By
Chris Mercer

I’m concerned about the hype that has surrounded the report of the parliamentary committee on the issue of captive lion breeding. The report is the result of a colloquium which took place over two days in Cape Town in August 2018.
​To the delight of animal activists - and the despair of the lion farmers, the report unequivocally calls for the Department of Environment (DEA) to start the process of phasing out lion farming and canned lion hunting. The actual committee resolution reads:
The Department of Environmental Affairs should as a matter of urgency initiate a policy and legislative review of Captive Breeding of Lions for hunting and Lion bone trade with a viewto putting an end to this practice.

There is not the slightest doubt that canned lion hunting is morally repugnant. Educate yourself by watching this short two minute video which will convince most ordinary people that lion trophy hunting is a horror show.  https://youtu.be/GZCUO6s9E0I 

An article in the Independent online by senior reporter Sheree Bega summarises the findings of the Parliamentary committee report, and also the reaction of various stakeholders and activists to that report.
https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/outrage-over-lions-bred-to-be-killed-by-deep-pocketed-trophy-hunters-18159693

What worries me, reading everything that has been published in social media, is that while activists are falling over each other to congratulate themselves on their success, there seems to me to be an unwarranted optimism that the report is going to result in a ban on lion farming and canned hunting. My personal opinion is that this is naive.

Anyone who thinks that a report by a Parliamentary committee is going to result in a ban on canned lion hunting in the foreseeable future does not understand how conservation works in South Africa. You have to understand that conservation structures are so thoroughly captured by the hunting industry that they could almost be regarded as an arm of the hunting industry.

We have the ridiculous situation in South Africa that the struggling taxpayer is actually subsidising the obscenely wealthy business of killing wildlife for profit – by funding a captured regulator.

Once you understand that, you will not be shocked when you read that the request by the 12,000 leading conservation scientists of the world, the IUCN, to the South African government, to implement a ban on lion farming and canned hunting, fell on deaf ears.

So how do we know that the parliamentary committee report will also not fall on deaf ears in the DEA?

Parliament is far more compelling to the DEA than the IUCN.  This report is a big step in the right direction and there will be consequences. So what do I expect to happen? Well nothing for quite some time. The South African government operates in a different time dimension to the rest of the universe; in the corridors of bureaucracy and legislation, years drift by like grains of sand.

However, the least we can expect is a general tightening up on animal welfare conditions within lion farms. That will be useful. But any attempt by the DEA to impose a ban on lion farming and canned hunting will be met with a barrage of court cases.
The hunting fraternity knows very well how to lobby and litigate ferociously. They’ve done so before, successfully, and they’ll do it again. Money to pay for the top-class lawyers who will fight their cause will flow like rivers from obscenely wealthy overseas asylums for rich animal abusers. Appeal after appeal will prolong the process for years if not decades. The South African legal system moves at a glacial pace.

But as the months and years drift by perhaps the next step will be for the committee to bring the report to Parliament for debate in the National Assembly. In that case, if you have tears, prepare to shed them now, because the debate will immediately become racialised and politicised.

South Africa’s torturous history of colonialism and apartheid has resulted in a government which is obsessed with ‘transformation.’ That is the buzzword to legitimise the taking of wealth from white people and redistributing it to people of colour i.e. ‘previously disadvantaged’.
In plain words the debate in the National Assembly will not be about animal welfare or ethics.
It will be about the racial composition of the lion farming industry.

And therein lies a huge weakness which will be seized upon, because this industry is - in the words of former DEA Minister Edna Molewa, ‘substantially un-transformed.’ Ie the people making money out of lion farming and canned hunting are almost entirely white.

Once the debate moves in that direction, then there is a dagger pointing at the heart of lion farming in the form of the new much-publicised government policy to expropriate land owned by white people without compensation and to redistribute it to people of colour. Lion farmers and canned hunting operators have far more to fear from land expropriation without compensation than they do from animal activists. Ironically, it may be the result of animal activism that lion hunting farms find themselves at  the top of the list for expropriation.

What might happen to the lions in captivity if and when lion farms are expropriated does not bear thinking about.

What if I am wrong? What if Parliament eventually (years if not a decade) passes legislation which survives all the legal challenges, to bring lion farming and canned hunting to an end? We would still have to restrain our jubilation because one should never underestimate the resourcefulness of animal abusers. There would be a flurry of midnight flights, the captive Lions in South Africa would disappear like Scotch mist (or government funds in a state owned enterprise,) and the hunting magazines would suddenly be full of advertisements for lion hunts in neighbouring territories where government is weak, such as Mozambique or Zimbabwe.

Please don’t think that I’m saying: what’s the point? let’s all give up. On the contrary, it was our efforts as activists that resulted in this important colloquium and in the 20 years or so that I have been campaigning against lion trophy hunting, I have seen enormous changes for the better in terms of public awareness. Our efforts have raised public ire to the point where the hunting industry has split down the middle, with one half joining the clarion call for a ban. (not from any motive of animal welfare, to be sure, but rather out of fear that public disgust at canned lion hunting will drag down the whole trophy hunting business)

We must redouble our efforts to raise public awareness and to get foreign countries to ban the import of lion trophies.

