Month: August 2015

The killing of Cecil the lion made world headlines – now, a new film hopes to blow the lid off the canned hunting industry.

Blood Lions, which premiered on July 22 at the Durban Film Festival to rave reviews, had its first screening in Cape Town last night at the Labia Theatre.

The film documents the investigation of environmental journalists Ian Michler and Rick Swazey’ s into South Africa’s hunting industry.

Michler said: “People can see for themselves the true nature of the industry.

“People need to understand that canned hunting and lions kept in captivity are all the same. They’re being kept in captivity and killed.

“Our goal is to have all exploitative methods exposed and bring an end to hunting.”

Francis Garrard, director of the Conservation Action Fund, said between 600 and 1000 lions are killed every year.

“Industry and the government deny the term ‘canned hunting’ but this film will create awareness.”

Are trophy hunters protectors of biodiversity, as hunting associations and some conservationists claim, providing funds and a reason to protect wild areas? Or are they heartless killers of defenceless wild animals who need trophies to reinforce their fragile egos? The more vexing question – leaving aside for the moment peasant farmers defending their stock, commercial farmers shooting for biltong and poachers harvesting animal parts – is whether the only way to sustain wildlife in Africa beyond its national parks is for rich hunters to be able to kill it.

To make any headway with these questions, we need to ask if hunting protects wilderness, if it’s sustainable and who gets the money? Why hunters take pleasure in killing we’ll leave to their therapists.

Land use

Safari operators are custodians of at least 1.4-million square kilometres of land in sub-Saharan Africa, exceeding the area encompassed by national parks in those countries where hunting is permitted by more than 20%. This is clearly a boon for biodiversity.

There is no certainty about what this land use would be if it wasn’t for hunting. If it was returned to farming the incentives for conservation would undoubtedly decline.

There’s also a good argument that hunting has the lightest footprint. While privately owned hunting areas may be empty of people, most professional hunting outfits have small camps, limited staff and few overheads other than equipment and licences. Any local training is confined to trackers and a camp chef. Apart from the animals they hunt, their footprint on the land is light.

Tourism outfits, on the other hand, build extensive facilities of largely indigenous material, train staff in a variety of skills and maintain areas for photo safaris. With roads and constant vehicle access, however, their footprint is much heavier.

Associated Private Nature Reserves, which borders the Kruger National Park and organises hunts of animals that wander into members’ unfenced lands, generally uses this revenue for conservation. Critics, however, have asked why it requires hunting revenue for this purpose, given the considerable profits it makes from tourism, and query whether hunting simply supplements elitist lifestyles. Does hunting preserve habitat? In limiting development, it undoubtedly it does.

Who gets the money?

In dollar terms, trophy hunting certainly accrues revenue, though it’s often difficult to follow the money. This is partly because of concern in the industry over what are seen as prying ‘animal rightists’ and partly because of intermittent overlaps with poaching and trafficking in animal parts.

Walter Palmer, who illegally shot Cecil the lion in Hwange National Park, provoking an international firestorm of protest, reputedly paid $50,000 to pull the trigger. However none of this would have accrued to the government, communities or conservation as the hunt was illegal and the money paid to the landowner and professional hunter.

South Africa alone hosts around 9,000 hunters a year. The Environmental Affairs Minister Edna Molewa claims this is worth R6.2-billion annually, although a scientific study by Economists at Large puts it at R112-million (a small fraction of tourism revenue).

Roderick Campbell of Economists at Large questions the value of trophy hunting other than to gun shops and hunting outfitters, pointing to a report by the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation that found only 3% of hunting revenue went to communities living in the area. “Local communities are key stakeholders for conservation initiatives,” he writes, “yet they receive minimal benefits from trophy hunting.”

In some areas, the limited trickle-down from trophy hunting could, in fact, be fuelling support for poachers, who pay shooters and bearers in cash.

Is trophy hunting sustainable?

Wild populations in Africa have been dropping steadily since firearms tilted the balance in favour of hunters 200 years ago. In the last 20 years, however, species decline has been catastrophic. Most of this is caused by habitat loss from human population increases plus, particularly, massive poaching of elephants, rhinos and lions for Asian markets.

