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Workers prepare animal skins in front of animal trophies at the taxidermy studio in Pretoria,February 12, 2015. Photo by Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters.  Taken from http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/trophy-hunting-explained/
                                                                                                                                       The full PDF of the document can be obtained by emailing cachjozi@gmail.com
​    
In September 2016, Linda Park, Director of the Campaign Against Canned Hunting (CACH) highlighted the health issue of TB in lion bones in her blog “SA Exporting TB in lion bones?”  http://www.cannedlion.org/blog/archives/09-2016. 

The blog includes further opinion from Professor Paul van Helden, Stellenbosch University stating that “It should be noted that the organism that most commonly causes lion TB is Mycobacterium bovis (which causes bovine TB). This differs very slightly from that species most often causing human TB.  Unfortunately, this organism has the propensity to cause TB in humans often in organs other than the lung, making it very difficult to diagnose.
Furthermore, it is inherently resistant to one of the four most important drugs (antibiotics) used to treat primary human TB. Treatment of humans with this form of TB is therefore compromised. This therefore poses a potential risk to humans which is arguably greater than the most common form of TB in humans. 

I am therefore of the opinion that uncontrolled exposure of humans to bones from animals, in particular lion bones, poses a risk for development of the form of TB known as bovine TB in particular, although not necessarily being limited to this form of TB only.” (In July 2009, Professor Paul van Helden was featured in an article on Thompson Reuters’ Sciencewatch - http://archive.sciencewatch.com/ana/st/tub/09julSTTubvanHel/ -  citing him as the 4th highest ranked scientist in the World in the field of tuberculosis)
 
At the beginning of this year the South African Government announced plans to permit the annual export of 800 lion skeletons from captive bred lions.  http://www.traveller24.com/Explore/Green/sas-export-of-800-lion-skeletons-misguided-and-shameful-20170123. 

The majority of these would most likely be sent to manufacturers of fake tiger wine.  Lion bones have been used as a substitute for tiger bones since around 2008.  https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/apr/16/south-africa-lion-bones-trade. 

Further highlighted in the paper Williams VL, Loveridge AJ, Newton DJ, Macdonald DW (2015) ‘Skullduggery’: Lions Align and Their Mandibles Rock! PLoS ONE 10(11): e0135144.
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0135144 and the report Bones of Contention report by Oxford University’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCru), TRAFFIC and the University of Witwatersrand https://www.wildcru.org/news/bones-of-contention-lion-bone-trade-report-released/
 
We are deeply concerned that there could be substantial health risks to people when handling/consuming lion parts from a lion infected with TB.    http://www.health24.com/Medical/Tuberculosis/TB-in-south-africa/Can-you-get-TB-from-animals-20150324.  http://edition.cnn.com/2016/10/31/health/veterinarian-contracts-tuberculosis-from-wildebeest/ 

The OIE – World Organisation for Animal Health list diseases transmissible to humans in their October 2016 press release
http://www.oie.int/for-the-media/press-releases/detail/article/update-on-wildlife-diseases/.  Zoonotic infection including M. tuberculosis is highlighted by Bruno B. Chomel et al in “Wildlife, Exotic Pets, and Emerging Zoonoses” https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/13/1/06-0480_article
 
We believe there is an urgent need for further research from all parties to prevent a major health issue. The most significant health risk applies to those that handle lion carcasses and bones in the first instance i.e. farm labourers who prepare a carcass immediately after it has been hunted, euthanised or died and prepared for the lion bone trade.  

It may also affect other participants in the industry (i.e. taxidermists  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3178868/Inside-Namibian-taxidermy-factory-stuffs-6-000-animals-year-trophy-hunters.html, customs officers, muti users http://www.penton.co.za/strong-muti-harm-ye-none-two-worlds-apart/  and the TCM end-users http://www.bloodlions.org/tiger-bone-wine/ , to a degree, depending upon how long the infection remains viable within the bones/organs.  It should also be noted that South Africa has a burgeoning TCM industry of its own http://globalriskinsights.com/2017/04/radar-traditional-chinese-medicine-became-one-africas-fastest-growing-industries/
 
Possibility of infection becomes a major risk factor for anyone who is on medication that is immunosuppressant or has an inherited or acquired immunodeficiency disorder e.g. HIV infection or other factors (but not limited to) those with low socioeconomic status, crowded living conditions etc.   

There is also the issue that once a person catches TB it can lie latent for a number of years whilst it multiplies in the body.  Once the disease is activated during this time they are likely to infect other members of their whole family as well as friends or anyone they may be in contact with since the disease is normally passed from human to human via the respiratory systems. 
 
