Month: September 2016

On Saturday supporters of the GMFER were urging the 183 Parties signatory to the CITES treaty to vote for the strictest possible protection of endangered species by listing all species of elephant and rhinos on CITES Appendix 1.

Sandton, Johannesburg – Hundreds of marchers gathered for the annual Global March for Rhinos and Elephants (GMFER) in Johannesburg on Saturday to show their support for the protection of South Africa’s endangered species. The march coincided with the launch of the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP) to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) reported Taryn Arnott van Jaarsveld.

“By marching to the conference, we are hoping to keep pressure on political leaders to protect the world’s most vulnerable species” said Dex Kotze, GMFER core strategist.

Supporters of the GMFER were urging the 183 Parties signatory to the CITES treaty to vote for the strictest possible protection of endangered species by listing all species of elephant and rhinos on CITES Appendix 1.

“Appendix 1 gives these species the highest level of protection in international law,” said GMFER president Rosemary Alles, addressing supporters at the march. “Like all social justice issues, the solution to the problem of poaching and wildlife trafficking will not be resolved in boardrooms and conference halls. It will be resolved by the collective goodness of our human community.”

The GMFER is calling upon delegates to vote against trade in ivory and rhino horn. “Killing the demand for both Ivory and rhino horn is the key to their absolution,” said Kotze. GMFER is also calling for a total ban on pangolin trade and on canned lion hunting.

“We will send a message that will not be ignored. Our heritage will not be stolen from us. This is why we march,” said 17-year-old Rhino SA ambassador Kirsten Anne Everett, addressing the crowd gathered for the march. “It is my generation that has everything at stake. It is our future jobs that could be thrown away by decisions made in the next fortnight. It is our inheritance that could be destroyed by greed. We cannot allow this to happen.”

Another 147 cities around the world, including Hong Kong, New York and Paris, are also participating in the GMFER campaign. Marches in Hoedspruit, Cape Town, Durban and East London, amongst others, also expressed their support for the cause.

The movement is supported by Humane Society International, Captured in Africa Foundation, Blood Lions, Nkombe Rhino, Rhino Africa, Rhino SA, Outraged SA Citizens Against Poaching, Save our Rhinos and the Conservation Action Trust, among others.

All eyes are on South Africa this week as delegates gather to debate and vote at the 17th major meeting of the world’s wildlife trade regulating treaty.

The conference, opened by President Jacob Zuma on Saturday is taking place at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg until 5 October. The treaty aims to ensure that international trade in wild animals and plants does not threaten their survival. South Africa became a signatory to CITES in 1975.

Elephant poaching, threats to rosewood species and sharks, and illegal trade in rhino horn and pangolin will be high on the agenda.

Plight of lions, particularly rare white lions, is in the spotlight at the CITES meeting this week

CLEOPATRA was very keen on Mandla. So keen that every time the tawny lioness came into oestrus she would leave her pride, swim across a river, dig under a fence and roar for the attention of the white lion who lived on a nearby reserve.

Mandla — at the time the only adult male white lion in the bush in South Africa — had been rescued by lion conservationist Linda Tucker from captivity and released at Timbavati, adjoining the Kruger Park, the only place where these unique lions are born wild.

But then things got complicated. After months of Cleopatra pursuing Mandla, the dominant male in her pride followed her and dug under a second fence to fight his rival. Mandla survived the bloody clash and Cleopatra was put on a contraceptive to stop her courtship.

But years later, when the drug wore off, she once again swam across the river and was back roaring to the white lion pride.

It was then that Tucker, founder of the Global White Lion Protection Trust, arranged to acquire Cleopatra and she was integrated into the white lion pride.

At the time the pride had three young lions sired by Mandla, so Cleopatra had to get another contraceptive implant.

This month, when she came back into oestrus, she finally got the chance to mate with two white lions, the sons of Mandla.

White lions, the species coveted by trophy hunters because they are so rare, have no special protection and went extinct in the wild from 1991 until 2006 when the trust reintroduced its founder pride.