How does trophy hunting feature? The stated ethic of hunter associations is that only animals past breeding prime should be bagged. This is deemed sustainable as the loss of these animals is thought to have little impact on the species as a whole. Through ignorance, cheating and straight criminality, this ethic is often breached.

One of these breaches is in the issue of ‘problem animal’ permits – permission to shoot animals because they’re in conflict with humans. These are being exploited by unethical operators across the continent.

Certainly in Zimbabwe and Namibia and probably elsewhere, problem animal permits can be obtained even before the animal to be killed is selected. A variation, in Namibia, is a ‘snipe’ hunt where a hunter with a permit can shoot any elephant a community declares to be a problem, generally because they simply want the meat. Several rare desert elephants have been shot this way. Strangely, ‘problem’ animals always seems to have the biggest tusks or largest, darkest manes.

Another cheat is to lure an animal out of a park, as was done with Cecil the lion, and shoot it on private land. The only reason this was discovered was because Cecil was wearing a tracking collar.

Given the requirement to shoot only ageing animals, the inability (or unwillingness) of hunters and trackers to age them correctly means the injunction is generally observed in its breach. In this way younger breeding animals are being taken out of the gene pool.

The idea that older individuals are no loss to their herds if killed is countered by a study published in the Journal of Wildlife Management by researchers Jeanetta Sellier, Bruce Page, Abi Vanak and Rob Slotow. They found the selective removal of a few large trophy or older males from carnivore and antelope populations led to the destabilisation of social structures and a loss of essential social knowledge. The consequences were infanticide, reproductive females using sub-optimal habitats and changes in offspring sex ratios.

This was a particular problem for elephants which are extremely communal. “Older bulls have a social network with high centrality and strong bonds,” they write. “Consequently, the elimination of older bulls may negatively affect social cohesion in bull elephant groups, increasing the  reproductive tenure of younger males. This can increase their length of musth, leading to elevated aggression, killing people and killing white rhino.”

Their conclusion was that that in the Limpopo/Botswana area they studied, trophy hunting both destabilised herds and was unsustainable. They added that large bulls with trophy tusks – so essential to photographic tourism which yielded higher returns – were disappearing. This study echoes the conclusions of studies by Iain Douglas-Hamilton in Kenya and Elephants Without Borders in Botswana.

Is canned hunting the answer?

Lions have always topped the list of desirable prizes. As their population in the wild declined, the status of having a perfect lion to hang on the wall and brag about increased. Being mostly both rich and busy men, foreign hunters demanded shorter hunt times and an assured kill, for which they were prepared to pay top dollar. In South Africa, a solution was to farm lions like cattle.

There are no completely trusted sources on the numbers of lions in captivity in South Africa. The reason is that not everyone who breeds predators is obliged to be a member of the South African Predator Association (SAPA)and not everyone that is a member provides reliable or updated stats.

Provincial governments, which ought to have some sort of record, don’t and they seem to rely on the figures from the SAPA and hunting bodies. It’s head, Pieter Potgieter, estimates the number of captive predators at between 6,000 and 8,000. Most of these, around 7,000, are lions – the others are tigers, cheetah, leopard, dogs and exotics held in around 200 facilities.

Over the past decade, however, there have been disturbing leaks about the conditions under which these so-called ‘canned lions’ are bred. A film just released, Blood Lions, reveals the shocking realities behind this burgeoning business. Possibly as a response, Professional Hunters’ Association of South Africa (PHASA) Hermann Meyeridricks sent an e-mail to members stating that the PHASA’s position on captive-bred lion hunting “is no longer tenable”.  He says there has been little progress in getting the government and predator breeders to “clean up” the industry.

He also acknowledges that opposition to such hunting is no longer restricted to “just a small if vociferous group of animal-rights activists” but that “the tide of public opinion is turning strongly against this form of hunting”.

As a public relations exercise, captive-bred lion shooting (it can hardly be called hunting) has been a disaster. Added to the international fury about the killing of Cecil, it has led to a groundswell of opposition to all trophy hunting.

Australia recently banned imports of lion parts or trophies, airlines are refusing to transport them, Born Free USA called on concerned citizens to write to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service urging them to stop all lion trophy imports and Europe’s Nordic Safari Club has removed all lion trophies hunted in South Africa from its official record books.

