Month: July 2015

A new documentary exposes the dark side of a growing South African wildlife business

Up to 7,000 lions are living behind bars in South Africa. Raised in captivity on private breeding farms and hunting “reserves,” some of these animals are petted as cubs by tourists, who can also walk alongside or even feed more mature lions.

Eventually, many are shot in “canned” hunts, in which lions are pursued and killed in confined areas that make them easy targets. Hunt fees can be as high as $50,000.

The hunters take lion skins and heads home as trophies. Lion bones and bodies are exported to Asia for traditional cures.

As new measures are put in place to clamp down on trade in the bones of endangered tigers, the lion bone trade grows. Substituting tiger with lion bone means that lionesses, as well as trophy males, now have commercial value.

The new documentary Blood Lions lays bare the dark underbelly of South Africa’s captive breeding and canned hunting industries. The film will be screened in Durban, South Africa on Wednesday at Africa’s leading film festival.

Owners of private breeding farms say that more hunting of captive-bred lions takes pressure off declining wild lion populations.

Not so, says Dr. Luke Hunter, president of Panthera, an organization dedicated to conserving endangered big cats. “This industry pumps out cats to be shot in cages or shipped to Asia to supply the demand for big cat parts. Blood Lions blows away the hollow ‘conservation’ arguments made by South Africa’s predator breeders to justify their grim trade.”

I hadn’t planned to write a blog post today, and I don’t normally use my blog as a soap box. But then I woke up this morning and heard about the #AnimalRightsInTourism campaign.

If you live in South Africa or the United States, you probably saw last month’s terrible story about an American tourist who was killed in the Lion Park. The Lion Park, about 30 minutes north of Johannesburg, is a zoo-like game reserve where tourists go for an up-close look at lions and other big cats. One of the biggest attractions at the Lion Park is lion-cub-petting, in which visitors enter enclosures with big cat cubs (up to six months old) and are invited to interact with them. (The tourist was mauled by a lioness in the drive-through section of the park. Despite warnings to keep car windows up, the woman had her window open.)

I confess that I’ve never been to the Lion Park. But about four years ago I went to the Rhino & Lion Nature Reserve, not far from the Lion Park, which offers similar activities. I knew nothing about these cub-petting programs at the time, but while I was in the reserve I saw a couple interacting with a tiger cub and felt really unnerved.

First, the cub looked way too big to be interacting with people. Second, the keeper in the enclosure was handling the cub very roughly, slapping it hard when it got too playful with the guests. And third, I couldn’t stop thinking about what kind of life that cub was going to face once it outgrew its babyhood job.

It’s been well documented that the cubs involved in these petting programs — which exist all over South Africa and are 100% legal — are frequently sold into the canned hunting industry. Canned hunting farms — which are also all over South Africa and totally legal — buy up captive-bred animals at auctions, or breed the animals themselves, and then charge big bucks for tourists to come to their farms and “hunt” the animals.

The Lion Park denies ever selling its lions into canned hunting, despite evidence to the contrary. (Since the tourist-mauling incident, the Lion Park has also announced that it will end its lion-cub-petting program in 2016. Let’s hope the park follows through on that commitment.) I’m not sure of the Rhino & Lion Nature Reserve’s official stance on canned hunting, but according to the reserve’s website its so-called “Animal Crèche” is still going strong. (Read more about cub-petting on my friend Meruschka’s blog.)

I’m not against hunting in general, although why people enjoy shooting animals and watching them die is beyond me. Many of my friends and colleagues will disagree, but I think hunting can be done ethically and I also believe that ethical hunting brings big financial and ecological benefits to local communities in South Africa.

But I am against canned hunting and cub-petting, as well as any tourism activity that puts human beings into physical contact with wild animals. This includes elephant-back safaris, which my friend Kate wrote about on her blog today. As far as I’m concerned, South Africa’s tourism industry would be better off without these activities and I believe they should be banned.

