather than treating it as the reporting line.

Cheetah is on the list of nine compensable species, at the lower share — see the note on amounts below.

An elephant or another animal damaged my crops, fence or water point

For every animal except lions and cheetahs, section 46(1) gives the owner or occupier of the land — or their agent — the right to kill an animal that has caused, is causing, or threatens to cause damage to livestock, crops, a water installation or a fence on that land. It is a permission, not an instruction.

Steps to take

Three things that right never covers
Section 46(1)'s proviso: not an animal that is inside a national park or a game reserve, and never using a poisoned weapon, a pitfall or a snare.
If you kill it, report within seven days and hand over the trophies
Section 46(2): report the circumstances of the killing and deliver the animal's trophies to the nearest wildlife officer or police station, as soon as possible and in any case not later than seven days after the event.
The meat and trophies are not yours
Section 46(3): they are Government trophies. Once the report has been made and the killing is established as lawful, a permit may be issued for you to sell the meat — but never for elephant, rhinoceros or cheetah meat, and never for an animal killed only because it was threatening to cause damage.
Getting this wrong is an offence
Section 46(6): killing an animal in defence of property otherwise than under section 46(1), failing to report a killing, or using or disposing of the trophy or meat outside the section each carry a fine of P1,000 and a year's imprisonment.

Who to contact

The nearest Department of Wildlife and National Parks office

Maun Police Station

Phone: 0800 600 040

Toll-free; the station's direct line is +267 686 1125. A police station is one of the two places the Act and the lion order name for a report.

Elephant is the other species compensated at the full assessed cost. The order has no seven-day reporting duty for elephant damage where nothing was killed, the way the lion and cheetah orders do — but a compensation claim still starts from a report, so there is nothing to gain by waiting.

I killed or wounded an animal to protect myself or someone else

Section 47(1): it is not unlawful to kill or wound an animal in defence of yourself or any other person, if that is immediately and absolutely necessary. Section 47(2) puts the burden of proving that on the person who did it.

Steps to take

Report it within seven days
Section 47(3): where a game animal is killed this way by someone who holds no licence or permit for it, the animal becomes a Government trophy and the killing must be reported to the nearest convenient wildlife officer or police station as soon as possible and in any event not later than seven days.
Hand the animal over if you are told to
The same subsection: if directed, you must deliver the animal, or the parts specified, to that wildlife officer or police station.
The penalty here is lower, and it is still a penalty
Failing to report under section 47(3) carries a fine of P500 and six months' imprisonment — not the P1,000 and year that section 46(6) carries.

Who to contact

The nearest Department of Wildlife and National Parks office

Maun Police Station

Phone: 0800 600 040

Toll-free; the station's direct line is +267 686 1125. A police station is one of the two places the Act and the lion order name for a report.

A hyena or a jackal killed my stock

The compensation scheme covers nine species, and hyena and jackal are not among them. Answering a question in Parliament in November 2020, the then Minister of Environment, Natural Resources Conservation and Tourism, Philda Kereng, put it plainly: there are other predators such as hyenas and jackals which currently do not attract compensation.

Steps to take

The right to kill a damage-causing animal still applies
Section 46(1) covers these animals as it covers any other, with the same three exclusions — not in a park or reserve, and no poison, pitfall or snare — and the same seven-day duty to report a killing under section 46(2).
Reporting is still worth doing
The department works from the reports it receives, and the district's figures quoted below are counts of reports. A loss nobody reports is a loss that does not exist in the record the review is being argued over.

Who to contact

The nearest Department of Wildlife and National Parks office

Maun Police Station

Phone: 0800 600 040

Toll-free; the station's direct line is +267 686 1125. A police station is one of the two places the Act and the lion order name for a report.

Adding hyena to the compensable species was named as one of the things under consideration when the Act went under review — nothing has been published.

