Escape Nature: Three lions are exploring their new home in KZN

ESCAPE NATURE As you read this, three lions are exploring their new home in KZN. Here’s why this is great news These cats got the creamSomkhanda Game Reserve is situated in the far northern wilds of KZN, between Pongola and Mkuze. ___4711111 Youth For Lions is the latest global awareness initiative. Find out why it’s not cool to pet cubs, and how kids can spread the word, on localhost/blog-post-data infrastructure and train local people in hospitality and reserve management. ‘There is no way captivebred lions could ever have been used in an exercise like this as they have no conservation value,’ says Ian Michler, who was also involved in Blood Lions. ‘This is about expanding habitat using wild lions, and the project being managed by the recognised conservation community.’ Somkhanda’s credentials are golden it has also been involved in the Black Rhino Range Expansion Project, so doing the same for lions is just part of a day’s work. The reserve’s ecotourism approach is also laudable here visitors are encouraged to learn and contribute. Guests are involved in gathering data on game drives and bush walks, they Howard Clelland, Teaga n Cunniffe, supplied

In May this year, a male and two female lions were transferred asleep, on the back of vet Dr Mike Toft’s special trailer from Phinda to Somkhanda Game Reserve in northern KZN, which is owned and run by the local Gumbi community. The trio have spent the past two months acclimatising in a boma, and are ready to stretch their legs.

‘We feel privileged that the reserve is going to be a Big Five reserve our dream is now a reality,’ says Nathi Gumbi, a key player in this community that, after successful process of land claims in 1998, turned what were cattle and game farms into a conservation success.

The lions are the first in the area in 100 years. This means that biodiversity and ecological balance in the reserve is now restored. But the transfer is also part of a lion conservation strategy that aims to expand their range and genetic pool.

Lions were reintroduced at Phinda in 1992, and they’ve thrived to the extent that the numbers often exceed the capacity of the reserve. Finding a place to translocate them to is the tricky part, as habitat loss is one of the greatest perils facing our planet’s wildlife. It’s no surprise that one of the people behind this initiative was also a producer on Blood Lions, the recent documentary that exposed the canned-hunting and captive-breeding industry. Dr Andrew Venter, CEO of Wildlands, has been involved with Somkhanda since 2013, helping to upgrade infrastructure and train local people in hospitality and reserve management. ‘There is no way captive-bred lions could ever have been used in an exercise like this as they have no conservation value; says Ian Michler who was also involved in Blood Lions. ” This is about expanding habitat using wild lions, and the project being managed by the recognised conservation community. Somkhanda’s  credentials are golden –  it has been involved in the Black Rhino Range Expansion Project, so doing the same for lions is just part of a day’s work.

The reserve’s ecotourism approach is also laudable – here visitors are encouraged to learn and contribute. Guests are involved in gathering data on game drives and bush walks, they can help with cattle dipping in neighbouring villages, or sign up for a wildlife conservation experience that includes helping to dehorn rhinos and replace their tracking collars. Back to the lions: ‘They’re bonding nicely and have been feeding well,’ David Gilroy, Wildlands Strategic Manager, told us at the end of June. ‘We anticipate a smooth release into the reserve at the end of July.

#ShockWildlifeTruth: Cecil the Lion’s cub Xanda killed by trophy hunter in Zimbabwe

Cape Town – On 1 July 2015, Cecil the Lion was killed by an American trophy hunter in Zimbabwe, resulting in the professional hunter having his licence confiscated and facing criminal charges for poaching.

The incident sparked global uproar regarding canned lion hunting and poaching, with the Blood Lions film and campaign running worldwide with the goal to “bring an end to canned hunting and the exploitative breeding of lions and other predators on farms across South Africa”.

But despite all these global efforts to make the general public, tourists and professional hunters aware of the ramifications of pet cubbing and canned hunting, the futile death of lions in many of Africa’s parks continue at the hands of canned hunters.