Immunodeficiency disorders
https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/000818.htm
 
Tuberculosis overview
http://www.emedicinehealth.com/tuberculosis/article_em.htm
 
HIV Infection Disrupts the Sympatric Host–Pathogen Relationship in Human Tuberculosis http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1003318
 
Humans can get deadly TB from animals
http://bhekisisa.org/article/2016-03-11-00-humans-can-get-deadly-tb-from-animals
  
TB in lions
TB affects humans and many animal species including wild and captive-bred lions.  Both the human and animal form of TB may be the causative agent. The Wildlife Disease Association Africa & Middle East April 2017 Quarterly Newsletter (page 5) contains an article entitled Tuberculosis as an Emerging (Re-Emerging) Disease in South African Wildlife by Professor Michelle A Miller, DVM, MS, MPH, PhD NRF South African Research Chair in Animal TB, Stellenbosch University and highlights the fact that “although a Bovine TB Eradication Scheme was introduced in 1969 to address the issue in cattle, changes in national and provincial veterinary structures, lack of funding and trained personnel, and disease prioritization have resulted in failure to control the disease in South Africa.” http://wildlifedisease.org/wda/Portals/0/Sections/AME/WDA%20AME%20April%202017%20Newsletter.pdf
 
In 2009, South African National Parks, Endangered Wildlife Trust and the Conservation Breeding Specialist Group Southern Africa convened a workshop entitled “Lion (Panthera Leo) Bovine Tuberculosis Disease Risk Assessment”.  A large group of specialists met to evaluate the then status of lions in the Kruger National Park and the issue of TB.  The final report can be found here https://www.wcs-ahead.org/gltfca_grants/pdfs/lion_tb_risk_report_final.pdf
 
 
At this workshop, Dewald Keet the Chief State Veterinarian KNP stated the clinical signs and pathology of TB.  “Clinical signs are typically non-specific and consist of varying degrees of emaciation with deterioration of skin quality. Focal areas of partial alopecia of varying size are seen in most cases. Visible, palpable and marked enlargement of superficial lymph nodes as seen in various other species does not occur. Hygromas of the elbow are found to be a reliable indicator of M. bovis infection. They are more frequently seen in females than in males. Undetermined or non-specific lameness due to swollen, inflexible stifle and hock joints associated with muscular atrophy of affected appendices occur in older lions. Dermal wounding with an apparent inability to heal is seen in a number of cases. Older males often develop large swellings above or below the hip joint. Large ulcers subsequently develop on the surface of these swellings. This is often bilateral but varying in size. Varying degrees of mane loss and deterioration are seen in most males necropsied. Testis atrophy is consistently present in these cases. None of 86 females were pregnant at the time of necropsy. Tachypnoea and dyspnoea was seen in cases with advanced pulmonary lesions. Ocular lesions are seen in a small number of cases and central nervous system impairment in only one. Hair covering the ventral aspects of the neck, thorax and abdomen appears to be longer and white in inactive females.
 
Gross lesions in the carcass of a lion are not typically caseous-necrotic. They are rather fibrous and proliferative and seldom associated with abscess formation. The sarcomatous appearance of mycobacterial lesions in domestic cats frequently leads to misdiagnosis in cats and lesions in lions have a similar sarcomatous appearance. Lymph nodes are only slightly enlarged but mostly rather severely atrophied. These lymph nodes reveal sinus ectasia associated with cortical and paracortical lymphoid hyperplasia. Pulmonary lesions are the only category identifiable with a certain degree of accuracy. However, they also appear distinctly different from lung lesions seen in ruminant, primate, rodent, swine and lagomorph species.
 
Microscopic lesion patterns observed in various organs were of a granulomatous nature consisting of macrophages, epithelioid cells, lymphoplasma cells and numerous neutrophils, suggestive of mycobacterial infection. Severe generalized lymphoid atrophy was sometimes seen in association with granulomatous lesions. Pulmonary lesions comprised of granulomatous interstitial pneumonitis or granulomatous bronchopneumonia often associated with bronchiectasis. Intestinal lesions showed mononuclear macrophage predominance suggestive of mycobacterial mural enteritis. Granulomatous osteitis, periosteitis and osteosis were found in most of the well-developed cases frequently associated with myositis.”
  
https://www.journeyman.tv/film/1271 In 2002 reporter Sally Sara and Journeyman.tv made a report on TB in lions in the Kruger Park highlighting the issues, clinical signs and prognosis going forward with the spread of TB and the knee jerk reaction of bringing in hunters to kill neighbouring reserve lions that had been infected.   If all lions that become infected with TB are culled like this there will certainly be one place that their bones could potentially end up and that will be in the lion bone trade!
 
TB & Captive-bred lions
 
With the numbers of lions held together in a breeding farm, the likelihood of disease spread is raised to a high level.  Plus the issues of inbreeding that occur in captive lion breeding cause major immune issues and therefore another high-level risk for disease spread. A recent study by the Animal TB Research Group of Stellenbosch University also suggests that lions may be able to transmit bacteria between themselves through respiratory secretions (droplets transmitted through sneezing or coughing). http://www.bioone.org/doi/full/10.7589/2014-07-170
 
As noted above by Dr Dewald Keet and Professor Nick Kriek of Onderstepoort Veterinary Academic Faculty (in our first blog on this issue) - hygromas of the elbow have been found to be a reliable indicator for TB in lions.  Kirberger RM, Keet DF and Wagner WM (2006) highlight “Radiologic abnormalities of the appendicular skeleton of the lion (Panthera leo): incidental finds and Mycrobacterium bovis-induced changes”. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16553146
 
In Viljoen et al (2015) Mycobacterium bovis infection in the lion (Panthera leo): Current knowledge, conundrums and research challenges it was also shown that the first cases of lions contracting TB came from two zoos.  The onset of the disease was relatively sudden after the felids experienced high stress situations such as after repeated periods of pregnancy and lactation.
 