In Africa, lion populations have plunged 43% in the past 20 years to about 20 000 lions, according to a recent report by three conservation NGOs, “Beyond Cecil: Africa’s Lions in Crisis”.

Protecting lions and banning canned hunting, which is rife in South Africa, are on the agenda at the 17th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, which started in Johannesburg yesterday.

When the Sunday Times visited the Timbavati reserve last week, the white lions pursued Cleopatra and another tawny lioness known as Tswalu, mating three to four times an hour around the clock for a few days.

For the first 48 hours Tswalu and the male Matsieng were inseparable, and Cleopatra hooked up with Zukhara.

When we saw them they had swapped partners and Zukhara, growling at a low pitch, was scenting and mating with Tswalu. Cleopatra was on the move, with Matsieng padding a hopeful pace behind her.

Lion ecologist Jason Turner, who studies the critically endangered white lion prides, said: “This is unusual behaviour as normally other lions mate only when the dominant male is away. We were surprised to see the males swapped over.”

The odds are against a tawny lioness giving birth to white cubs after mating with a white male. This can happen though if the tawny female has a white lion genetic marker, which is rare.

Tucker’s conservation trust is working to boost the white lion gene pool in habitats where the lions are endemic. The trust has six white lions and four tawny lions in three prides in its Tsau! reserve on the Klaserie River.

Dispelling the myth that white lions — which are not albinos — cannot survive in the wild, Turner published research this year showing that they hunt as effectively as tawny lions.

Tucker said: “We have seen a drastic decline of lions in the wild while their numbers are escalating in captivity. White lions have been forcibly removed from the endemic habitat where they occur naturally into breeding camps and zoos and they have been hunted.

“White lions are at the centre of the killing industry in South Africa. The lionpetting and cannedhunting industry work together. The same cubs which are hugged by visitors are hunted as trophies when they get too big,” she said.

In South Africa there are about 2 500 lions in the wild.compared to more than 6 000 in captivity. They are confined in lionbreeding/ cannedhunting farms which are found mostly in North West and the Free State, she said.

Blood Lions, a documentary released in December, exposed this multimilliondollar industry in which lions are bottlefed and fasttracked for the bullet.

Tucker welcomes a motion accepted this month by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature that calls for a ban on canned hunting in South Africa.

But she wishes that all trade in lions — whose survival is threatened by loss of habitat and bushmeat poaching of their prey — would be banned outright.

Lion trophy exports from South Africa more than doubled in the 10 years to 2011, from 1 830 to 4 062.

White lions are not only genetically rare but also revered as sacred by the Sepedi and Tsonga people. They honour white lions as their ancestors and for years a sangoma called Maria Khosa was their lion shaman.

One night in 1991 Khosa walked unarmed with a baby on her back and two grandchildren through a pride of angry lions surrounding a broken safari vehicle to rescue Tucker and other tourists stranded inside.

So moved was Tucker by the experience that three years later she abandoned her marketing career in Europe and came to find the woman known as the “lion queen of the Timbavati”.

In time, Khosa told Tucker she was destined to take over her mantle as the “keeper of the white lions”. Tucker, a graduate of the University of Cape Town and Cambridge University, trained with traditional leaders and studied the sacred science of lions.

She said: “The name `Timbavati’ refers to the place where star or angelic lions came down.”

In 2002 Tucker launched the nonprofit trust to protect the white lions and the cultural values around them.

Her quest to free white lions, supported every step by Turner, involved confrontations with breeders and hunters and death threats.

Tucker and Turner are now partners, both in the trust and in life.

Conservationists like the late Ian Player supported their efforts, which are grounded in the local community.

Tucker started a programme for young people.committed to conservation, dubbed StarLion, and a leadership academy.

Sibusiso Ngobeni, 26, from nearby Bushbuckridge, said: “As a StarLion ambassador I work closely with five schools doing nature conservation and talking about ‘lionhearted leadership’.”

