canned's blog

Dear Mrs Boshoff,

I am writing to you on behalf of the Trustees of the respected international animal welfare and protection grant making charity, the Marchig Animal Welfare Trust.

CANNED LION HUNTING AND THE NEW TOPS REGULATIONS*

The Department of the Environment has published amendments to the Threatened or Protected Species( TOPS) regulations (and given the public 60 days to file comment. 60 days ending 15th June 2013.) Campaign Against Canned Hunting, the NGO that has spent more than a decade exposing the abuses of lion farming and canned lion hunting, has extracted from the 101 page document those provisions that affect lions and comments upon them below.
Main Criticism:-

DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS

THREATENED OR PROTECTED SPECIES REGULATIONS (TOPS)
Members of the public are invited to submit to the Minister, within 60 (sixty) days after the publication of the notice in the Gazette, written comments or inputs to the following addresses:
By e-mail: mboshoff@environment.gov.za or by fax to: (012) 320 7026

Captive Breeding facilities
Sec 26 (3)

MERO MOTU AND THE EXTINCTION OF LIONS .

Allow me to connect the dots to explain how the decision of the S.A. Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) in the canned hunting case could contribute to the extinction of wild lions in S.A.
To recap, the Minister for the Environment (at that time Van Schalkwyk) tried to impose a 24- month wilding rule on the captive lion breeders in the TOPS regulations (TOPS = Threatened Or Protected Species Regs).

Hunting is to conservation what pornography is to art. Watch this video as proof.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tExAqeGXRZU

Herewith the Report that I sent out to my contacts, to give them an idea what went on at the workshop. It is not intended to be comprehensive.

WILDLIFE FORUM

SEEKING SOLUTIONS TO

LIVESTOCK FARMER – WILDLIFE CONFLICT

IN THE WESTERN CAPE

A workshop at Ganzekraal Conference Centre

6 – 7th March 2013

PROGRAMME:

DAY 1: 6th March 2013

09h00 Registration

09h30 Welcome Chairperson - Annie Beckhelling)

09h40 Ice Breaker Facilitator – Nicola King

A NEW PHILOSOPHY FOR CONSERVATION

The doctrine of sustainable use has failed. Everywhere we look we find that in practice, sustainable use has become sustained abuse. Everywhere we look, we see our precious natural heritage being destroyed. Sustainable use has become just a licence to kill. 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 on a global scale.

SHOULD WE REGULATE CANNED HUNTING?

RHINO PSEUDO HUNTER GETS 40 YEARS JAIL.
SOME RANDOM THOUGHTS.
By
Chris Mercer.

The comments posted on social media about the 40 year prison sentence for Chumlong express unbridled schadenfreude. Rarely has a prison sentence kindled such joy in the world of conservation.

RHINO PSEUDO- HUNTING: WHAT WAS CHUMLONG’S REAL CRIME?

The withdrawal of charges against Marnus Steyl and all other accomplices in the much-publicised rhino pseudo-hunting case, raises awkward questions.

Let us leave aside for now questions relating to the dysfunctionality of the criminal justice system in S.A. and how demoralising it must be for detectives who have invested so much effort and expense to build a case against accused persons, only to see the Prosecutor tamely surrender without a fight.