I have one more confession. A couple of years ago I was invited on a media trip to a high-end private reserve in South Africa’s Waterberg region. During that visit, I pet a pair of cheetahs. I justified my actions back then by telling myself that these cheetahs, who had been hand-reared by the couple who managed the reserve, were family pets and would probably never be sold to a canned hunting farm.

But I realize now that my justification was wrong. Those beautiful cheetahs were purchased at an animal auction that almost certainly catered to the canned hunting industry. By petting those cheetahs I was indirectly supporting that industry, and that was uncool.

Blood Lions, a documentary about the canned hunting industry in South Africa, is premiering this evening in Durban. I watched the two-minute trailer earlier today and couldn’t get through it without crying, so I don’t think I’ll watch the whole film. But the Blood Lions release is the main motivation behind today’s #AnimalRightsInTourism campaign. To show your support, please follow Blood Lions on Facebook and Twitter and voice your own opinions about unethical animal practices using the #AnimalRightsInTourism hashtag.

Also, please don’t pet cubs.

“A formal assessment of the South African trade in African Lion bones and other body parts is necessary and urgent says various wildlife organisations”

PRETORIA – The recent meeting between breeders and hunters regarding their role in the management of the lion industry, at which the minister of environmental affairs was also present, has been criticised by conservationists and activists, who say it was one-sided. Conservationists, wildlife organisations and activists were not invited to this meeting.

Only organisations supportive of lion breeding and hunting, including the Professional Hunters Association of South Africa and the South African Predator Association, appear to have been invited.

The minister’s office said the purpose of the meeting was “to address widespread and mounting public concern” about the controversial practice of canned-lion hunting.

It comes at a time when a new documentary called Blood Lions exposes some shocking practices of this industry, and a new international report by TRAFFIC sheds light on the growing trade in these animals’ bones, involving hundreds of South African lion carcasses exported annually to supply the traditional Asian medicine market.

The Department of Environmental Affairs’ official statement about the meeting reveals a fundamental disagreement over what constitutes canned hunting in South Africa.

Although the government and the breeding and hunting industry insist that hunting of captive-bred lions represents the legitimate and sustainable use of a wildlife species, they do acknowledge that “rogue elements” and criminals operating at the fringes of this industry, should be rooted out. They also believe that all that is necessary to rectify the poor public perception of the lion breeding business is to improve and clarify the regulations which govern it.

In stark contrast, opponents claim that factory farming of lions in stressful, unnatural and unhealthy breeding farms for the sole purpose of supplying the lucrative trophy hunting industry, and the secondary income stream from the trade in lion bones, represents a violation of wildlife conservation principles and animal welfare standards, and has no conservation value.

Around 6 000 lions are currently confined in about 150 South African breeding facilities.

While government appears intent on reforming and sanitising the business of breeding and hunting lions, critics want to see it dismantled altogether.  According to the Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks Agency, no lion breeding is allowed in the Mpumalanga Province, and no permits will be issued.

The President of the Born Free Foundation said earlier that “Blood Lions lays bare the truth behind the canned hunting industry that, far from contributing to the future survival of the species, may, in fact, accelerate extinction in the wild, leaving behind a trail  littered with rotting corpses of its helpless and hopeless victims.”

Cape Town – South African Airways Cargo division has issued a notice confirming it will once again be transporting selected hunting trophies, effective since 20 July.

Traveller24 reported on SAA’s decision to ban the transportation, initially put into effect in April 2015, following an incident in which hunting trophies were allegedly shipped to Perth, Australia under a false label of ‘mechanical equipment’.

The move was hailed by conservationists and responsible tourism operators both locally and internationally, with the world’s largest airline Emirates following suit and instituting its own ban on the transportation of hunting trophies.

SAA Cargo announced the lifting of the embargo in a cargo policy and procedures advisory, dated 20 July 2015, saying the airline had been engaging with the Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA). It said the DEA’s implementation of “additional compliance measures for permits and documentation” caused the airline to review its embargo and that it has since been lifted on the transportation of selected hunting trophies, namely “rhino, elephants, lion and tiger”.