Other projects supported by the trust include waste recycling and planting indigenous trees.

Another StarLion ambassador, Harmony Khosa, who is descended from the lion queen, said he was working to preserve the oral history of the Sotho and Shangaan tribes.

“White lions are our guardians, our ancestors, and we need them for balance in the ecosystem,” he said.

Prompted by an ancient proverb — “Until the lion learns to speak, the story will be told from the hunter’s perspective” — Tucker launched a talent challenge to “lionhearted children” ahead of the CITES conference, asking them to speak for the lions. “We have got incredible submissions from around the world, from Hawaii, India, England, America, Italy. I’m hoping their messages will touch the hearts of decision-makers,” said Tucker.

The abominable South African practice of canned lion hunting has come under severe attack at the International Union for Conservation of Nature Conference (IUCN) in Hawaii.

Despite being regarded as abhorrent and an embarrassment by most of the country’s professional hunting organisations, the Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA) still does not support certain aspects of the tabled motion.

Various nongovernmental organisations (NGO’s) have brought the motion to the World Conservation Congress in an effort to highlight and put an end to the local government’s practice of allowing trophy hunters to kill lions in captivity.

According to the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT), SA has approximately 7000 of these big cats in captivity whilst only 2000 roam free.

Other wild animals are also bred and kept in captivity for.commercial shooting, a popular trophy hunting “sport” which was once again highlighted by a recent social media post of an 11year old American girl posing with a giraffe she shot. This has started an international outcry.

The Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT) and the South African Wildlife College (SAWC), with the support of Wildlands, the National Association of Conservancies (NACSA) and the Blood Lions Group have filed the motion.

According to reports in SAs national media, the DEA was only prepared to say that it did not support the motion in its entirety, but has undertaken to engage with the IUCN regarding stipulations therein.

The motion has elicited huge support amongst other country’s members at the conference and the Director General of the IUCN has been tasked to urge national government to review existing provisions regarding this activity.

It also requires African governments known for allowing canned hunting, especially of lions, to within the next four year implement proper regulations to control this activity.

Not only SA, but other countries in the southern part of Africa are also allowing hunters to shoot wild animals in captivity which has great financial reward.

Some of the proposals in the document presented to the IUCN, call for restriction of the captive breeding of lions, not only for canned hunting, but also for the purpose of selling them to unregistered zoos and that proper norms and standards should be set, especially in light of the latest emerging trade in harvesting lion bone and the growing wild meat trade.

It calls for new legislation to take in account the standards set by the SA Scientific Authority and render the practice of canned hunting as illegal.

At the Conference, the DEA’s spokesperson and deputy director general reiterated SA’s commitment to responsible utilisation and preservation of wildlife.

However, in true political style, it was made clear that legislation against canned lion hunting will not automatically result in the termination and shutting down of these facilities. This in effect translates to the government dragging its feet on the issue and that money will always talk louder than conserving the biodiversity of SAs magnificent wildlife and its welfare.

The lions are once again kings of Timbavati in Limpopo. But their numbers in the wild remain small. CITES CoP17 is opening on 24 September, where policymakers will decide if it is okay to hunt these magnificent beasts. It will take the strength of an entire community, led by the Global White Lion Protection Trust, to ensure the species’ survival.

Zukhara is a handsome white lion living at the Global White Lion Protection Trust’s reserve in Timbavati, Limpopo, his ancestral homeland. His thick mane waves with every shake of the head, and his gaze is magnetic. Just don’t try to stare him down, warns Linda Tucker, the founder of the trust. Staring into a lion’s eyes means you are offering a challenge.

Zukhara – whose name is derived from the Egyptian sun god Ra – is one of six white lions on the reserve and 12 overall remaining in the wild. There are hundreds of white lions in captivity, unknowingly waiting to be hunted.

With the CITES CoP17 World Wildlife Conference taking place in Johannesburg between 24 September and 5 October, some of South Africa’s most loved animals, including white lions, may see their fates take a downturn.