​Bringing to an end the captive breeding of lions for hunting purposes is a lifetime’s work and there are no quick fixes.  In five years’ time, the reality is that canned lion hunting will still be happening.
So we go on…
 

​                                       Aftermath
         
The Parliamentary Colloquium on lion farming in SA.
by 
​Chris Mercer.

I’ve been re-reading the transcript of the submissions made to the Portfolio Committee of Parliament in Cape Town recently.

Some of the arguments advanced on behalf of the hunting industry made me wonder if they were written by a five-year-old child, whereas in fact they were made by senior officeholders of hunting associations. Tragically, unbelievably, these puerile arguments are accepted as gospel by conservation structures in South Africa. At least, I think they’re childish - you make up your own mind.

Here are some howlers, along with my comments.

1. “It was not the practice of canned lion hunting that is damaging the conservation image of the country, it is the activists who keep publicising it. Government should ban people from commenting negatively on canned hunting. South Africa should only show the good news and kill the bad news.”                                                         

My comment:
Yes, this was a serious submission made to Parliament by an executive member of a hunting association. I did not make this up!
Do I really need to comment? I rest my case on this. Sigh!
   
2.  “The 1000 people who work in the lion sector have a right to earn a living.”     
My comment:
What a sweeping statement! So everyone has a right to make a living in any way he chooses. Like robbing banks?  Surely, this right applies only to occupations that are not harmful. Otherwise on his claim you could argue that everyone involved in human trafficking or drug dealing had a right to earn a living in that way. (Oh by the way, the number of workers is grossly exaggerated – a few hundred at most directly involved in hunting.

3.  The DEA should not pay any attention to foreign NGOs who give input on how African wildlife should be managed. The DEA should only listen to Africans. And the Chinese.  Not to any western colonial national.

My comment:
Does that also mean that the SA government should not listen to any foreign hunting organisations such as Safari Club International?  Oops – a little bit of special pleading here in an effort to play the race card.

4.  Hunting brings in more than 1 billion rands of foreign currency to South Africa every year.

My comment:
Ah! So now the criterion for legitimacy is how much money you make. The argument is that, if the industry makes a lot of money for its members, it should not be banned. On that argument the sale of narcotic drugs should be legalised immediately since drug dealers surely make many times more money than the lion hunting industry. And what about the human trafficking industry? Should we also legalise that as well because it makes a lot of money for its perpetrators?

Surely the question is not how much money an industry makes but whether it is harmful. That is why human trafficking and drug dealing are banned and it is why canned lion hunting and lion farming should be banned too. How much money the industry makes is completely and utterly irrelevant. We are talking conservation here, not finance.

5.  Lions should be hunted because otherwise they would be “an economic burden on South Africa. One lion consumes food to the value of R120,000 per year. That equated to R250 million in economic value that they ate.”

My comment:
Again, I’m not making this crap up. We must kill lions because they eat too much?  Really?  Seriously?  This is taken verbatim from the transcript.

And it is not only the hunting fraternity that is guilty of muddled reasoning and crooked thinking. Here from the hallowed halls of Oxford University comes a wondrous academic who advances the following perverse reason to promote canned lion hunting and the lion bone trade.

6.  According to the precautionary approach, Dr Sas-Rolfes stressed, it should be incumbent upon proponents of a zero quota to provide assurances, backed up by scientific evidence, that it would not lead to expansion of illegal trade and the poaching of wild lions or other wild cat species.

My Comment:
Wow! Let’s unpack this little gem of logic. The cautionary rule is a law in South Africa that requires conservationists to take action against any potential threat even if there is insufficient scientific evidence to quantify or measure it. It is a law which is designed to protect the environment, not the commercial interests of polluters or animal abusers.

The good academic takes this law and applies it to an assumption which he has made that the killing of a tame lion prevents the hunting of wild lion. There is not a shred of scientific evidence to support his assumption; on the contrary, tiger farming for the sale of body parts is banned by CITES because everyone knows that allowing a legal trade in animal parts will inevitably stimulate an illegal trade.

Having made a false assumption, he then stands the precautionary rule on its head and applies it against conservationists who warn of the dangers of allowing the export of lion bones to Asia.
In other words, he is taking a precautionary rule designed to protect the environment and using it to protect the commercial interests of lion farmers and canned lion hunting operators.

So on the basis of such childish arguments as these, the SA government Department of Environment (DEA) not only permits, but vigorously promotes a lion farming industry which:

• Inflicts routine cruelty on helpless animals on an industrial scale;
• Sabotages the efforts of the Department of Tourism to promote SA as a responsible tourism destination;
• Causes controversy, confusion and division in conservation
• Has no conservation benefit; and
• May very likely stimulate the illegal trade in body parts of big cats globally.

Oh! I also found some other interesting snippets in the transcripts:
SANBI (the scientific authority of the South African National Biodiversity Institute) who was consulted by the DEA in regard to the quota for lion bone trade to Asia, indicated that “it was not answerable to the public.” Wow! Even though it operates 100% on public funds? Is that acceptable?

