Botswana has the world’s largest elephant population, with some 130,000 animals.

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Lebalang Ramatokwane surveys a jagged hole in the cement wall surrounding his half-built guesthouse on the outskirts of Kasane, a small tourist town in the far north of Botswana. A few days earlier, an elephant had knocked down part of the wall in two places, and now he’s wondering if he should beef up security before paying customers start to arrive.

“They are not only damaging what you see here,” Ramatokwane, a 37-year-old medical scientist, says. The thousands of elephants that roam freely around Kasane regularly destroy farmers’ crops and pose a real threat to people, he says. “These are wild, wild, wild animals. They are not conditioned.”

Botswana is home to some 130,000 elephants, more than any country in the world. For years, trophy hunters from the U.S. and…