South African policymakers attending the conference, properly known as the 17th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, are proposing a change in the status of lions from endangered to a species not under threat. White lions are threatened the most as they are not separately classified and are instead seen as a variant of the tawny lion.

This is the reason Tucker and the trust’s lion ecologist, Jason Turner, is looking to keep the status of all lions as endangered and prevent them from being hunted and traded.

“The logic was to regulate the captive breeding industry,” says Tucker. “If you down-list you can basically legitimise captive breeding. And that’s when we realised there was such a huge risk, that policy can make it acceptable to industrialise our lions. Once that happens from a legislation point of view, it’s really the end of everything, the end of ecosystems.”

With just 12 white lions remaining in the wild they would be deemed critically endangered if they were classified as a subspecies. But CITES groups them among the tawny African lion population.

CITES appendices explained

Africa lions, Panthera leo, are listed as vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species. Animals classified as vulnerable means they are considered to be facing a high risk of extinction in the wild and are likely to become endangered unless the circumstances threatening their survival and reproduction improve.

Lions are split listed on the CITES appendices, at Appendix I and II, which means some populations of a species are on one appendix, while some are on another.

Appendix I means the species is threatened with extinction and may be affected by trade; trade in wild-caught species is illegal.

Appendix II means the species is not necessarily threatened with extinction, but may become so unless trade in them is restricted. An export permit is required for trade in these species.

Canned hunting

Turner stops the van near a hut on stilts that overlooks a watering hole. It is a remnant of an old hunting practice, he says. “The previous owner would have his friends over, get drunk on brandewyn and wait for the animals to arrive. They’d shoot them without care.”

So when the trust bought the land from the farmer, the animals expected the same. “The animals would just see a vehicle and run. You’d barely see their tails.”

The canned hunting industry started near Timbavati, says Tucker. Today numerous animals, including hundreds of white lions, are held captive exclusively for hunting.

Canned hunting has grown particularly quickly in Free State, where 160 such farms have sprung up in the last 20 years. The farms can be about 20 hectares in size, meaning there is not much room for any wild animal to thrive.

Speaking at the 2016 IUCN Congress in Hawaii, running from 1-10 September, Wildlands Conservation Trust chief executive Andrew Venter said the rate of lions hunted in captivity had dropped by 70% in the past year. However, more than 6 000 lions are still being bred in more than 200 breeding stations as hunting trophies. He called for an end to canned hunting.

At the end of the congress, the IUCN called for laws banning the breeding of lions for canned hunting, particularly in South Africa, by 2020. It stated that hunters regard the practice as “an ethically repugnant embarrassment”.

Cecil and Blood Lions

When the trust heard South Africa was proposing to change the status of lions from endangered to species not under threat, it started alerting the public of the risks lions would face.

But at about the same time, Cecil the lion was killed in Zimbabwe and the documentary Blood Lions was released, which exposed the canned hunting industry. The film led to a Blood Lions campaign against captive breeding and canned hunting, which is said to have heavily dented the multimillion-rand industry this year.

According to Tucker, these two events started shifting international perceptions.

“International policy started changing for the first time in my experience over 20 years,” she says. “International policy started clamping down on trophies across borders. So there was the CECIL Bill that came out and the Fish and Wildlife Service in the States and Australia closed its ports to trophy hunting. So there was a sort of international position around this.”

US senator Bob Menendez introduced the Conserving Ecosystems by Ceasing the Importation of Large (CECIL) Animal Trophies Act, which prohibited trade of endangered animals or those proposed to be endangered without permission from the Secretary of the Interior.

To prevent white lions from becoming trophies, Tucker is trying to get them classified as a subspecies, which, considering their low population numbers, would render them critically endangered. But the white lion is not the only animal she looks to protect. “Our idea is to get the whole ecosystem protected with white lions as the charismatic animal at the centre.”

At the trust’s reserve, zebra, black-backed jackal, eland, wildebeest, impala and even the rare purple-crested loerie, roam freely and thrive again. “So with nature restoring itself, the parks in the area are growing and the different species are all moving through as they should be,” says Turner.