This situation is replicated within lion breeding farms and it is well known that lion breeding farms keep their lionesses in a tight circle of pregnancy (by removing cubs as early as possible to bring them back into estrus) to maximise the number of cubs that are born each year.  
 
Keel et al (2010) also highlight the fact that progress of TB in lions is apparently slow, with the majority of infected lions appearing healthy while being sub-clinically infected.
 
Conclusion
We believe that there is a substantial risk to humans from TB carried in lion bones/organs and that this requires immediate attention and further research.  An industry that puts the health of its workers/end-users at risk is an industry that is likely to find lawsuits against them in the future.  They have now been warned about this issue and need to act on it immediately.
 
Acknowledgements
We wish to acknowledge the following people for their assistance in the preparation of this document.  
Professor Paul van Helden, Stellenbosch University
Professor Nick Kriek, Onderstepoort Veterinary Academic Faculty
Dr Kobus du Toit, Rhino expert, wildlife veterinarian and biologist
 
This document has been sent to the following organisations for their concern with a request to immediately look at the serious health implications:-
 
Hospitality, Catering and Farm Workers Union (HOCAFAWU)
National Domestic Security Agriculture and Allied Workers Union (NDOSAWU)
South African Forestry, Farming, Catering and Allied Workers Union (SAFFCAWU) http://www.saffcawu.com/427086635
Human Rights Institute of South Africa (HURISA) http://www.hurisa.org.za/
Centre for Human Rights/University of Pretoria www.up.ac.za/centre-for-human-rights
The South African Human Rights Commission http://www.sahrc.org.za/
The Black Sash http://www.blacksash.org.za/
The Food and Allied Workers Union http://www.fawu.org.za/
Lawyers for Human Rights http://www.lhr.org.za/programme
Foundation for Human Rights http://www.fhr.org.za/
African National Healers Association https://www.africannationalhealersassociation.org/
World Health Organisation, Africa Region http://www.afro.who.int/
Wildlife Disease Association http://www.wildlifedisease.org/wda/
Human Sciences Research Council http://www.hsrc.ac.za/en/
OiE World Organisation for Animal Health http://www.oie.int/
 
 

​Bev Pervan:  Wildlife champion
                     Founder of Kalahari Raptor Centre 1998
                     Co-founder of Campaign Against Canned Hunting circa 2000
                     Co-founder of Karoo Wildlife Centre 2015
            Co-author of book Kalahari Dream   -  www.kalahari-dream.com
 
Tribute to Bev on the anniversary of her death.
 
Bev died from cancer on 30th April last year (2016). We remember her today because of the impact she made on animal welfare in South Africa. 
 
Most people go through life making acquaintances. Bev went through life making friends who would die for her. This was because she cared so much for her friends, both human and animal. Watching Bev work with wild animals and birds was a privilege. There is nothing glamorous about wildlife rehab work. It is all about getting bitten, kicked and scratched on a daily basis. Love of animals by itself is not enough. The rehabber needs toughness. And Bev had toughness in spades.
 
Once, for example, when holding down a struggling vulture for the vet, she suffered a serious laceration to her hand. “That needs some stitches,” commented the vet. Bev had not let go of the struggling bird. “Well put them in,” she replied. So he did put in half a dozen stitches while she continued to hold the bird down and then the vet resumed his work with the vulture.
 
On another occasion, she became impatient with me while I battled to subdue a martial eagle and she tried to catch the powerful bird on her own. This was a mistake and working with wildlife, one pays the price. Those fearsome talons closed around her forearm and penetrated right through. It took me some time to prise open the talons and release her bloodied arm. She then, typically, refused any offer of help and drove off by herself to the doctor in Kuruman to get an anti-tetanus shot.
 
I wonder if the arrogant, intransigent Northern Cape conservation officials would have dared to invade our sanctuary and illegally confiscate the three Caracals, had they known what sort of a woman they were up against. They must so many times have regretted the day they decided to “teach these greenies a lesson” in the years that followed the unlawful seizure, as we dragged them through the South African legal system all the way to the Constitutional Court, not once but twice. They learnt the hard way that Bev would stop at nothing to protect the animals in her care.
 
She was a remarkable woman, even more so because she was so tiny. Not even 5 feet tall. I always used to say about her “she is about the same size as Napoleon and look how much trouble he caused!”
Chris Mercer.
 

Bryan Havemann, the game Warden at Timbavati Nature Reserve, which is adjacent to Kruger National Park, and a member of the APNR (Association of Private Nature Reserves) justified trophy hunting a super tusker elephant in an article in SA Tourism Update.
For example:
Havemann explained that the hunt would benefit conservation. “When an elephant gets beyond 50 years of age, they don’t have the ability to chew their food properly any longer.” He argued that if it was inevitable that the elephant were to die of natural causes, the money from a hunt would be better used to fuel conservation efforts.