The TOPS (threatened or protected species) regulations were only implemented in some provinces eleven years later after being promulgated. Wow! Again! How could it take these SA provincial conservation structures eleven years to start implementing their own regulations? On such an important matter? How dysfunctional is that?

Conclusion
At the end of the transcript the committee announced that a report on the colloquium would be prepared and handed to the committee for further consideration. That has been delayed – perhaps partly due to the untimely death of Minister Edna Molewa, but is expected to be handed to the Portfolio Committee next week.

Then what? I’d love to be an optimist but I suspect that in five years time lion farming will still be flourishing in SA.
 

Visit to Inverdoorn private game reserve by Chris Mercer  (CACH) and Toni Brockhoven (BWC).

On the 4th and 5th September, we visited the resort at the request of the new owner, Searl Derman, in order to assess the existing Cheetah program and to advise on any changes needed to comply with fair trade tourism guidelines.

Inverdoorn is a big five upmarket resort in the Tankwa Karoo near Sutherland. The lodge sits on a vast expanse of flat Karoo veld, 10,000 ha in all. The attempted poaching of one of their rhino some years ago featured in Richard Peirce’s book Poachers Moon.

About ten minutes drive away from the town of Touws Rivier lies Aquila private game reserve which is a successful ecotourism resort built up by Searl from scratch over the last 21 years. Aquila is the busiest private game reserve in Africa. A large number of tourists visit every year and it provides employment for around 500 staff.

Searl has bought Inverdoorn for a number of reasons. It is not far away from his main business (Aquila) and it fits with a business plan to offer a more remote and more exclusive five-star resort as part of a package tour.

The ethics committee
However he was concerned that the existing cheetah program might be seen as unethical and could damage his reputation so he contacted me and I suggested that he set up a completely independent ethics committee to advise him and to deal with any complaints about ethics, leaving him free to focus on business, while knowing that the welfare of the animals is not being compromised.

Toni Brockhoven of Beauty Without Cruelty in Cape Town, and wildlife documentary author and activist Richard Peirce have kindly agreed to join me to form the committee.

The cheetah program
We had a good look at the existing cheetah program. There are 15 animals in captivity. They are cared for by an experienced and dedicated handler. There is an excellent quality of life enhancement program which ensures that they remain in good condition. There are no volunteers; all the Cheetah staff are full time employees.

Every evening at 5 o’clock, as part of their exercise regimen and for rehabilitation purposes , a number of cheetah have to run for their supper, chasing a lure down a runway at up to 120 km an hour. At the end of the run they are rewarded with their food. There is no interaction with tourists who merely observe from a vantage point on top of a building halfway along the run. This ritual happens every evening regardless of whether there are tourists there to observe.

The holding camps are spacious and clean. On a daily basis in the mornings, cheetah are taken out into the veld in the reserve where they are allowed to run free and do whatever they want, chase after prey or lie under trees, depending on their mood. There are no ethical reasons why tourists should not accompany the habituated cheetah on these walks through the bush.
The same thing happens at Samara game reserve near Graaf Reinet where the famous cheetah Sybella was quite happy to allow tourists to sit a little distance away from her and to accompany her at some distance while she went about her daily tasks as a wild self-sustaining animal.

What worried Searl was that some tourists have been allowed in the past to touch the cheetah on these occasions, although under very strict control by the handler,  who would only allow touching when the animals were relaxed and purring and not at all if she felt that the animal was not in the mood.

Unfortunately, the very word ‘touching’ conjures up unacceptable images of lion cubs being passed around clumsy tourists in order to externalise the cost of rearing them to canned huntable size.

However the modern view - and the ethics of animal welfare are still evolving - is that any form of touching should not be allowed and we advised the staff.  Searl had already stopped any touching. Toni of Beauty Without Cruelty confirms that no physical interaction from the public must take place, regardless.  Inverdoon has already alerted the previously- booked patrons that no direct animal interaction will take place as previously advertised, but that tourists will enjoy an educational cheetah tour which includes watching them run. Visitors are also taken in a safari vehicle to see the cheetah being prepared for their life back in the wild.

Speaking personally my concern is less for animal ethics as a dogma and far more on whether the animals are content and well cared for.
And I must say that the Inverdoorn cheetah are probably the luckiest captive cheetah in South Africa in terms of condition, care, contentment, and quality of life enhancement programs. These animals will never be hunted.
​
Searl has already decided that he will predator- fence up to 5000 hectares into which he will import a suitable prey base such as springbok, blesbok and ostrich. Then a family of his captive Cheetah will be released to live wild and free.

LION ECONOMICS – ECONOMICAL WITH THE TRUTH
by
Richard Hargreaves
​ 
As you will probably be aware the South African Government issued a Media Statement on 16th July 2018 stating:
 
Minister Edna Molewa establishes lion bone export quota for 2018
 
In accordance with advice provided by the Scientific Authority, the Department of Environmental Affairs has determined the 2018 lion bone export quota. The approved quota of 1500 skeletons (with or without the head) is effective from 7 June 2018.
 
This was further to a South African Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA) statement dated 28th June 2017 setting the initial quota in 2017 as follows:
 
Lion export quota for 2017 communicated to the CITES Secretariat in line with CITES requirements
 
The Scientific Authority, through the National Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) Management Authority, has determined the 2017 export quota for lion bones and other derivatives of lion.
 