Developers from Dubai wanted to buy some land in Timbavati, part of which would have been the trust’s reserve. They aimed to build a golf estate. But all the farmers banded together to prevent it from happening, says Turner. “The biggest challenge is human politics and the biggest stakeholders are the communities and they’re starting to believe.”

“We want a radical shift in consciousness,” says Tucker. “I’m so battle weary of being in the system and not being able to change the system, which is a consumerist-based system arguing on trade considerations and trade hunting considerations. They’re good arguments but they’re all based on exploitation of our ecosystem instead of love and reverence, which is the indigenous way. You see these statistics in the congresses we attend that are so dire you can barely take them in.”

Scientists proven wrong

When Tucker and Turner wanted to introduce Marah and her cubs to the wild, scientists warned them that they may not survive. First they believed that as captive animals they would find it difficult to hunt for their own food and secondly, their white coats would not camouflage well in the bushveld.

But the lions proved the experts wrong. Their hunting instincts quickly took over and their white bodies hid well in the foliage, especially during winter. “The white lions have a great winter camouflage,” says Tucker. “All these white tigers and lions popping up around the world means nature is giving signs of an impending Ice Age.”

At the time, Marah was leaving scat in various parts of the reserve. Tucker believes this was a sign that the lioness was doing well. “In her scat, she was showing us that she was okay. One scat had porcupine and the other had duiker hooves. This sort of tracking is an indigenous technique. She was telling us she was okay.”

As a scientist, Turner said he was amazed to find the lioness and her cubs were adapting so quickly. Over the years, Turner has come to accept Tucker’s animal communication techniques. “As a scientist I can only record the outcome and over time a pattern emerges and I can only say that science could not explain some things.”

White lions a Shangaan heritage

Tucker not only wants to protect the white lion for its own sake. They are significant to the Shangaan people of Timbavati who believe the white lions to be their kings and queens reborn. Protecting these cats would also mean preserving an important part of Shangaan, and indeed, South African heritage.

On a warm November afternoon in 1991, Tucker experienced first-hand just how closely connected the Shangaan are to the lions of Timbavati.

When she and a few friends rode out into the bush to witness a lioness giving birth to cubs, they didn’t expect to become prey for a pride of lions. “There were 24 lions around us. There was no radio call at the time,” says Tucker. Having no radio meant they couldn’t call for help.

The sun was setting quickly. People first laughed and later they panicked. The lions could smell the fear from their cold sweat. “We were like prey in an open butcher shop. They were in predatory poses, ready to pounce.”

Then in the faint light, a woman in sangoma dress carrying a baby on her back and with a little boy beside her appeared. “She walked pass the lions towards us, so surefooted. And the lions became calm and backed off. She climbed on to the vehicle and just held this courage in her hands. She saved us.”

The lady was Maria Khosa, a Shangaan sangoma who later became Tucker’s mentor on her own spiritual journey.

Today, the Shangaan in Timbavati still honour the lions by performing rituals to appease them. Tucker has taken to these rituals and has been practising an indigenous approach to nature for the last decade. However, this ancient knowledge has been dying out over the last 20 years. “It’s an aural tradition. [Shangaan people] pass it down, word-for-word, believing if you get one word wrong, they’ll be cursed.”

One of these practices is the slow cat blink, which she recommends above the staring contest. “Bow your head slightly and close your eyes. Indigenous people have always practised this respectful approach to nature.”

Other than the slow cat blink, Tucker has also used animal communication and indigenous knowledge systems to learn more about the lions.

For the trust to protect the white lions, it combines indigenous knowledge with scientific rigour. “We combine ancient indigenous knowledge with modern ecological knowledge. The ancient system believes nature is one living organism that works together,” she says.

There were no white lions in Timbavati before she started the trust in 2002. After rescuing Marah, a lioness cub, from a hunting camp in 2000, she vowed to return the white lion to the land and its people. Two years later, Marah and her three cubs were the first white lions to be introduced to their ancestral homeland of Timbavati, much to the Shangaan community’s delight.