Let us examine the claims a little more closely:
1.       That there are too many elephants, causing ecological damage, and therefore, taking out a tusker aids the environment.
2.       An elephant over the age of 50 is going to die soon from natural causes and so it is better to hunt him and make money for conservation.
3.       Conservation purposes include anti-poaching expenses.

Dealing with the points seriatim:

1.       This argument confuses hunting with culling. When there are too many animals for the available vegetation, then the brutal remedy of culling is the only answer. Whole herds are liquidated. Killing one tusker will not have any effect whatsoever on the breeding of an elephant population. Other males will service the females in oestrus and all that the hunter achieves is to pervert the process of natural selection and select for the smaller tusk gene. Soon, if the hunters have their way, elephants will be born without any tusks at all.

2.       Using the age of the elephant as an excuse to justify the hunting of a tusker is transparently flawed public relations. It has no substance in elephant behaviour or herd dynamics. The landowners and shareholders of Timbavati include some of the richest people in South Africa. The proper way to raise money for reserve expenses is by imposing a levy upon members. Why are some of the richest people in the country so reluctant to put their hands into their deep pockets, and so keen to rather raise money by shooting animals that do not even belong to them.

3.       Who are the real poachers here, if not the Timbavati hunters themselves? These elephants stray in from the adjacent Kruger Park. They belong to the people of South Africa and should not be hunted for private gain on adjacent land. So if a poor black man goes into Kruger Park and hunts the same elephant, he is a wicked poacher. But the rich white man who kills the same animal for fun when it wanders onto Timbavati, is hailed as a conservationist. Since when did money substitute itself for true conservation - which is the preservation of natural functioning ecosystems?

How can any intelligent person confuse hunting with culling and believe that shooting an elephant in the face can possibly be anything other tha environmental terrorism? 

I believe that trophy hunting takes place on all the reserves which are part of the APNR. Timbavati is not the only culprit. If I am wrong, I hope someone reading this will correct me. 

I could never visit any reserve where hunting takes place, because I take responsible tourism far more seriously. Perhaps when a sufficient number of tourists boycott APNR reserves, management will have an epiphany and suddenly find the financial inducement to see the difference between true conservation and sickening brutality.

Chris Mercer.
​Karoo Wildlife Centre.
 

                                      ​DANGEROUS ILLUSIONS
 
                                                               by
 
                                                      Richard Peirce
          Author, wildlife campaigner      Website www.peirceshark.com
 
                                                               and
 
                                                       Chris Mercer
                  Director, Campaign Against Canned Hunting (CACH)
 
In AD 1028 when the Anglo Nordic King Canute decided to sit on the beach and command an incoming sea to recede he was conducting an exercise in futility, and he knew it.  To what extent are today’s conservation activists, naturalists, environmentalists and others conducting similarly futile exercises trying to conserve wildlife, and campaigning for humans to live sustainably on our planet? 7.48 billion people, ineffective national governments, giant profit driven corporations, and the lack of effective joined up global governance are a deadly combination.  Against this onslaught of irresponsibility are the world’s conservation and environmental organisations emulating King Canute?  If so they are unwittingly, and certainly not deliberately, contributing towards producing dangerous illusions.
 
The Paris climate summit, CITES meetings and others all generate reassuring headlines for the world’s public, and the illusion that effective action is being taken. What chance has the world’s public got of understanding the gravity of the global environmental situation when President Trump, the most powerful leader in the free world, peddles the illusion that climate change is all a Chinese invention?
 
A terrifying example of reality, as opposed to illusion, comes from the WWF/ZSL Living Planet report. In the 46 years between 1970 and 2016 global wildlife declined by 58%. On present trends that figure will be 67% by 2020.  By 2012 1.6 earths were needed to provide the natural resources and services we humans were consuming each year. These figures are the reality, the illusion is that we are taking effective actions to halt our headlong rush to decimate wildlife, combat climate change, and live sustainably.
 
Global problems need global solutions, and until national governments either act effectively in concert, or cede powers to a global governance entity, efforts to save wildlife, halt climate change and live sustainably are doomed to failure.  Only a radical re-think of the way we live will enable us to live sustainably and in harmony with nature.  I do not believe this will happen until the human race feels so threatened that survival becomes the prime consideration.
 
In the Second World War the people of Great Britain cheerfully accepted consumer austerity measures they would never have been accepted in peacetime, because they believed their survival was at stake.  When climate change starts to manifest itself by causing worldwide large scale human death and misery, then the world’s population will demand from their leaders the changes needed for survival.
 
In future decades, I believe that today’s pathetic climate change and wildlife conservation measures will be recognised as having been inadequate and illusory. It would be a suicidal NGO that stood up and said “We are not winning and we cannot win”, and this is one of the reasons illusions will persist.
 