A quota of 800 skeletons (with or without skull) of captive bred lion has been determined.
 
This legal quota system was established at the 17th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to CITES in Johannesburg in the autumn of 2016 as part of a package of fudge measures to try to keep the conservation community sweet when, for the second time in CITES history, a valid and fully justified proposal to give lions the same ‘protection’ as all the other big cats under CITES / International Law was rejected to keep the massively rich and influential lion trophy hunting industry sweet.
 
When asked how its initial 2017 legal export quota of 800 captive-bred lion skeletons was established the DEA responded by stating:
 
“The South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) reviewed available information regarding the export of lion bones, lion skeletons and captive produced lion hunting trophies from South Africa between 2005 and September 2016. Based on the CITES trade database information and two studies, (i) Bones of Contention: An assessment of South African trade in African lion bone and other body parts and (ii) Southern African Wildlife trade: an analysis of CITES trade in the South African Development Community (SADC) region – a study commissioned by the Department of Environmental Affairs and the South African National Biodiversity Institute, the Scientific Authority recommended an export quota of 800 skeletons per year. The Scientific Authority considered the recommendation by SANBI, and the comments were received by the Department of Environmental Affairs and made a recommendation to the Minister, relating to the final quota.”
 
In other words it was partly based on the 2015 ‘Bones of Contention’ report written for the TRAFFIC NGO by Dr Vivienne Williams from the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, Andrew Newton from TRAFFIC and Andrew Loveridge and David Macdonald from the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU) within Oxford University’s Department of Zoology. 
 
‘Bones of Contention’ was written further to contributions by the likes of Werner Boing who has granted probably hundreds of lion export permits from South Africa over the years and Pieter Potgeiter who was the previous President of the South African Predator Association (effectively South Africa’s canned hunting and captive lion breeding industry’s own governing body). As a result, perhaps unsurprisingly, with Williams as the lead author, ‘Bones of Contention’ concluded that:
 
“In South Africa, the trade in Lion bones currently has a negligible impact on wild Lion populations. The trade in bones appears to be a sustainable by-product of the sizeable trophy hunting industry in South Africa, and Lions that are hunted are almost exclusively captive-bred.”
 
For the recent quota increase from 800 to 1,500 South African captive-bred lions whose skeletons may legally be exported in 2018, the DEA relied upon a 2017 report for the South African National Biodiversity Institute (SANBI) titled ‘South African Lion Bone Trade – A Collaborative Lion Bone Research Project – Interim Report 1’.  Again Dr Vivienne Williams was the lead author but for this one she was ably assisted by Michael ‘t Sas-Rolfes who is currently embedded as a Research Fellow within Oxford University’s ‘Oxford Martin Programme on the Illegal Wildlife Trade’. With a postgraduate degree in Environmental Resource Economics, ‘t Sas-Rolfes has been pro-trade for decades and is one of the few people outside of Asia to openly come out in favour of Asian tiger farming.
 
The 16th July 2018 Government Media Statement stated that Williams and ‘t Sas-Rolfes’ 2017 study revealed that:
 

• Due to quota restrictions, there appears to be a growing stockpile of lion bones in South Africa;

 

• There has been no discernible increase in poaching of wild lion in South Africa, though there appears to be an increase in poaching of captive bred lions for body parts (heads, faces, paws and claws);

 

• The captive breeding industry is in a state of flux as breeders respond in different ways to the US’ restrictions on trophies as well as the imposition of the skeleton export quota.

 
It also revealed that there were 14 applicants for the 2017 quota of 800 skeletons (four of whom had already exported lion bones to Asia in the past) and that the quota had been filled in less than two months. As a result a recent lion report for the upcoming CITES meeting in Sochi in October reveals that ‘t Sas-Rolfes will shortly publish a piece advising that:
 
“This constriction of the legal trade could lead to an illegal trade sourced both from South Africa’s captive population and from wild lions across the continent.”
 
I remember liaising with one of the world’s key lion scientists back in the early days of the lion bone trade out of South Africa who thought along similar lines, that maybe a captive-bred lion bone industry out of South Africa was a ‘necessary evil’ to soak up demand so it didn’t impact upon wild lion populations. I also remember the basic economic principle from my school days that supply feeds and stimulates demand.  No doubt ‘t Sas-Rolfes would tell you that’s outdated now but it’s one of the very first things they teach you in High School level economics and sure enough it’s now being proven by reports of entire wild lion skeletons being removed after illegal killings from both Mozambique and the Kruger National Park.
 
Also, those ‘US restrictions’ referred to, which came into effect in January 2016 prohibiting US hunters from importing lion trophies from captive-bred sources, they were lifted by the Trump administration in March of this year…
 
Further, as we’ve been telling the conservation NGOs for years, these lion skeletons are passed off as tiger within tiger products once they reach Asia. As a result that massive South African injection into the supply side of the Asian tiger trade then feeds and stimulates demand for more tiger products, thereby increasing the poaching pressure on the world’s last 3,000 tigers and making this lion bone trade a far greater threat to wild tigers than it currently is to wild lions.
 