The question we’re left with, apart from the psychology of these strange people who kill for pleasure, is whether trophy hunting is, in the broader sense of the word, sustainable. To answer that, it’s necessary to get behind hunters’ claims of preserving wilderness with money for trophies and public outrage at colonial-style killing safaris by rich white men.

Preserving wild lands for hunting is a way to maintain higher levels of biodiversity and, in certain situations and certain places, the damage caused by trophy hunting is limited, though this may change as populations decline. But, in pursuit of the Big One, hunters very often cheat, crippling sustainability of prey species.

Coming on top of human land encroachment and poaching in Africa, hunting for fun is becoming increasingly problematic. And we are left with a conundrum that needs to be at the centre of any discussion about trophy hunting: outside of game parks, is the only way to sustain wildlife in Africa to allow rich foreign hunters to kill it?

Humans are in the process of bringing about the Earth’s sixth extinction of life forms. From an African population of more than 1-million lions in the mid-19th century, there are maybe 20,000 left in the wild. Around 36,000 elephants are falling to rifle bullets each year and more than 1,000 rhinos were poached in the species’ heartland of the Kruger Park last year. In the face of such declines, can we really afford to kill, for personal pleasure, even one of this planet’s wild creatures?

Die doodmaak van Cecil die leeu van Zimbabwe in ‘n beweerde onwettige jagtog plaas Suid-Afri- ka se eie praktyk van kommersiéle leeuboerdery in die kollig.

Die dokumentére rolprent Blood Lions, wat eersdaags in Suid-Afrika en oorsee uitgereik word, trek tans die aandag van gewone mense en natuurlewe-organisasies. Al drie vertonings wat vandeesweek in die Labia-teater in Kaapstad gereél is, is reeds uitverkoop.

Dit is vanjaar staande toegejuig by die premiere op die internasionale rolprentfees in Durban. Die Hollywood-persoonlikhede Ricky Gervais en Ellen DeGeneres het ook onlangs oor die prent getwiet. Die voorprent op YouTube is reeds 170 000 keer gekyk.

Blood Lions volg die omgewingsjoernalis en safari-operateur Ian Michler en Rick Swazey, ‘n Amerikaanse jagter, in hul ondersoek na die kommersiéle boere wat die groot roofdiere teel. Miljoene is in sodanige boerderye op die spel.

In die prent is bevind dat meer as 900 leeus elke jaar gejag word; 99% van daardie leeus word vir die koeél geteel, luidens ‘n mediaver- klaring. Hulle word met die hand grootgemaak deur vrywilligers wat dink hulle red Afrika se leeus. Vier dae nadat hulle vrygelaat is, word hulle as wild beskou en kan hulle geskiet of geslag word.

Pippa Hankinson van Regulus Vision, wat gemoeid is met die prent, sé Blood Lions is vervaardig om ‘n wéreldwye bewusmaking aan te wakker. “Dit is ‘n oproep tot aksie. Elkeen wat daarna kyk, kan ingeligte besluite neem. Ons is almal aanspreeklik en word uitgedaag oor ons rol en verantwoordelikhede rakende dié majestueuse diere.”

South Africa has about 7 000 lions that have been bred in captivity to be shot in captivity – and it is completely legal.

The animals are shot by paying clients in a captive hunting industry that turns over about R100 million a year. Many of these lions have already brought in extra income for their owners through “cub petting” tourist ventures when they were young animals.

The government has banned the hunting of drugged lions, or shooting lions that have been attracted by bait, but shooting a captive-bred lion in a fenced area is legal. Now a team of film-makers, journalists and conservationists have banded together to produce Blood Lions, a documentary on captive lion hunting which they hope will get the government to scrap the practice.

One of the movie team, local safari operator and journalist Ian Michler, said yesterday there was no conservation value in captive lion breediing.

“The public needs to understand that. You can’t reintroduce a captive-bred lion into the wild. These predator-breeding farms, about 200 of them, are fenced properties and the lions are fed like domestic stock. They are then shot. “The horror of it only really comes home with a visual representation, when you see 20 lions moving around being shot.”

Estimates are that between 800 and 1 000 lions are shot in South Africa every year. Last year only five of these were hunted in the wild by hunters tracking the animals in the traditional “fair chase” method. The rest were shot behind fences where they had little or no chance of escape.