                                                            ______________
 
One thing is clear which is that current conservation paradigms, in which traditional conservation (preservation) has been superceded by policies of regulated exploitation (sustainable use), are not working. Wildlife numbers in Africa and elsewhere continue to decline dramatically. Some scientists have proposed combatting the incompetence and corruption of African governments by privatising wildlife conservation, but the unintended consequences of this are potentially disastrous.
 
The privatisation of wildlife has already been implemented in South Africa. More than 10,000 farms have abandoned agriculture in favour of game farming in which the ‘wild’ has been taken out of wildlife, and rural employment has declined.
 
The South African example shows that privatising wildlife management is no substitute for real conservation and so is another dangerous illusion.
Treating captive lions bred for canned lion hunting as ‘wildlife’ is not conservation. It is farming for profit and to call it conservation is illusory.
 
The doctrine of sustainable wildlife use has largely failed. Everywhere we look we find that in practice, sustainable use has become sustained abuse. Sustainable use has become mostly just a licence to exploit and kill. 

In Africa, whether it is the senseless destruction by rich white men (hunting), or by poor blacks (bushmeat and poaching), or by Asian syndicates (poaching) the result is the same – devastation of biological diversity and dreadful animal suffering.

We have forgotten that conservation means “the preservation of natural functioning eco-systems”. Nowadays hunters style themselves as conservationists because they are only killing some animals - not all of them.

We need an environmental philosophy that gets back to true conservation. However idealistic and aspirational it may be, it is better than adopting licences to kill as an overarching policy.

To preserve biodiversity, we need discipline and rigid protection. One example of this is the island of Santo Domingo. A clear line can be seen running down the border that divides Haiti from the Dominican Republic. On the Haiti side, no trees, no life, just environmental ruin. On the Dominican side, rich natural forests still survive, because right from the start, the Dominicans adopted a zero-tolerance approach to Haitian poachers and woodcutters. The army was deployed to shoot trespassers on sight.

This hard line did not result in substantial loss of human life. Once a dozen or so Haitians had been killed, the message got home, and they stopped coming over the border to poach. Africa is now heading steadily in the direction of becoming a continental Haiti – a continent failing to stem the tide of poverty, misery and environmental degradation. What is needed is for Africa to aim at becoming a continental version of the Dominican Republic.

Involving local tribesmen is important. Every effort must be made to ensure that a good proportion of funds derived from eco-tourism reaches local communities so that they feel that they have a stake in the preservation of biodiversity. But along with the carrot must come the stick. Experience has shown that benefits alone are inadequate. Nature reserves need also to be rigidly protected with the most effective modern technology and with ruthless military efficiency. 

Rigid protection of biodiversity also requires African governments to pursue unpopular policies that will inevitably alienate some sections of their voting constituencies. Sadly, based on experience to date, this is most unlikely to happen, at least in the short to medium term.

There are examples where indigenous people have organised resistance to exploitation of natural resources, such as is currently happening in Amazonia, but this pits them against their own governments, and their own national armies.

There is apparently no such grassroots resistance among indigenous tribes of Southern Africa. Until indigenous Africans reclaim and remember at least part of the culture and heritage that was so disastrously dismantled by white colonial governments, continent wide conservation successes will be few and far between.  Without a widespread reawakening of the value of the natural world, conservation successes are potentially dangerous illusions if we allow them to distract us from the general decline so evident all around us.
 

The Armyworm is a greater threat to African wildlife than all the the hunters and Rhino poachers put together.

And I am prepared to bet that no one reading this blog post has any idea why. But I do because I’ve seen it all before.

Droughts are endemic in Africa and are often followed by floods. When that happens, there is an explosion of growth of grass and other plant matter, and Nature in its wisdom, tells all the little locust and other insect eggs to hatch and go on the rampage.

Of course Nature in its wisdom knows that the locust swarms and insect pests will create a feeding frenzy for Africa’s bird and small mammal populations. But Mankind does not live by Nature’s rules. Mankind thinks it is smarter than nature. What would be a feast for bird and small mammal populations are a plague to humans. Worse, they threaten economic interests and therefore insult the great God Money to whom all humans pray daily, regardless of the subsidiary religions that they claim to worship.

Anyone who speaks out against economic interests is regarded universally as an heretic of the worst kind.

Here is how  this situation will play out and how so much of Africa’s wildlife is going to be wiped out.

I was farming in the Western Transvaal during the last drought and when the rains came we had locust swarms and a plague of army worms. Those army worms were awful things because they covered the ground like a carpet and everywhere you walked they stuck to the bottom of your shoes in a horrid squashed mess.

Of course all the landowners received government aid - in the form of poisoned corn, which they laid out and spread in long lines on their land. Sure enough the marching ranks of insect pests devoured the poisoned corn and died - but not before they had done great damage to the crops.

Insects provide the prey base for African wildlife. So behind the insect plague came every bird and small mammal in the affected area, gratefully feasting upon the plentiful insect food – and dying from poisoning in their thousands. All the little guinea fowl flocks, the meerkat families,the foxes –etc, they ate and died.
​Once the poison has entered the food chain, up it goes to the raptors, and kills them too.