The move was hailed by conservationists and responsible tourism operators both locally and internationally, with the world’s largest airline Emirates following suit and instituting its own ban on the transportation of hunting trophies.

SAA Cargo announced the lifting of the embargo in a cargo policy and procedures advisory, dated 20 July 2015, saying the airline had been engaging with the Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA). It said the DEA’s implementation of “additional compliance measures for permits and documentation” caused the airline to review its embargo and that it has since been lifted on the transportation of selected hunting trophies, namely “rhino, elephants, lion and tiger”.

The airline said the hunting trophy cargo would also be “liable to physical and documentary inspection by the relevant nature conservation authorities, as they deem fit”.

While the ban was never meant to be indefinite, the move by SAA Cargo comes as the contentious issue of canned hunting takes centre stage, with the #Animalrightsintourism trending at number two across South Africa at the time of publishing.

The issue is also being highlighted in the Blood Lions documentary by Ian Michler of Invent Africa  – one of the continent’s finest wildlife guides, as well as an outspoken conservationist who has fought for the protection of African wilderness and wildlife. For 15 years Ian has researched and campaigned against the canned lion hunting industry in South Africa.

‘Blood Lions’ is due for release at the Durban International Film Festival on 22nd July.

“The canned hunting industry is unnatural‚ unethical and unacceptable. It delivers compromised animal welfare and zero education. The Born Free Foundation on Wednesday applauded the international premiere of the hard-hitting documentary‚ Blood Lions‚ which “blows the lid off the predator breeding and canned hunting industries in South Africa”.

Last year alone‚ according to the foundation‚ more than 800 captive lions were shot in South Africa.

According to the film makers‚ Blood Lions “shows in intimate detail how lucrative it is to breed lions‚ and how the authorities and professional hunting and tourism bodies have become complicit in allowing the industries to flourish”.

Will Travers‚ president of the international wildlife charity said‚ “South Africa’s failure to address the canned hunting industry has emboldened those who make a living out of the death of lions bred‚ raised and slaughtered on a ‘no kill‚ no fee’ basis.

“The canned hunting industry is unnatural‚ unethical and unacceptable. It delivers compromised animal welfare and zero education. It undermines conservation and creates a moral vacuum now inhabited by the greed and grotesque self-importance of those who derive pleasure in the taking of life.

“Blood Lions lays bare the truth behind the canned hunting industry that‚ far from contributing to the future survival of the species‚ may‚ in fact‚ accelerate extinction in the wild‚ leaving behind a trail littered with rotting corpses of its helpless and hopeless victims‚” Travers said.

Blood Lions‚ directed by Bruce Young and Nick Chevallier‚ premiered at the Durban International Film Festival at 6pm on Wednesday.

#animalrightsintourism – This is the Official trailer for Blood Lions, a documentary that exposes the terrible truth behind the predator breeding and canned lion hunting industries in South Africa, set to be released on Wednesday 22nd July.

Every day in South Africa at least 2-3 hand-reared captive bred lions are hunted. It’s unethical and immoral, yet under our laws, not illegal. It’s cruel and brutal. It’s not sport.

Learn more here: http://www.localhost/blog-post-data/

South Africa has upwards of 10 000 lions, but those number s conceal a classification system whereby breeders or farms class them as captive, managed and wild. If you look at the real numbers, only about 3000 lions are truly wild, with 7000 others residing on private farms and of those, a large portion are kept in stable-like conditions under terrible conditions.

When you take a closer look at what are essentially commercial breeding programs you’ll see a very different side of what some like to call ‘conservation’, where by cubs are used for their cute factor, older lions are seen in the ‘wild’ as showpieces and mature lions are hunted as trophies; even worse are the hundreds of lions slaughtered like cattle for the booming lion bone trade in the East – they use it for aphrodisiacs often referred to as tiger wine –.

Essentially, a large portion of ‘captive’ lions in South Africa are used for one thing, canned lion hunting. Big game farmers stand to make huge profits through this practice and folks ‘high up’ have a vested interest – read, back-handed deals – in the proliferation of this practice and it’s marketing to North Americans and Europeans who just can’t get enough of the ‘wild hunt’.