About 10 years ago, when the Department of Environmental Affairs tackled the issue of canned lion hunting, the resultant legislation ruled that captive-bred lions had to be released into large areas for two years before they could be commercially hunted. But lion breeders took the matter to court and this rule was overturned – largely because the ministry’s own advisers had said captive-bred lions could not be rehabilitated into the wild. “There are some reputable private game reserves where they have professional hunting operations, but there are a whole lot of others where farmers and businessmen have cottoned on to the fact that there is money in this captive hunting. There is also a trade in breeding mutants, like white lions.”

The issue is on the agenda for the next meeting of the Professional Hunters Association of SA (Phasa).

Hermann Meyeridricks, president of Phasa, has written to the 1 300 members asking the association to reconsider its stance on captive-bred lion hunting, adopted in 2013. This recognised that the practice was lawful and that there was a demand for it.

Now Meyeridricks said it had become clear those opposed to captive lion hunting were not just a small animal rights group. “Even within our own ranks, respected voices are speaking out publicly against it. Our position is no longer tenable.”

He appealed to members to come up with a policy that was “defensible in the court of public opinion”.

Blood Lions will be screened at the Labia today, tomorrow and on Saturday.

Hierdie week op Flits het uitvoerende vervaardiger Andrew Venter en vervaardiger Pippa Hankinson kom gesels oor die dokumentêre rolprent Blood Lions.

Dié opspraakwekkende rolprent is onlangs by die Durbanse Internasionale Rolprentfees gewys, en bied ’n ontstellende blik op leeus, wat in aanhouding grootgemaak word om uiteindelik gejag te word.

Hilkinson het gesê dat hulle ten doel het om ’n globale bewustheid te skep van wat werklik met dié diere gebeur – in fasiliteite wat voorgee om die spesie te preserveer.

“Ons will hê dat die kykers ’n bewuste keuse moet maak van die verantwoordelikheid wat hul teenoor diere het, en hoe ons as ’n gemeenskap diere moet hanteer.”

Venter het gesê hulle wil hê kykers moet wegstap met ’n absolute verontwaardiging teenoor hierdie fasiliteite. “Dit is barbaars, dit is wreed en dit is bedrieglik.”

“Hoe kan ons as Suid-Afrikaners dit doen?”, het hy verder gesê. Sy hoop is dat Suid-Afrikaners hierdie boodskap sal versprei, en as aktiviste sal optree.

Om meer uit te vind oor die projek, besoek gerus die Blood Lions.

With the shooting of Cecil, the Zimbabwean lion still fresh in the mind, the Lowveld also remember the killing of Batian

As the world celebrated International day of the Lion on August 10, people were remembering Cecil the Zimbabwean lion, that was killed by an American trophy hunter.

Lion expert, Mr Gareth Patterson spoke to Lowvelder about facts and figures of trophy hunting with the impact it had on the lions themselves.

He also talked about the one killing that affected him directly in the Hectorspruit area in 1998: a lion killing on the farm of Mr Roy Plath.

He also talked about the one killing that affected him directly in the Hectorspruit area in 1998: a lion killing on the farm of Mr Roy Plath.

It was his Batian, the last of the Adamson lions, with his two sisters, which Patterson rescued and rehabilitated back into the wild, after the murder of legendary lion man, Mr George Adamson. Batian was only three years old and just like Cecil, lured by artificial means out of the safety of the park he was in, and shot dead.
The killing was arranged by Plath, a banana farmer in the area.

“There are amazing and even chilling similarities between the recent killing of Cecil and that of Batian 17 years ago. The sad thing is that this way of killing a lion is common to trophy hunting. We are currently losing about 900 lions a year. Up to 60 per cent of the killers are trophy hunters from the United States and 40 per cent are from Europe.” Patterson has done a lot of research into the lion-hunting industry. “What the trophy hunters want is the largest lion with the biggest mane, and what many people don’t realise is that with this unnatural killing, not only one lion dies. The new males coming into the pride would kill all the cubs of the previous alpha male. So sometimes up to 15 cubs will be killed.”

Patterson told Lowvelder that the cost for a canned lion today is between $50 000 and $55 000. “There is a lot of sentiment that this kind of killing is actually paying for conservation. I need to see the proof of this before I would support this in any way. Figures identified by the International Fund for Animal Welfare stated earlier that a mere three per cent of the money goes to nature conservation and parks.”