I did not spread poison on my land. Instead I waited to see what Nature would do. After a week or so of army worm infestation there arrived on my land hundreds of sacred ibises. Where they came from I know not, but I had never seen ibises on my land before. They cleaned up the veld until it was hard to see any army worms left. And then they flew away.
The grasses and vegetation soon recovered and within a month there was no evidence of any army worm damage.

But, I have little doubt that after cleaning up my land for me, the ibises would have landed on farms most of whom had spread poison out for the insects - and been wiped out.

The big chemical companies will deny that their product causes secondary poisoning and they will reassure the public with sophisticated public relations that their organophosphate poisons are eco-friendly and will break down in the soil once they have done their job.

Do not believe these blandishments. The poisons may break down in time but not before they have wiped out much of Africa’s wildlife. This PR may fool the public, but you can’t fool Nature. 

And who will stand up for the wildlife in South Africa? We have a Department of Environment of course – the very same department that eagerly promotes canned lion hunting as 'conservation.' And we have the wildlife unit of the Department of Agriculture (DAFF) which eagerly promotes the use of gin traps and other forms of indiscriminate mass killing, which are aimed at small predators like caracals and jackals, but actually decimate bird and small mammal populations on South Africa’s farms.
 
In other words no one in SA will stand up for the wildlife. So buy shares in Bayer and Monsanto; the big chemical companies are going to make billions out of this calamity.
And turn a blind eye to the environmental destruction which you’re about to witness.

Do not forward the link to this post if you are afraid of being called ‘elitist’ or ‘racist’ or any other epithet dreamed up by chemical industry PR firms.

Cub petting and getting animal welfare on to the agenda.
 
The response on social media to the inaugural meeting of our Captive Carnivore working group has been mostly condemnatory and often downright abusive. The main theme of the criticism is that cub petting and lion farming should be banned and anything less than that amounts to a betrayal of the lions.

Let us be clear about this issue. CACH continues to campaign vigorously in more than a dozen countries for tourism and volunteer operators to withdraw their support for facilities that offer cub petting. We also liaise with more powerful welfare organisations to reduce demand for lion trophy hunts by banning the import of lion trophies into their countries. Other role players such as airlines are also targeted. So over the last 20 years, very few people have done more than us to bring lion trophy hunting to an end and to publicise the link between cub petting and canned lion hunting. That work goes on day in and day out.

We are a small group of volunteers, finding as much time as we can to fight for the lions. None of us draws a salary and none of us ever will.
 
We have found by bitter experience that the South African government is determined to promote lion farming and canned lion hunting, together with all its spin-offs, including the lion bone trade. All our campaign efforts have fallen on deaf ears in the SA Department of Environment which, as we have explained many times, has been captured by the hunting industry.
Indeed the SA government is eagerly promoting the exploitation of animals for the Asian traditional medicine trade and you may have read of the cruel killing and skinning of donkeys to provide donkey skins to Asia.
https://www.thedonkeysanctuary.org.uk/sites/sanctuary/files/under_the_skin_report.pdf
So it’s not just the lions who are suffering from a government culture which claims that compassion for animals is un-African.
 
While we continue to campaign against canned lion hunting, what are we to do in the meantime? Other than a provincial Ordinance in one of the nine South African provinces, there is no control over the interaction between animals and the public. Cub petting thrives in a vacuum where animal welfare regulation should exist. The Captive Carnivore working group decided at its first meeting to draft a management plan to submit to government which will fill that vacuum and introduce animal welfare into all animal aspects of lion farming and cub petting.
 
How can struggling to get animal welfare placed on the agenda in SA conservation be so distasteful to so many animal lovers?

• Do you want to see lion cubs so stressed from excessive human handling that they lose their hair? Is that what you want?
• Do you want to see lion cubs covered with mange, drinking from filthy water troughs? Is that what you want?
•  Do you want to see lion cubs dragging their hindquarters behind them because they have rickets from poor nutrition?

 
Over the last 20 years I have become cynical about clicktivists – people who clamour self-righteously to know what we are doing to make them feel better about the plight of lions. They should rather ask themselves what they are doing to improve the plight of lions.

Shouting on social media has its uses to raise awareness but that is subject to the law of diminishing returns. Thanks largely to our own efforts, everyone in conservation and many of the public role players and stakeholders are now fully aware of the link between cub petting and canned lion hunting. It is now time to engage with stakeholders- yes even lion farmers- if we wish to be effective in animal advocacy.
 
For those who refuse to see the importance of getting animal welfare placed on the conservation agenda, we would rather they just went away with short jerky movements, to rephrase an old Anglo-Saxon expression.

​Chris Mercer.
 

Captive Carnivores Working Group
From left to right
Chris Mercer CACH, Mike Fynn Lion and Safari Park (LSP), Andre La Cock LSP, Mandla Mdluli DAFF, Petri Viljoen ALWG, Tom Wittenberg Economist, Riaan Crafford Ondestepoort Vet, Carla vd Vyver SAPA, Katja Koeppel Ondestepoort Vet, Pieter Van Zyl SAPA, Linda Park CACH, Magdel Boshoff DEA and John Werth PAAZA/WAZA.