Two years after the killing of Cecil the Lion, it has been reported that one of his cubs has been shot dead by a big game trophy hunter in Zimbabwe.

The six-year-old lion named Xanda, who was in his prime, was killed in similar circumstances as his father, just outside the Hwange National Park in north-west Zimbabwe, not far from where Cecil was killed in 2015.

“His death was discovered because Xanda was wearing an electronic collar, fitted by researchers monitoring his movements in the area,” reports the The Telegraph.

According to the UK news site, “when the Zimbabwean professional hunter on the shoot, Richard Cooke from RC Safaris, discovered the dead lion had a collar, he handed it back to the researchers”.

Andrew Loveridge from the Department of Zoology at Oxford University, which has a team supplying and fixing collars to monitor the lions in the Hwange National Park, says he fitted Xanda’s collar last October. “It was monitored almost daily and we were aware that Xanda and his pride were spending a lot of time out of the park in the last six months, but there is not much we can do about that,” he told The Telegraph.

“Richard Cooke is one of the ‘good’ guys. He is ethical and he returned the collar and communicated what had happened. His hunt was legal and Xanda was over 6 years old so it is all within the stipulated regulations,” he adds.

Loveridge says he hoped that there would soon be a 5km exclusion zone around the Hwange National Park so that hunters would no longer accidentally shoot collared lions that wonder outside the boundary of the Park.

“The client may have paid about £40 000 (R674 400 at R16.86/£) for the shoot and for Xanda’s head to be cured and mounted and sent to him wherever he lives,” says The Telegraph.

Remembering Cecil the Lion

Cecil the Lion’s death in 2015 placed the spotlight on trophy hunting in Africa. Although the practice is not a novelty, more and more pressure has been put on the industry’s distorted ethical arguments, in a bid to stop lion trophy hunting for good.

Cecil was killed by US hunting tourist, Walter Palmer, who reportedly has a hunting felony history, faced charges for the illegal hunt.

The 13-year-old big cat was shot at night near his birth place, close to the national park. He didn’t die immediately and was tracked down the following day. His head was cured in Bulawayo in preparation to be dried and mounted when police seized it.

The world united to bring attention to the crime committed and an image of Cecil was even projected onto the Empire State building in protest of the trophy hunt.

According to The Telegraph, more than 70% of funds to safeguard Zimbabwe’s wildlife and catch poachers come from revenue from professional hunters.

Overview of ground made to protect lions in Africa

– Australia and France have placed bans on importing lion trophies.

– The Netherlands has placed a ban on importing trophies from lions and 200 other endangered species.

– The US (the country with the most hunter-tourists) has made significant changes to have stricter import requirements.  Since January 2016, hunters wishing to import lion trophies must prove that the killing was necessary to protect lions living in the wild – which is in general very difficult to do. South African sources show that lion hunts involving hunters from the United States have decreased by 70%.

Great Britain is threatening to ban imports from 2017 if the African countries of origin do not maintain their lion numbers more effectively.

– Over 40 international airlines have banned or restricted the carrying of trophies.

– The South African hunting association PHASA has taken a firm stand against the official lion breeders in the country, the South African Predator Association (SAPA) and has distanced itself from this cruel form of hunting

Europe’s largest hunting fair, Germany’s “Jagd & Hund”, and the Austrian “Hohe Jagd & Fischerei” fair have undertaken to oppose canned hunting products and packages.

– Several African states have committed to calling for Africa’s lions to be promoted to the highest level of protection (CITES Appendix 1) at the upcoming international World Wildlife Conference, to be held in Johannesburg in September 2016. It is still uncertain whether the application will achieve the necessary majority.

Meanwhile, the South African Government plans to permit the annual export of 800 lion skeletons to curb poaching, but conservationists say this clearly supports canned lion hunting.