So what is CITES doing about all of this and this massive quota increase? For their Sochi meeting in October and no doubt for their next big tri-annual meeting of the Conference of the Parties in Sri Lanka next May they simply recommend that:
 
“In order to improve traceability Parties [to CITES] that are importing lion specimens from South Africa are encouraged to use the information generated by South Africa’s Barcode of Wildlife Project that South Africa developed for priority CITES species including lions and including DNA analyses of lions bred in captivity and exported as skeletons.”
 
So in other words, a green light for those 1,500 lion skeleton exports this year and no doubt further significant quota increases in the years to come, but for each of those lions who were the subject of lives uniquely their own and who didn’t want to die just stick a barcode on them after slaughter...

​Kicking up dust – some thoughts on the Colloquium held in Cape Town on the 21st and 22nd August 2018.

Members of Parliament who sit on the Portfolio Committee for Environmental Affairs were present, including the Chairman, who chaired the workshop.

The subject of the colloquium (I hate that pretentious Latinism – it was a workshop plain and simple) was” Captive Lion Breeding for Hunting in South Africa: Harming or Promoting the Conservation Image of the Country.”

The meeting was attended by many interested bodies, including government, NGOs and other stakeholders. About two hundred people in attendance altogether.

The Keynote Speaker was Edna Molewa, the Minister of Environmental Affairs. Other speakers included  DEA, Dept of Agriculture (DAFF), EMS and Ban Animal Trading, Born Free Foundation UK, EWT, Don Pinnock, SanParks, Brand SA, and of course all the hunting orgs,  PHASA,SAPA, CPHC-SA, International Council for Game and Wildlife Conservation, and CHASA.

Molewa claimed:

1. that government support for the hunting industry is rooted in science (whatever that means, but I would say that if that were true, the root never grew, blossomed or flowered, and has suffered root-rot)
2. that canned hunting has been banned under the Threatened Or Protected Species – TOPS –regulations
3. that the bad publicity surrounding Lion Trophy hunting in South Africa obscures the many benefits that lion farming brings in terms of ecotourism, job creation and conservation
4. that the ethical side of lion farming and canned hunting has nothing whatever to do with her since she considers animal welfare and health issues to fall within the mandate of the Department of Agriculture (DAFF)
5. that lion farming and canned hunting do not pose a threat to wild lion populations
6. that lion breeding, hunting and trade are well-regulated, and
7. that the quota system for lion bone exports are ‘a control measure and a monitoring tool.’

Other hunting apologists contended that a ban on line farming would merely result in wildlife traffickers turning to wild lions in order to meet the demand in Asia for lion bones.

The problem with these workshops and one of the reasons why I did not attend personally, is that the flaws in the hunting arguments cannot adequately be dealt with in that forum, because the serious and time-consuming business of exposing the flaws gets crowded out in the general clamour of so many attendees.

For example, Minister Molewa’s bald statement that canned hunting has been banned needed to be unpacked. Her claim is based on a narrow and artificial interpretation of what constitutes a canned hunt; one that differs from that which is accepted by everyone else in the conservation spectrum. She argues in effect that hunts take place in terms of permits which are issued pursuant to the TOPS regulations, and are therefore legal. However if one of the conditions of the permits is violated, for example a failure to report the hunt to the local provincial conservation service within the time limit stipulated in the permit, then she considers that to have been a canned hunt.
In other words she conflates ‘canned’ with ‘unlawful’ in the sense of contrary to permit conditions. This is of course a deliberate and misleading way of missing the whole point, which is the absence of fair chase.
It is, in short, a lie.

And all the other claims listed by her are equally flawed. The excellent Working Paper by Ross Harvey, titled The Economics of Captive Predator Breeding in SA, effectively demolishes the Ministers contention that lion farming benefits SA by ecotourism, job creation and ‘conservation.’  

Ah but now, to kick up dust and counter Ross Harvey’s cogent criticisms, comes a representative of the sustainable use gang based at Oxford University, argued that banning lion farming would cause an upsurge in the poaching of wild lions in order to meet the demand for lion bones in Asia. In other words, he maintains that captive lion farming provides a buffer against the poaching of wild lions.

There is not a shred of scientific evidence to justify this extravagant claim. No one has done a study of the size of the lion bone market in Asia and whether there are enough lions on the planet to meet that insatiable demand. Without knowing the limits of the Asian market one cannot argue that the lion bones taken from captive lions will satisfy the market and meet demand so that there would be no need for poaching of wild lions.

On the contrary we know that wildlife trafficking syndicates are motivated by profit and it is much cheaper and therefore more profitable to poach a wild lion than to pay out thousands for the carcass of a captive lion. Reports coming to us from across southern Africa indicate that the poaching of wild lions for their carcasses is already happening. However because this has not been studied by the sustainable use gang and sanctified by a peer-reviewed paper, these inconvenient facts may be swept under the carpet as merely ‘anecdotal.’

What I was afraid of right from the outset, with my experience of dealing with South African conservation services, is that at the end of the workshop the waters would have been so badly muddied that independent observers and stakeholders would emerge confused.