A group of concerned members from diverse areas of operations and interests established a Captive Lion Working Group, with an initial specific focus on lion breeding and cub petting. The group met at Lion & Safari Park on 21 January 2017 to discuss the subject of captive lions, and cub petting in particular.

The diversity of the group is demonstrated by the mix of representatives, namely Onderstepoort, SA Vet Council, PAAZA, African Lion Working Group (IUCN SSC), Lion & Safari Park, SA Predators Association (SAPA), Campaign Against Canned Hunting (CACH), as well as independent specialists and consultants. The Department of Environmental Affairs and the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries were also invited to participate in the discussions, and representatives from both departments attended the meeting.

Under the facilitation of CBSG (IUCN Breeding Specialist Group), constructive debate and input from this group of professional and experienced participants resulted in consensus that, despite differences in opinion and priorities, the working group would continue to operate and would pursue the drafting of an industry management plan for cub petting that can be circulated to the industry and key stakeholders for input.
It was agreed during the meeting that the group will continue as the Captive Carnivores Working Group.

CACH believes that an agreement on regulations for carnivores in captivity, thus far totally unregulated, with a universal welfare plan is a step forward, whilst our push for an entire ban on the industry continues unabated. Our teams continue to press tourism stakeholders not to promote or support cub petting.

The year has been overshadowed by the unexpected illness and death of my partner Bev. The cancer struck in August last year but from the beginning of this year she was in and out of hospital. Her egregious suffering finally came to an end on 30th April. She was 68 years old.

Her death was followed by all the bureaucracy involved in winding up a deceased estate; the visits to the office of the Master of the High Court, the compulsory attendance at the tax offices to register the estate etc all involving travel away from home in the Karoo.

A word about cannabis oil. Still illegal in South Africa, notwithstanding the heroic efforts of IFP parliamentarian Dr Mario Ambrosini who fought for the legalisation of medical marijuana until the cancer claimed him too. When you are desperate you will try anything and through various contacts we managed to obtain a supply of medical grade cannabis oil at horrendous expense. Bev took her dosage regularly but looking back on it, I don’t think it had any beneficial effect at all.

When the pain got too bad Bev just wanted to die but assisted suicide is not legal in South Africa either. I cannot understand why an elderly terminal patient who wishes to choose the time and manner of her death should not be allowed to do so. It is uncivilised. Instead Bev was condemned to suffer the most unimaginable pain for many months and for what?

As for the treatment of pain in advanced cancer patients, medical technology has not advanced since the Second World War. Drown the patient in morphine is the primitive treatment. Why on earth in the modern era they cannot target pain receptors in the brain and disable them with lasers or something 21st-century I do not know.
 
The Karoo Wildlife Centre.
We were very busy at the beginning of the year building camps and enclosures and developing the KWC. It was difficult for me to properly supervise the labour force when Bev required such constant care and attention. Eventually, I had to bring in contractors to complete the work. We are proud of the infrastructure that you can see today and which will last for many years.

Labour issues.
We think that the Karoo is Paradise - but there are thorns in paradise and our thorn is the old drunkard who we inherited when we bought the property. We have been fighting a running battle with him on top of all the other responsibilities. Dismissal for misconduct was only a first step in a torturous process. Next comes battling to evict him from the staff quarters which he and his family use as their private retirement home. Political issues are raised when a white landowner wishes to evict a black family from his land and the law has been changed to make it well-nigh impossible. Basically, the employer has to provide the dismissed worker with suitable alternative accommodation at his own expense. The process will, I am told by our labour expert, take anything up to 18 months to complete and in the meantime the staff quarters are occupied effectively by squatters.

Animal rescue.
Birds and animals have begun arriving at the centre even though we cannot obtain permits from provincial conservation authorities to operate the centre. We have tried; we really have. I even employed a consultant to draft the permit application and motivation, and have given the authorities all the information they could reasonably require. But the authorities are not reasonable. Their bureaucracy is patently ridiculous. First, there was an issue over a full rezoning process and when we put our foot down against that, up popped demands for environmental impact assessments.
So we go on functioning without permits, relying on section 3 of the Promotion of Administrative Justice Act, which protects us against unreasonable or excessive bureaucracy. If we have any trouble from conservation authorities, we will challenge them in court. We have had to fight battles on many fronts this year.

CACH HQ
On 15th of August the deed of transfer of the 175 ha Karoo property was finally registered. Bev and I provided about 90% of the funding out of our life savings, but we have registered the property in the name of CACH (Campaign Against Canned Hunting.) The KWC is the headquarters now of the campaign and when I turn my toes up and join Bev in the next world, the CACH team will take over management of the centre, which CACH now owns.

Although our location is remote, modern satellite communications allow us to function with VOIP phone, Skype, email and the Internet. We have had a steady stream of visitors and apart from CACH representatives such as Sarah Dyer from UK  who was here from 24th March to 1st April, we hosted Phil and Trix Wollin on March 12, Donalea Patman from Australia on May 12 and Jill Robinson MBE of Animals Asia on November 1. Other guests included the GoPro for a Cause team from San Francisco.