THE POSSIBLE IMPACTS OF LEGALISING THE LION BONE TRADE

The recent announcement by the Department of Environmental Affiars (DEA) to set the export quota of lion skeletons for Asia to 800 has important implications for the conservation of wild lions in South Africa. Legalising the trade in lion bones has been enabled by the 17th Conference of Parties (CoP17) of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) failing to transfer all lion populations from Appendix II to Appendix I and thus prohibiting the international commercial trade in lions or any lion parts.

It is estimated that there are less than 20,000 wild lions left throughout Africa with a population decline of more than 40% in the past two decades. The wild lion population is at a similar tipping point as the white rhino and is fast tracking towards extinction. The main cause of lion population decline is habitat loss, with the constant encroachment of human activity into wild areas increasingly bringing humans and wildlife into conflict.

As the export of lion skeletons will be from farmed lions, the impact on the wild lion population may not be immediately obvious. The captive breeding of lions for the purpose of killing them to supply the bone trade is considered by many to be ethically unacceptable and has the potential to harm South Africa’s global image. Recognising the negative perceptions of killing iconic wildlife for scientifically unproven treatments, the Chinese themselves banned the use of tiger parts in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) in 1993.

Prior to the ban, tiger body parts had been used in TCM, with tiger bone wine marketed as a potential cure for arthritis and other bone ailments. The consumption of tiger penis was also widely practiced for its purported role in the treatment of erectile dysfunction. With tiger populations also vastly diminished due to habitat loss and hunting (only 30-80 wild tigers remain in China and it is considered functionally extinct), and no legal market for the sale of their body parts, the demand has been drastically reduced.

Although their grandparents may have used tiger parts in the past, many modern Chinese consumers have rejected the use of these traditional medicines. In response to one of China’s pre-eminent public polling companies, an overwhelming 95% of respondents said that they would take action to save wild tigers,  including abstaining from the use of tiger products. Encouragingly, educated modern Chinese men are selectively switching from TCM to Viagra to treat erectile dysfunction, according to a study by an Australian university.

The proposed new trade in lion bones from Africa to Asia is clearly due to the fact that the lion is seen as analogous to the tiger by the powerful traditional medicine industry in China. This is despite there being no documented use of lion body parts in the 2,000 year long history of TCM.

The move by South Africa is clearly intended to create a market for the estimated 6,000-8,000 captively bred lions in the country. There have already been some legal sales of lion bones in much smaller numbers starting in 2008, which has confirmed the acceptability of the product to the Asian market.

The danger here is that a much larger market could be created, if the use of lion bone in TCM is validated. We have seen this before of course with rhino horn. Though rhino horn elixirs were first prescribed in TCM more than 1,800 years ago, by the early 1990s demand was limited due to trade bans and the removal of the product from most medicines. Only around 15 rhinos were poached in South Africa each year from 1990 to 2007.

Then came 2008 and a prominent Vietnamese politician claimed that Rhino horn had cured his cancer, which had gone into remission. Validated by a high level government source, demand surged across the region. The situation has now become critical and we get used to the shocking headlines such as this, where 20-30 rhinos are poached in South Africa in just one weekend.

Does the same fate lie ahead for lions? If the SA government further legitimises this trade and validates lion bones as a valuable medicinal product will we be looking at similar horrific statistics for lion poaching in the future? The signs are already ominous. Worryingly lion poaching has increased since the first lion bones were legally sold.

We are starting to see cases of lions being poached from easy targets in wildlife sanctuaries. The fear among conservationists is that this will begin to spread further into the poaching of the already threatened wild lion populations. The decision by the SA government to trade lion bones, and therefore validate their medicinal use and give them an increased economic value, is surely only going to increase this risk. This is even more frustrating at a time when there is growing evidence that demand for wildlife products can be restricted by better awareness and education programmes in the Asian marketplace.

In addition, legalising lion bone trade will encourage further captive lion breeding and its associated unethical wildlife interactions, such as cub petting, lion walking and volunteering, when the impact of the Blood Lions documentary and campaigns, such as #HandsOffOurWildlife and Wildlife.Not Entertainers, is slowly but surely starting to make some headway.