That’s where Ian Michler comes in; for the last 15 years he has been campaigning for the abolishment of canned lion hunting and fighting those who would want you to believe that trophy hunting injects masses of cash into conservation and attracts scores of tourists. In fact, trophy hunting makes up an infinitesimally small portion of the R100 billion tourism trade in SA and well, of the nine million annual tourists we attract, only around 9000 of those come for trophy hunting.

“During the 1990s, I lived in the Okavango Delta and my research there into trophy hunting took me to the canned hunting farms of South Africa. For anyone who has an ecological understanding of the natural world, to witness territorial and apex predators being kept under intensive agricultural conditions is horrifying. And then to find out that they are being bred to be killed by hunters in confined areas defies all sense of integrity,” Michler told Untold Africa, a wildlife conservation and awareness initiative.

“I got to see and understand very quickly that there is no basis or justification for this type of behaviour, other than human greed and complete ignorance that is. And there is also a degree of deception by many of the operators involved so it became obvious why I should stay involved.”

“When one contextualises the amount generated by the predator breeders and canned hunters, the financial contribution is miniscule. The canned lion hunting contribution is a tiny fraction of one per cent of the almost R100-billion South African tourism generates.In addition, visitor numbers also tell the story: of the over nine million International Foreign Arrivals that come into South Africa annually, a mere 9,000 or so are trophy hunters and of these, about only 1,000 or so will be to kill ions in canned hunts.”

In a new documentary, Blood Lions, we can follow Michler’s story and see firsthand what is really happening behind the scenes of our local lion ‘industry’, as well as get some insights from environmental experts.

Have a look at the trailer and be sure to keep an eye out for the doccie, it’s sure to be an eye-opener.

According to the Conservation Action Trust while government, industry and activists agree that canned lion hunting is wrong, they don’t agree on just what exactly constitutes canned lion hunting.

Minister Edna Molewa recently called a meeting with industry stakeholders to address rising concerns over the canned lion hunting industry – after the release of a new documentary titled Blood Lions highlighted the conditions lions were being raised in.

Industry stakeholders did not appear to include NGOs critical of the industry however.

The Department of Environmental Affairs reiterated that it is prohibited to hunt a lion:

• In a controlled environment (the minimum size of the hunting camp is not prescribed in the TOPS Regulations, as it will differ from area to area. However, the minimum size is prescribed in many of the provincial acts/ ordinances);
• While it is under the influence of a tranquiliser (the minimum time frame before a lion may be hunted after it has been darted, is not prescribed in the TOPS Regulations but is regulated in terms of some of the provincial acts/ ordinances);
• With certain methods, such as poison, snares, air guns, shot guns, or by luring it with scent or smell.

Here is where the big issue comes in – critics view the factory farming of lions as part of the canned lion hunting issue.

From the activists’ point of view if a lion is bred in highly unnatural and stressful conditions to be hunted, with no survival skills for in the wild, then it doesn’t really stop being canned lion hunting just because the area it was shot in was fairly big and it wasn’t under the influence of tranquilisers.

In other words, “While government appears intent on reforming and sanitising the business of breeding and hunting lions, critics want to see it dismantled altogether” according to the Conservation Action Trust.

“Government and the industry insist that hunting of captive-bred lions represents the legitimate and sustainable use of a wildlife species which they see as “a key driver of economic growth, skill development and job creation in the sector”.

Minister Edna Molewa has just met with stakeholders “to address widespread and mounting public concern” about the controversial practice of canned lion hunting.

The DEA’s official statement about the meeting reveals a fundamental disagreement over what constitutes ‘canned hunting’ in South Africa.

Only organisations supportive of lion breeding and hunting, including the Professional Hunters Association of South Africa (PHASA) and the South African Predator Association (SAPA), appear to have been invited to the meeting. No critics of the industry or conservation NGO’s mentioned in the list of stakeholders involved.