The two opposing camps, the hunters and the animal welfarists, are not going to be affected by anything said at the workshop. Their positions are firmly entrenched.
It is the other independent attendees who need to be convinced. And unfortunately, the reports coming through to me are that the hunting industry has kicked up sufficient dust to confuse the independent observers and to ensure that they do not take sides and throw their weight behind the campaign to ban lion farming and canned hunting.

Nothing new has come out of this ill-termed Colloquium. Both sides have merely restated their arguments and counter arguments and the independent stakeholders have left confused.

I do not see anything positive coming out of this workshop other than perhaps a symbolic tightening up of regulations which are already merely aspirational since no one pays much attention to them and enforcement is notable for its absence.
​
I would love to end on a positive note. But so long as the hunting industry maintains its stranglehold on conservation structures in South Africa and indeed globally, bunfights like the Colloquium will always be much ado about nothing.

As most will know, there will shortly be a Colloquium (workshop) at the SA Parliament.
​
CACH UK has prepared a 50 page review of bad publicity for Brand SA to inform the Portfolio Committee.

Toni Brockhoven of Beauty Without Cruelty in Cape Town has kindly offered to print out and bind this seminal review, and hand deliver it to the Parliamentary Secretary for the Portfolio Committee.
Along with this covering letter:

Letter to SA Minister of Tourism
cc: Members of Portfolio Committee of Parliament for the Environment

 Dear Hon Minister
How the DEA is sabotaging the SA Department of Tourism: see the annexed Nash report from CACH.

Everyone knows that lion breeding and canned lion hunting in South Africa has attracted significant international criticism, and that this has increasingly damaged South Africa’s image abroad. Yet your Department spends millions every year trying to promote tourism here.

What you, and in particular your colleagues in other departments, may be less well aware of is the sheer scale of the overseas reaction. When you see the extent of the damage to SA brand image, you will be shocked.

To demonstrate this, retired lawyer David Nash of Campaign Against Canned Hunting ( CACH) UK has prepared the attached review. It lists the huge range of import bans, airline trophy bans, negative press coverage, anti-canned hunting campaigns, protest marches, tourist industry views and social media criticism.

Once you read this important research, you will clearly see how Min Edna Molewa's DEA is undermining your efforts.

Further, the damage to Brand SA adversely impacts Responsible Tourism - the fastest growing sector of the global tourism industry.

Hunting PR, swallowed by the DEA and other SA conservation structures, claims that canned hunting is essential to the South African economy. CACH strongly disagrees: rather than benefiting the South African economy, captive lion breeding and canned hunting is a wasteful use of land and significantly limits employment and up-skilling opportunities when compared with other farms of farming and ethical wildlife tourism.

This Review demonstrates a clear economic case for banning lion farming (through a managed phasing out) and canned lion hunting.
 
You can view and download the whole 50-page report here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/d6nymf20qtpyaut/CACH%20Brand%20SA%20Review%20August%202018.pdf?dl=0
 

There is such a hype in animal welfare circles over the forthcoming 'Colloquium' on lion farming in SA, that I felt compelled to try to offer some cautionary opinion.

Especially because there seems to be some puzzlement on why I am not going to Cape Town for this event. It is about lion farming, right? Surely CACH should be there, right?

This report explains what it is about:
​www.thesouthafrican.com/sas-macabre-captive-lion-breeding-industry-to-be-investigated-by-parliament/

I don’t know why there has to be such a pompous and pretentious Latinism to describe what is clearly a workshop. And notice that the agenda is restricted to the effect of lion farming upon South Africa’s conservation image.

The Department of Tourism is not even mentioned or represented.

So do not think for one second that this chat group is going to lead to a ban on lion farming or on the trophy hunting of lions. I'm writing this blog post because I think that there is an unrealistic expectation from members of the animal welfare community about the purpose and results of this workshop.

The hunting industry is at this workshop in force to ensure that the message gets across that responsible trophy hunting is a wonderful tool of conservation, job creation, foreign currency generation, blah blah.  And they’ll call for regulation of lion farming, not to ban canned hunting, but to minimise the bad publicity that it brings to all hunting and the threat felt by the hunting industry that the excesses of canned lion hunting will pull down the whole trophy hunting industry.

People who live in the developed world where parliamentary committees are important and can actually effect change will have unrealistic expectations for this workshop.

I have been to Parliament to talk to members of the portfolio committee on the environment and I can tell you that these are not animal lovers. Or in my experience qualified to understand what true conservation is. One of the MP’s looked me in the eye and asked: ‘what’s wrong with hunting. I hunt.’ Talk about the cruelty to helpless animals involved and their eyes glaze over.

Conservation as you and I understand it, which is the preservation of natural functioning ecosystems for their own sakes, is a totally alien concept to this government in general, and to the portfolio committee in particular. Like the DEA, they've swallowed the pro-hunting narrative.

This workshop is about public relations surrounding the hunting industry and how to improve it.  Nothing more.

Indeed, Minister Molewa has publicly stated that biodiversity is merely a resource that needs to be exploited and transformed (a euphemism for transferring income to previously disadvantaged South Africans)

So please put this workshop in that political context.