Thanks to the Internet, there was a huge outcry over the killing of Cecil. This was not possible 17 years ago. “We made a documentary on the killing of Batian and called the film The Cook Report. It was watched by 11 million viewers worldwide. Today this film is nowhere to be found. It was an International Television News production as you know and this firm has undergone many changes over the last 20 years or so.”

There are plans to show the recent documentary film on canned lion hunting, Blood Lions, in the Lowveld. It will be shown on Tuesday October 13 at Uplands Preparatory School in White River. Tickets can be bought at R100 per ticket from Webtickets, on behalf of the production team of Blood Lions. All the proceeds will go to a campaign against canned hunting and predator breeding.

The organiser for this showing is Mr Dex Kotze of Youth for African Wildlife.

Serial world record breaker, André van Zijl of Knysna, is determined that neither the elements nor isolation would rattle his cage as he takes on his 49th record – this time to raise awareness around the animal petting industry.

Van Zijl stepped into a 5m by 4.5m cage at Monkeyland outside Plettenberg Bay on Tuesday, August 11 – his home for the next two weeks.

“He entered a pre-release cage in the Monkeyland primate forest at noon and will spend 14 days in the enclosure. By living as a caged primate, André, along with the the South African Animal Sanctuary Alliance (SAASA) team hope to place focus on the plight of captive wild animals, especially those used in the pet-play-and-pay industry.

“We are confident that this will also bring much needed focus to the horrific canned hunting and lion bone industry [which is now being used as an alternative to tiger bones in traditional Chinese medicine],” said SAASA spokesman Lara Mostert.

By the end of his first day in the cage Van Zijl said the biggest challenge would be the weather. “That is the only and biggest challenge. Other than that it is all a mindset and staying positive to get me through it,” Van Zijl said.

Van Zijl will only exit the cage at 12:00 on August 25, just in time for the viewing of the now famous Blood Lions documentary at the White House in Plettenberg Bay on August 28.

The documentary uncovers the realities of lion breeding for canned hunting in South Africa and highlights the negative impact it has on the captive lions and other predators.

Mostert said initiatives like Van Zijl’s were necessary as, despite South Africa’s abundant wildlife, there was a disturbing number of facilities offering tourists the opportunity to get “hands-on” with wild animals.

“One can pet lion, tiger and serval cubs, and walk with adult lions and cheetahs. You can take a ride on the back of an elephant or even an ostrich, feed monkeys and lemurs or drape a large and dangerous snake around your neck. The list appears to get longer each year with more wild animals being added to the list of those you can cuddle.”

She added that the harsh reality behind these encounters was that the animals had been raised and conditioned in captivity, and generally from a very early age.

“Conditioning can take on many forms and generally will involve an element of physical and psychological cruelty.”
She added that many of the establishments offering animal encounters would often do so under the guise of conservation. “It is extraordinarily difficult to release any animal or bird back into the wild and once they have been imprinted by humans it is virtually impossible.

There can only be one reason to offer these attractions and quite simply it is to make money. The industry is controlled by greed and greed is acting like a disease which threatens to become an epidemic and the threat to our wildlife is becoming irreversible.”

Van Zijl is definitely no stranger to challenges like this. In 1969 he set his first world record by roller-skating 1 000 miles in 19 days from Cape Town to Johannesburg. The reason behind the attempt was simply to prove that he could.

Since then Van Zijl has been on a roll and subsequently set 47 more world records, many of which were to highlight issues around animal welfare and other worthy causes.

Some of his records have been a bit ‘off beat’, including one where he sang for more than 28 hours, drank 211 cups of coffee in only four hours, played chess non-stop for 150 hours, pumped petrol for 1 000 hours, sat in a bubble bath for 10 days and more recently spent five days in a shark diving cage to shed light on illegal pitbull fighting.

While Van Zijl goes after his 49th record, the SAASA team also decided to go after their own and attempt to gather the largest collection of recycling and donations over the same period. Mostert said they would be hiring big containers for residents to deposit their recycling as well as donations such as clothes you are no longer wearing (or anything you no longer need) to canned food and other non-perishables

“There are some facts which I would also like to bring to the fore that have an impact on our beautiful lions.”