CACH work.
On top of all this hectic activity around Bev and the KWC, the work of the campaign has continued relentlessly and I and the CACH team spend many hours every day dealing with campaign issues; educating the media, assisting documentary film makers, giving input to conservation authorities across the globe, proactively persuading the tourism industry to become more responsible and to discourage unethical practices like cub petting.
Much of the groundwork has already been done to set up the Captive Lion Forum which we have established with the help of the Lion and Safari Park near Johannesburg. We have attracted a lot of heavy hitters to the Forum, including politicians, conservation officials, regulators, lion farmers, cub petting facilities, agricultural economists, wildlife vets; indeed representatives of all stakeholders. The first meeting will be held in January and the purpose of our engagement with all role players is to try to find common ground on two issues:

•  the ethical treatment of captive lions, and
•  a timetable for the deconstruction of the lion breeding industry and a ban on canned lion hunting.

Updates on Facebook
We try to post interesting news weekly on the KWC Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/karoowildlife/
 
 
 

Conservation has been hijacked. The culprits are both exploitative industries and supine governments.  Their banner is the policy of sustainable use.

"Forget preservation of natural functioning ecosystems", they argue dogmatically. “It is not practical in the modern overcrowded world. For the socio-economic benefit of rural Africans and other human communities we have to sacrifice the conservation ideal.” How very convenient for the hunting industry.

Well, we've had this paradigm for decades now, long enough for us to see that sustainable use is not working. Wildlife populations are plunging all across Africa.
Like a stolen car at a chop shop, African wilderness is being hacked into little pieces to be sold off for the highest profit.

In place of magnificent stretches of pristine wilderness where animals continue to evolve against each other as nature intended, we now have little fragments of land called ‘game farms’ where selected species are bred and kept like sheep or cattle. "Active management" is the euphemism for this ghastly parody of conservation.

Picture this:

• here is a rhino farm; a piece of land where rhinos are being bred. You can see rhinos and even shoot them if you have the money and that is your pleasure.
• over there is a lion farm. There you can pet cubs and shoot lions too.
• on another fragment of land is a buffalo farm, breeding animals with out-sized horns because that is what the hunters want.
• And over there is a tree farm, where for an entrance fee, you can admire plantations of imposing indigenous trees, which used to grace the wilderness but which were chopped down for firewood by local inhabitants in order to cook the meat from the poached animals.
• provincial game reserves host prides of "wild" lions, many with radio collars around their necks. "Actively managing" their numbers should be done scientifically, but the tourist lodges will not allow the females to be contracepted, because tourists want to see cubs all the time. The result is a surplus of lions for the available prey base, allowing the reserves to profit yet again by offering lion hunts.

 
This is not the future.  I am describing SA conservation here and now. It is all about money. Wildlife must pay for itself. Protecting wilderness for its own sake, and for that of future generations is "elitist".

Extinction looms for many species. Scarce funding is squandered on wasteful talk shops like COP 17. While anti-poaching units struggle to provide boots for their rangers, hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on useless debate about whether this species should be moved from this Appendix to that, when enforcement of such technicalities is so poor that it really makes no difference. Lions are Appendix 11, leopards are listed as Appendix 1. Yet permits to hunt and export the trophies from both species drop like confetti from useless SA conservation structures.
Wildlife numbers continue to plunge. The only elephant that is not threatened is the fat white elephant – CITES.

We need a new conservation paradigm. Sustainable use has become sustained abuse. A return to rigid protection of wilderness and the politically difficult expansion of wilderness areas to allow for the migration routes of old, is the only way to arrest the disastrous decline in unspoiled wilderness and wildlife numbers.

If we fail to raise the bar of protection for wildlife populations then they will be driven to extinction. Those animals that survive the slaughter will find a fate worse than death, domesticated, living artificial lives in fenced camps as alternative livestock and being truly treated as human commodities. The "wild" is being taken away from wildlife as I write. This is an unintended consequence of the doctrine of sustainable use.
In my life time in Africa I have personally witnessed the wanton destruction of the greatest show on Earth. As a child, I learnt to play golf on a small town golf course in Zambia where it was not unusual to see lions roaming around the course. Now you can travel for hours in Southern Africa and not see a living thing – just miles and miles of barbed wire fences.

I cannot see African governments finding the political will to stamp out poaching and trespassing by local inhabitants and their livestock, let alone extending the parks to join up fragments of land into one meaningful whole. "Forced removals", “putting animals before people”, “neo-colonialism” etc - can you not just hear the angry accusations by political agitators?
Besides, why would governments ‘waste’ public funds – funds that could be better spent on buying patronage and political capital, executive jets and luxury cars, than on protecting voter-less wild places, when they can abandon these to the hunters and call such destructive activities "conservation".

People vote; animals do not. Democracy becomes tyranny in time, as the Greek philosophers remind us. For animals, the tyranny has always been there. It just gets worse. And animals are the sentinel species on the planet. Their fate today will be ours tomorrow.

For those of us with eyes to see it is all happening right now, right in front of us.
 
What a scary prospect for the future.