The most effective tactic for CACH to adopt is to circulate David Nash’s compendium of bad publicity to Brand South Africa, a comprehensive list of all the poor publicity that Brand SA gets from lion farming, canned lion hunting and the hideous lion bone trade.  And that is what we'll do - even though this workshop is not about the financial damage to the tourism industry.

If it were the Department of tourism would be involved.

Add to all this the fact that the portfolio committee would be unable to change anything even if it wanted to. Conservation structures in South Africa have been utterly and completely captured by the hunting industry and any attempt to crack down on lion farming and canned hunting would be met with a torrent of lobbying and litigation:-
‘You gave us permits to breed lions for hunting and for lion bones’, they would argue, ‘so if you want to close us down we want compensation.’

So in short I regard this workshop is a total waste of time. I cannot justify the cost and time involved to attend. If I thought there was a sliver of hope that I could achieve anything by attending, I would be there like a shot. But to spend a day travelling to Cape Town, two or three nights in a hotel and another day travelling back home, all of five days away from the work which I regard as really important, is out of the question.

I'm not telling any of you not to go. Attending will certainly do no harm. Subjecting the members of the committee to something other than hunting propaganda would certainly do no harm - if only to cause them some bafflement.

And if I regard the Portfolio Committee as a, no doubt well-intentioned, but woefully un-qualified and ineffective bunch of political appointees utterly incapable of understanding why it is in the national interest to ban lion farming, why, I may be wrong.

                                   
My blog calling for the abolition of CITES (http://www.cannedlion.org/blog/several-good-reasons-to-abolish-cites)  has predictably provoked a furious response from some CITES apologists. This one is typical:
This is not a problem of the concept of CITES but rather a problem with the enforcement of CITES by the signatories of the treaty. As a conservation biologist I'm telling you that to say CITES should be thrown out is unbelievably irresponsible. If you have no CITES (or similar international checks on import/export of wildlife products) things WILL be catastrophically worse for many many endangered species and there will be no legal recourse. You need to focus on the corruption within the SA government.

Okay, so apart from the fact that I’m not a conservation biologist and therefore how dare I have an independent opinion on CITES, let’s take this little billet douce apart.

First can you really say with a straight face that there’s nothing wrong with the concept of CITES?
CITES is a trade organisation, and CITES officials never miss an opportunity to defend their irrelevance by pointing out that they are a trade body and not a conservation organisation.

So am I the only person in the conservation universe that finds it bizarre and ludicrous that national  conservation policies all around the world are being determined not by a global conservation body but by a trade organisation?

Wouldn’t it be better if we abolished the trade organisation and replaced it with a supranational nature protection organisation? Wouldn’t that be more logical? And effective?

I could write a book on all the adverse impacts of measuring conservation through the narrow and oblique lens of trade? Trade regards nature as a commodity. All of nature is regarded as a mere resource to be harvested. Adopting an insane policy of sustainable use is intended to regulate trade flows ie don’t trade too much in the species or there won’t be any left to trade next year.

Second, looking at conservation through the narrow prism of a specialist academic field such as biology restricts your ability to see the bigger picture. To see the bigger picture and to produce policies with a depth of vision and a broad sweep of purpose requires a generalist - not a specialist.

For example, they don’t teach you about the problems of scale in biology. You would not know that an increase in scale of an organisation causes an increase in risk and inefficiency which is not linear, but exponential. Because of this CITES was doomed to fail at the outset.

At a plenary session of CITES, your lion conservationist will find himself sitting next to a Japanese piano maker whose concern has nothing to do with Lions and everything to do with availability of hardwoods. And there are, what, 5000 other people all wanting to be heard above the clamour?  It is impossible.

The result is that decision-making moves into the wings in the form of horse trading ie “I’ll vote for that if you will vote for this.” Horse trading is certainly the essence of trading but it has f*ck- all to do with conservation. So lion conservation is traded away.

Third, you believe that without CITES legal recourse ‘things’ would be catastrophically worse. I beg to differ. Wildlife traffickers run rings around the CITES bureaucracy. By its mere existence CITES is counter-productive, because conservationists tend to leave it to CITES to make policy decisions for them, instead of taking effective, independent and proactive measures to counter known threats.

CITES has become a substitute for true conservation; a false God worshipped by specialists and other conventional thinkers.

I appreciate that I’m a lone voice crying in the wilderness and that the conservation herd is marching to the CITES tune, but that doesn’t mean that I’m wrong.
20 years ago I was campaigning for the SA government to ban lion farming because it had nothing to do with conservation; it institutionalised routine cruelty to helpless animals, and it would eventually adversely impact wild lion populations. At the time I was regarded by SA conservationists as a fringe extremist. Now however, the whole conservation herd is singing from that hymn sheet.

I have little doubt that what starts off with free thinking by independent generalists will eventually become the prevailing paradigm, and then CITES will be toppled and replaced by a proper supranational conservation organisation.
​
We do not need a trade protection body; we need a Nature protection organisation.
 

The photo above shows the ugly reality of so-called 'lion conservation' in South Africa.
​CITES, DEA, national and provincial conservation structures - abolish the whole damn lot.