Getting the community to help

The trust is turning to the Shangaan community, and particularly its children, to help protect the white lion. The StarLion Programme educates the community in Timbavati about protecting the white lions found in the area.

The programme’s One United Roar campaign gets youth and adults to be the voice for the lions, especially when speaking to policymakers attending CITES CoP17. As part of the campaign, youth members are posting messages on the trust’s YouTube channel, calling for the protection of lions.

Tucker says the campaign recognises that all the policies governing wildlife do not represent the animals’ perspective. “We thought ‘how do we get lions as the silent stakeholders in human policies, to have a voice and a vote?’ We thought the only way to do that was for people to go into the position of the lion. And the best way to do that was through kids because they were much less indoctrinated than we were and they could feel from a lion’s perspective what it was like.”

Earning nature’s trust again

Zukhara and his brother, Matsieng, walk towards a hunt they could smell a kilometre away. They separate into what Turner calls a pincer formation.

They mark scents on trees as they move along. And when they reach a grove, they meet again and drop to the ground. “Their strategy is to lie in wait separately, picking up scents. The females might have hunted or attempted a hunt,” says Turner, while sticking half his body out of the driver’s side window.

The trust he has for the lions is two-way. Not once have the lions attacked him, despite his being exposed to them on numerous occasions. When they first moved here, the animals were terrified of humans, explains Turner. But with him and Tucker showing the animals love and respect, nature – at least in Timbavati – has learnt to trust humans again.

Quick facts about lions

• In the 1800s there were 1.2 million lions in the wild. Now there are between 21 000 and 35 000.
• Lions have lost 50% of their land/range in last 30 years.
• Up to 1800, lions could be found throughout Africa, stretching across the Middle East and into India.
• A white male lion rescued by the trust was going to be hunted for R1.6-million.
• A roar can go as far as two kilometres.
• Roars communicate that this is the lion’s territory. One male lion had 65 back roars. Rivals in Timbavati only manage half of that.

 

A motion to terminate the hunting and breeding of captive lions and other predators in South Africa has been approved by the IUCN World Conservation Congress currently underway in Hawaii.

The motion requests the prohibition of the hunting of captive-bred lions under any conditions and also states that breeding should only be allowed at “registered zoos or facilities that demonstrate a clear conservation benefit”.

Motion 009, requests that South Africa review existing legislation pertaining to the captive predator hunting and breeding industry and implement revised regulations by 2020.

The passing of this motion has come at a critical time as despite more than 20 years of campaigning by local and international activists and organizations to bring an end to these practices, the industry has shown steady growth over the last decade.

Currently there are more than 180 facilities holding approximately 7 000 predators used for a variety of commercial purposes, including captive or ‘canned’ hunts.

“We’re looking forward to working with the IUCN and Department of Environmental Affairs to implement the resolutions, which will have a significant impact,” says Wildlands CEO Andrew Venter.

“There must be good reason for the IUCN to have passed this motion. It does not do our country or tourism any good to be seen as a zoo country breeding wildlife in captivity which has no conservation value,” says Stan Burger, President of the Professional Hunters Association of South Africa (PHASA) who announced their opposition to the industry in a statement late last year.

Although basic legislation is in place to regulate the captive keeping and hunting of lions in South Africa, IUCN members have acknowledged that the SA government has had limited legal scope available to terminate “canned” hunting altogether and are hoping the guidelines set out in the motion will assist them to revise legislation.

“The Department (of Environmental Affairs) will consider the implications associated with the motion; engage the relevant IUCN members and then take appropriate actions, guided by its legal mandate,” says Albi Modise, chief director of communications for the Department of Environmental Affairs(DEA) adding: “As you know, these motions or resolutions adopted by the IUCN are not legally binding and therefore compliance with the resolution cannot be enforced.”