Government and the industry insist that hunting of captive-bred lions represents the legitimate and sustainable use of a wildlife species which they see as “a key driver of economic growth, skill development and job creation in the sector”. While they acknowledge that “rogue elements” and “criminality operating at the fringe of the legal” industry have to be rooted out, they believe that all that is necessary to rectify the poor public perception of the lion breeding business is to improve and clarify the regulations which govern it.

In stark contrast, opponents claim that factory farming lions in stressful, unnatural and unhealthy breeding farms for the sole purpose of supplying the lucrative trophy hunting industry (with a secondary income stream from the trade in lion bones) represents a violation of wildlife conservation principles and animal welfare standards, and has no conservation value.

Around 6000 lions are currently confined in about 150 South African breeding facilities.

While government appears intent on reforming and sanitising the business of breeding and hunting lions, critics want to see it dismantled altogether.

At the meeting of stakeholders it was decided to establish “a forum to investigate a number of issues related to the lion industry in South Africa”. Given its pro-breeding composition it is highly unlikely that this forum will be in a position to resolve these deep-seated differences.

Conservationists stress the need to address Asia’s appetite for wildlife products.

A crackdown on illegal tiger products in China has created a soaring trade in lion bones from South Africa to Asia, ecologists say.

Alleged ‘tiger’-infused wines and traditional medicines are popular in China. But when the country tightened its rules on selling parts from tigers and other Asian big cats in 2006 and 2007, it may have “inadvertently set off a chain reaction of interlinking and unexpected events” that led to the bones of African lions being exported to fill the gap in demand, according to a 16 July study¹. The report is published jointly by the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU) at the University of Oxford, UK, and the international wildlife organization TRAFFIC.

The trade in lion bones disguised as those from tigers had been recognized before, but not quantified, says ecologist Andrew Loveridge of WildCRU and a co-author of the study. The report shows that lion skeletons sold out of South Africa rose from around 50 in 2008 to 573 in 2011, most of which were destined for Asia. (Figures for more recent years are not yet available).

In a Correspondence to Nature², published on 15 July, the study’s authors note that the South African trade is a by-product of the trophy-hunting industry and that hunted lions are almost exclusively captive-bred. South Africa is unusual in that some 68% of the more than 9,000 lions in the country are kept in captivity, often for big game-hunting enterprises, so sales were allowed under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, a treaty that governs such transactions.

But Loveridge fears that the appetite for lion bones has grown so great that it may stoke trade from other African countries. Many do not have extensive captive lion populations, so wild cats might be put at risk.

Bones of contention

The existence of a legitimate means to obtain wildlife products can encourage law-breaking by providing the market with a supply that is rare and thus highly coveted, conservationists say. Many point to the legally sanctioned practice of tiger farming in China, which has the biggest market for wildlife goods, as a model that has fueled the desire for tiger products.

Farms began appearing in the 1980s to breed the critically endangered animals. But investigations have found that the cats are instead frequently bred for their pelts and to be made into tiger-bone wine — a luxury spirit said to confer virility. Environmental groups, the World Bank and UK and Indian wildlife officials have all expressed their dismay at tiger farming, which they say incentivizes poaching.

Damping down demand

Chinese officials have recently touted their intent to crack down on the illicit trade in wildlife by publicly destroying contraband ivory and participating in diplomatic discussions on tightening law enforcement. But they have been less willing to discuss demand. Zhao Shucong, the head of the Chinese State Forestry Administration in Beijing, told Nature: “We have a demand for food and water in China, not ivory.”

Tackling the demand for tiger parts will be even thornier given its commercial value, says Mahendra Shrestha of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Front Royal, Virginia. “I’m not sure whether the minister understands the level of demand in China not only for ivory, but all kinds of wildlife parts and products,” he adds.

The report authors say that better distinguishing legally sold lion parts from other illicitly traded parts would help to impede unsanctioned exports. But conservationists agree that there is a pressing need to frustrate buyers by stamping out demand. “The solution has to be on the consumer side,” Loveridge says.