I want to claim compensation for what was lost

Compensation is paid for damage by nine species only: buffalo, cheetah, crocodile, elephant, hippopotamus, lion, leopard, rhinoceros and wild dog. Section 46(4) of the Act says compensation may be paid, as provided in regulations, to anyone who satisfactorily establishes that they suffered damage from an animal's action — and section 46(5) lets the Minister set the rates by notice in the Gazette.

Steps to take

It starts from the report
There is no separate claims channel we can point you to. Everything begins with the report to the nearest wildlife office — which for lion and cheetah damage is itself a legal duty within seven days.
Expect an officer to come and verify it
The DWNP director, Moemedi Batshabang, told Mmegi in March 2025 that cases must be attended to by officers who investigate and verify a claim before any payment, and that payments are never made on the spot because that could not be audited.
Leave the evidence until they have seen it
Do not clear the carcass or work the damaged field before an officer has been. The burden of establishing the damage is on the claimant.

Who to contact

The nearest Department of Wildlife and National Parks office

Maun Police Station

Phone: 0800 600 040

Toll-free; the station's direct line is +267 686 1125. A police station is one of the two places the Act and the lion order name for a report.

We could not find a published claim form, a deadline for the claim itself as distinct from the seven-day report, or a stated processing time. If the office tells you any of those, the office is right and this page is simply silent on it.

Good to know

Seven days, and it is a criminal deadline

If anyone killed the animal, the killing must be reported within seven days — section 46(2) for a damage-causing animal, section 47(3) for self-defence. And for lion or cheetah damage the report is a duty within seven days whether anything was killed or not. Failing to report is an offence, not a lapsed form: P1,000 and a year under section 46(6), P500 and six months under section 47(3), and up to P1,000 and a year under the 2005 orders.

Nobody can tell you the amount, and that is the state of it

Two ministers have given the structure: the full assessed cost for elephant and lion damage and 35 per cent for the other seven species — Philda Kereng answering Parliament in November 2020, and Wynter Mmolotsi at Kasane in January 2025. One newspaper report gives 50 per cent rather than 35, so treat the share as attributed rather than settled. Specific figures the Minister gave at a kgotla meeting in Bobonong in March 2025: P3,000 for cattle killed by a lion, P150 for a donkey, and P70,000 for a human death, made up of P50,000 to the beneficiaries and P20,000 towards the funeral — paid, in his words, funds permitting. What there is not, is a published schedule. The only compensation order still in the statute book was made in 1980 under the previous Act and sets a mature bull at P200 and crops at a maximum of P20 an acre, which is not what anybody pays now. The figures in use come from government guidelines that have not been published, and the Act itself was under review through 2025 and 2026.

This is the law restated, not legal advice

Every rule on this page is quoted from the Wildlife Conservation and National Parks Act (Cap 38:01) and the two orders made under it in 2005, all three linked below so you can read the words yourself. What the page cannot do is tell you how your own case will be decided, and where an officer tells you something different about procedure, they are the authority.

How much of this the district sees

Answering the MP for Maun East in March 2026, the Minister reported that the North West District had 35 elephant reports and 27 lion reports in 2025/26 to that point — 26 of the lion reports from livestock farmers at Shorobe alone. He also said the department had five vehicles for problem-animal control across the district, with maintenance delayed by austerity. Mitigation being used includes predator-proof kraals, herding dogs, collaring lions for early warning, and wildlife corridors in land allocation.

Official links

Wildlife Conservation and National Parks Act (Cap 38:01)The Act itself. Section 46 is the right to kill a damage-causing animal, the duty to report it and the compensation provision; section 47 is self-defence.
The 2005 lion and cheetah orders (S.I. 27 and S.I. 26 of 2005)Both orders in full, with the seven-day reports, the conditions for killing a lion and the burden of proof.
The 1980 compensation order (S.I. 135 of 1980)The only compensation schedule in the statute book. Made under the previous Act and long overtaken in practice — here because it is what the law on paper still says.
Statistics Botswana — Botswana Environment Statistics 2012Where the list of nine compensable species comes from, with Ngamiland's own 2009-2011 report and payout tables. A large file, about 5 MB.

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