Nevertheless as part of its plan to implement the requirements stated in the motion the Department says that the Environmental Management Inspectorate has prioritised strengthening compliance monitoring and enforcement relating to captive breeding facilities as well as enforcing TOPS (Threatened or Protected Species) regulations which prohibits hunting lions in a controlled environment.

But the Department has made it clear that while legislation will be revised and regulated the adoption of this motion does not necessarily mean that facilities will be shut down.

Adding to further implementation, amendments to TOPS Regulations will be published early next year which are expected to include prohibiting the introduction of wild lion to captive breeding facilities and the captive breeding of lion if no conservation benefit can be demonstrated.

The Department also says it will prioritise research to determine whether there is any conservation value in breeding lions in captivity. Further recommendations were the development of norms and standards for the welfare and management of captive-bred lions which will be tabled by the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.

While the passing of this motion is significant, it is only the first step of what could still be a tricky process. “We’ve been down this road once before in South Africa and the attempts came to nothing. We cannot allow government, the breeders and the hunters to again play with the nuances of words and space that will result in failure.

The world is now watching.” says Ian Michler, Blood Lions Consultant.

Story via Conservation Action Trust

A motion to enact legislative changes to canned lion hunting practices in South Africa has been approved at the International Union for Conservation of Nature congress in Hawaii.

Seven NGOs including the Blood Lions team (a documentary on canned lion hunting), the National Association of Conservancies and Stewardship South Africa (NACSSA), and the South African Wildlife College (SAWC), have tabled a motion to review legislation governing canned lion hunting. The motion was introduced at the recent International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) congress in Hawaii.

John Wesson, chairperson of NACSSA, told Farmer’s Weekly that the organisation was against canned lion hunting in particular, and not hunting in general.

“We are against handrearing lions for hunting, which are [kept] in an enclosure and then moved onto a range to be hunted. As long as hunting is practised in a sustainable, legal and humane way we are not against it,” Wesson said.

Norms and standards

If canned hunting was banned, a lot of thought would have to be given to how current captive animals will be reintroduced into the wild or game parks.

Dr Andrew Venter, CEO of the Wildlands Conservation Trust, told Farmer’s Weekly that the Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA) and NGOs have agreed on priority actions, such as developing norms and standards, supported by the South African Scientific Authority, that define conditions under which lion hunting is regarded as canned hunting. In addition, captive breeding of lions would be restricted to registered zoos or facilities that show a clear conservation benefit. Norms and standards would also be developed to manage the welfare, biodiversity and utilisation of captive-bred lions.

Prof Pieter Potgieter, chairperson of the South African Predator Association (SAPA), said many assumptions made about lion hunting was problematic.

“Some see hunting a lion in a 10 000ha enclosure as canned hunting. Then all kudu and eland hunts can be seen as canned hunts as they are hunted in fenced areas,” Potgieter said. lion population, as well as the hunting of captivebred lions has no negative effect whatsoever on wild lion populations, in SA,” Potgieter said.

In support of Captive-bred lions

From a species survival perspective, the SA captive lion population is an important subpopulation, making up between 21% and 31% of the total population. “The captive lion population, as well as the hunting of captive-bred lions has no negative effect whatsoever on wild lion populations in SA” Potgieter said.

“In the 2013/2014 hunting season, the lion trophy industry contributed R317 million to the [local] economy,” he said.

Only 15% of captive-bred lions are hunted annually, which is economically sustainable, and pays for the board and lodging of the rest of the population. Many of them live in large private game reserves, Potgieter said.

Not legally binding

Ian Michler, specialist wilderness guide, consultant and environmental photojournalist, told Farmer’s Weekly, “unfortunately, IUCN  motions are not legally binding within member states. But as a signatory to the IUCN, government undertakes to cooperate with agreements and decisions.coming out of the IUCN”.

A recent DEA press release stated that government did not support some of the aspects of this motion. “It will, however, consider the implications associated with the motion and engage the IUCN directorgeneral and IUCN members on the requirements contained therein,” the release said.