WITH reference to your article, ‘Dept reviewing lion management rules’ on page 16 of the issue dated 24 July, thank you for bringing the subject of canned hunting to the public. However, there are some facts which I would also like to bring to the fore that have an impact on our beautiful lions.

As Asian traders have taken an interest in our rhino since the decline of their own tiger population, they have also taken an interest in our lions. On the Asian market, the lion bone trade can reach and exceed a value of R200 000 per skeleton. It is estimated that an average yearly figure of around 7 000 lion skeletons are sold legally to two Chinese dealers in South Africa. These bones are boiled down and bottled in Asia then hit the streets as ‘healing medicines’. So the circle of life for the lion starts as a cub.

They are normally rented out to ‘petting zoos’, where tourists can have their photo taken while petting and cuddling a cub. Hundreds of ignorant volunteers come to these ‘wildlife sanctuaries’ to help bottle-feed and raise these cubs. Then, once the lion is fully grown, it is released, only to be hunted. The rest is history.

There are around 174 captive lion breeding facilities in South Africa, where lions are bred exclusively for trophy hunting. Leopards are not being overlooked either. They are also being hunted, either as trophies or for their skins, which are either used locally or sold to the fur trade. Their numbers are also rapidly declining.

This can only stop with you, making an effort to take a stand. There are websites where you can gain more information on this subject. For further information you can visit www.cannedlion.org. There is also a new documentary that has just been released. It outlines the practice of canned lions. The documentary is called, ‘Blood Lions’.

From allowing 26 live rhino to be sold to Vietnam, to selling our lions like common farm animals, we as South Africans need to seriously think what type of example we are setting for the rest of Africa and need to take a stand against this sick and degrading trade. Is this something we can share with our foreign tourists who flock to our game reserves, hoping to spot one of the Big 5? The recent illegal hunting and shooting of Cecil the Zimbabwean lion by an American dentist has received worldwide publicity. Europe is calling for a ban on hunting trophies, meanwhile South Africa has just lifted this ban on exporting trophies – where are we going?

Bruce Young, an old Rhodian and old Kingswoodian has directed “Blood Lions”, a documentary film which focuses on the multi-million dollar predator breeding and lion hunting industry in South Africa.

The killing of Zimbabwe’s Cecil the Lion in an allegedly illegal hunt has drawn the world’s attention to the whole issue of lion hunting (and hunting in general) and has also generated a great deal of interest in the film.

Blood Lions debuted at last month’s Durban Film Festival recieving rave reviews and a standing ovation at its first showing.

The response to the film on social media has also been impressive with the likes of Ricky Gervais and Ellen de Generis tweeting about it.

The film’s publicity material describes it as “a story that blows the lid off all the conservation claims made by the breeders and hunters in attempting to justify what they do”.

Bruce, who collaborated with Nic Chevallier on the production, graduated from Rhodes in 1981, with a Bachelor of Arts and Honours in Speech and Drama.

It was while at university that he developed his love for cinema and got motivated to go into the industry.

“I’ve loved stories all my life, I was brought up in a family where my mother and father read to us”, said Young.

Blood Lions follows environmental journalist Ian Michler and American hunter, Rick Swazey, on their journey to expose the grave realities of the so called ‘canned lion’ industry which, while not illegal, many believe to be unethical and inhumane.

Last year alone it’s estimated that over 800 captive lions were shot in South Africa.

“The Blood Lions campaign is starting to get significant traction,” says Ian Michler.

“Since the launch, we have been overwhelmed by the global response across all sectors of society.

This should serve as a clear indication to governments and the various authorities around the world that they need to come together to close down predator breeding facilities and canned hunting operations.”

Ultimately Young and his collaborators hope to raise sufficient awareness around the industry to sway public opinion and to force the department of environmental affairs to change the laws regarding the hunting and breeding of lions.

Dates for further screenings of Blood Lions in Johannesburg and Cape Town are to be announced soon.

Also, only yesterday, the film’s producers, Wildlands and Regulus Vision, announced that they have secured both local and global distribution with PBS picking up global rights and Indigenous Film Distribution handling South Africa rights.

Tom Koch, Vice President of PBS International says, “Blood Lions is a rare programme that reveals the dark and brutal side of trophy hunting in Africa.

Programmes like this are equally rare and exceptional and should be seen by audiences around the globe. We are proud to represent this film to the international community”.