An extraordinarily detailed and comprehensive report on the lion bone trade has now been published.

http://emsfoundation.org.za/wp-content/uploads/THE-EXTINCTION-BUSINESS-South-Africas-lion-bone-trade.pdf

Prepared by Michele Pickover (EMS) and Smaragda Louw (BAT) and their teams, this report exposes the utter futility of the existing CITES –led conservation system.  A group of passionate ladies has done what conservation structures have failed to do, namely, investigate the lion bone trade.

No magic involved. The activists simply took the CITES permits which are showered on animal abusers like confetti and verified the information given therein. They had to squeeze copies of the permits out of a secretive and uncooperative SA Department of Environmental Affairs by means of parliamentary questions and applications under the Promotion of Access to Information Act.

They then checked the information given by the exporters and importers of the lion bones. For example if the importer was stated to be Woo Flung Dung at a particular address in Lao PDR or Vietnam, their investigator simply visited the address.

Surprise! Surprise! Most if not all of the names and addresses were either fictitious or false in material respects and linked to internationally known criminal wildlife traffickers. In other words, the entire conservation structure right from CITES down to national and provincial conservationists has been exposed to be a useless bureaucracy. It is quite apparent that CITES permits are being issued to the wrong people for no good reason without any attempt at verification.

Taxpayers’ money that funds these are useless provincial, national and international structures are completely wasted. All existing conservation structures should be abolished on the ground that they serve no useful purpose and replaced with structures that actually try to protect our wildlife.

The narrow interpretation of sustainable use adopted by the South African Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA) and provincial structures render themselves irrelevant. How can one possibly tell whether species are sustainably used by simply counting numbers? Surely the condition of the animals should be considered. Are they free-roaming and functioning in the wild?  Or are they miserable prisoners being kept by the hundred in small cages at lion abattoirs awaiting slaughter?

South African conservation structures say that this makes no difference to them because the condition and welfare of the animals is “outside their mandate”.  So what is the point of them?

If CITES and all conservation structures in Africa and Asia were abolished tomorrow there would not even be a ripple. Nothing would change. The free-for-all that currently exists would simply continue, because rapacious and ruthless Asian wildlife traffickers are always ten steps ahead of the useless bureaucracies that pretend to control them.

A few activists have done more for lion conservation than the whole elaborate, bloated, dysfunctional conservation system in South Africa. It would be comical if it were not so tragic.

 
The link to Richard’s book where people can find out more info and buy online is: http://www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za/book/cuddle-me-kill-me/9781775845935  or the shortened version is:https://goo.gl/iDPwMh
 
Richards schedule so far is:
Friday May 11th – LHR to JHB
Saturday May 12th –KINGSMEAD BOOK FAIR 09h30
Sunday May 13th – Live interview on Radio 702 at 06h30
Monday May 14th – FGASA (Field Guide Association of South Africa) TALK evening 18h00 (Tickets R50 for non FGASA & STRUIK NATURE CLUB MEMBERS
Wednesday May 16th – KALK BAY BOOKS LAUNCH Richard in conversation with Don Pinnock. 18h00 for 18h30
Thursday May 17th –BOOK COTTAGE LAUNCH Hermanus 17h30 for 18h00
Friday May 18th – 13h00 – 14h00 FRANSCHHOEK LITERARY FESIVAL Four way discussion, Richard Peirce, Ian Michler, Don Pinnock & Josh Crickmay. Why should we care? Tickets available on www.webtickets.co.za (under Franshhoek Literary Festival, under the date of the talk & then the name of the talk - Tickets are R70)
Saturday May 19th – 17h30 – 18h15 FRANSCHHOEK LITERARY FESIVAL three way discussion. Tamara Lee-Pine Williams, Jame Clarke & Richard Peirce ‘Cuddle Me Kill Me’ Tickets available on webtickets(under Franshhoek Literary Festival, under the date of the talk & then the name of the talk – Tickets are R70)
Thursday May 24th – Monday 28th inclusive – Kalahari
Wednesday May 30th – WEDNESDAY TALK AT KIRSTENBOSCH BOTANICA GARDENS 10H30
Friday June 1st –V&A with FOUR PAWS, fly back to U.K.
 
Richard’s events at Franschhoek Literary Festival are:
Why we should care
Friday, 18 May
13:00: -14:00:
Travellers Lodge
 
Our planet's wildlife is under threat from poaching, climate change, and urbanisation. Tamara LePine-Williams discusses why this matters with Richard Peirce(Nicole), James Clarke and Josh Crickmay (Josh Crickmay's Big Year).
(17:30-18:30) Cuddle Me Kill Me
Saturday, 19 May
17:30 -18:30
Council Chamber
 
Richard Peirce (Cuddle Me Kill Me - A true account of South Africa’s captive lion breeding and canned hunting industry) and wildlife specialist Ian Michler talk toDon Pinnock about the dark world of captive lion breeding. R70 through Webtickets.
Facebook event links to the launches:
https://www.facebook.com/events/2081524098785907/
https://www.facebook.com/events/2031428603783482/
https://www.facebook.com/StruikNatureClub/
​