Melissa Bachman and the rape of Africa.

Melissa Bachman is a symbol of everything that is wrong in South African conservation.

Let’s forget the cruelty for a moment.  Let’s also forget that the killer is a celebrity TV presenter.  Let’s just focus on the consequences of her kill, and particularly on these two questions:

How does killing lions save them?

How does captive breeding of lions contribute to conservation?

Money! say the hunters, the lion farmers, the taxidermists, and the gun manufacturers.

Money! Money! Money! says the S.A. Government. It is Big money – but it does not go to real conservation, which is the preservation of natural functioning ecosystems. It goes in to more and more hunting farms.   

So Melissa Bachman proves that conservation has been monetised.  Like the shadow banking system that nearly brought the world’s financial system crashing down in 2008, wildlife has become securitised: sliced, diced and turned into AAA tranches for Asian Crime Syndicates. 

We now have a shadow conservation system.  In this new system, Africa is not a lady to be treated with love and respect.  Africa has been turned into a whore who has to be raped. 

Anyone who speaks out against the rape of African wildlife is labelled a racist, a radical, an extremist – even a terrorist. 

Those who participate in the gang rape are labelled responsible, conservationists.

It gets worse.

Now there are degrees of rape, which are called sustainable use.  Rapists are not supposed to gang rape Mother Africa to death.  She must be left alive so that they can come back and gang rape her again next year. 

Now we can place Melissa Bachman in a conservation context:

1.    She kills a captive bred, tame lion.  A cruel and pointless act that contributes nothing to lion preservation.

2.    She pays large sums of money to enrich lion farmers, whose breeding activities have nothing at all with conservation.

3.    On the contrary some lion farmers even procure poachers in Botswana to kill wild lions and capture cubs for use in their captive breeding farms.

4.    The aggressive lobbying by the hunting industry is a distraction, moving the debate away from the real issues facing lion conservation.  i.e loss of habitat and encroachment by rapidly expanding human populations.

5.    The bones of the lion she shot will be sold to Asian wildlife traffickers, creating yet another threat to lion survival – a booming lion bone trade – and therefore increased wild lion poaching in Africa.

In short Melissa Bachman is directly contributing to the extinction of wild lion populations in Africa.

Karl writes:



Value additions to lion bones sold into the Traditional Chinese Medicine Market:



-   Trophy hunter in SA books a lion ‘hunt’ of a captive borne cat for approximately U$ 8-25 000 dollar (the cost of hunting a female are a fraction of the cost of hunting a male)

-   The taxidermist in collaboration with the hunting company arranges for the sale of the skeleton to a large scale buyer in Laos for  U$ 1500 per skeleton

-   The importer sells skeletons in bags to Vietnamese buyers for  U$ 700-800  per kg ( a hundred kilo lion would yield about 18 kgs of  bone) or a sales price of about U$ 15 000.

-   Vietnamese buyers from Ha Tinh province buy the lion bones by the ton and make down payments in the hundred thousands of dollars

-   Bones are shipped across the Laos - Vietnam border with no CITES permits and in contravention of the treaty

-   In Vietnam  a 15 kg skeleton of a lion is mixed with approx. 6 kgs of turtle shell, deer antler and monkey bone and then the boiled down in large pots over a three day period

-   This yields approx. 6-7 kg of tiger cake which is then cut into chocolate like bars of 100 grams  resulting into 60 or 70 portions which will be marketed as TIGER BONE CAKE.

-   Each bar will be sold at a price of around U$ 1000 buyers who believe in  the value of Traditional Chinese Medicine and the myth associated with the consumption of “tiger cake” which in most cases is added to a  glass of rice wine.

The skeleton of U$ 1500 will have been turned in a value added on product (with the addition of some more bone material of other species) of some U$ 60-70 000.


Value added.

-   Trophy hunter in SA books a lion ‘hunt’ of a captive borne cat for approximately U$ 8-25 000 dollar (the cost of hunting a female are a fraction of the cost of hunting a male)

-   The taxidermist in collaboration with the hunting company arranges for the sale of the skeleton to a large scale buyer in Laos for  U$ 1500 per skeleton

-   The importer sells skeletons in bags to Vietnamese buyers for  U$ 700-800  per kg ( a hundred kilo lion would yield about 18 kgs of  bone) or a sales price of about U$ 15 000.

-   Vietnamese buyers from Ha Tinh province buy the lion bones by the ton and make down payments in the hundred thousands of dollars

-   Bones are shipped across the Laos - Vietnam border with no CITES permits and in contravention of the treaty

-   In Vietnam  a 15 kg skeleton of a lion is mixed with approx. 6 kgs of turtle shell, deer antler and monkey bone and then the boiled down in large pots over a three day period

-   This yields approx. 6-7 kg of tiger cake which is then cut into chocolate like bars of 100 grams  resulting into 60 or 70 portions which will be marketed as TIGER BONE CAKE.

-   Each bar will be sold at a price of around U$ 1000 buyers who believe in  the value of Traditional Chinese Medicine and the myth associated with the consumption of “tiger cake” which in most cases is added to a  glass of rice wine.

The skeleton of U$ 1500 will have been turned in a value added on product (with the addition of some more bone material of other species) of some U$ 60-70 000.

You might find this list of hunting arguments, which I run into time and again in radio or TV debate, and our replies thereto, of interest. 

We want you all to be able to debate the canned hunting issue knowledgeably, if necessary with experienced hunting industry propagandists on national television.

Is ‘Canned hunting’ defined in any SA law? 

No, the new TOPS Regulations do not define 'Canned hunting' so when the Minister says he has banned it, no one can say what he means. Canned hunting is where the target animal is unfairly prevented from escaping the hunter, either by physical constraints (fencing) or by mental constraints (habituation)

I think that inflicting pain and death on unoffending animals for fun (sport) is cruel, and contrary to all major world religions. I also believe that it is a criminal offence under the SA Animals Protection Act of 1962, which makes it an offence to ill-treat domestic animals, livestock - and captive wild animals.



Hunters say that canned lion hunting – trophy hunting – benefits the economy and alleviates poverty.

This government's mindless endorsement of cruel hunting practices will cause a much greater loss than it brings in, of jobs and foreign currency, to our legitimate tourism industry . Unlike eco-tourism, hunting does not have a broad beneficial effect upon communities and the economy. This was conclusively shown in Ian Michler’s well-researched article published in the Africa Geographic magazine a few years ago "To Snap or Snipe." Hunting is not an asset to SA - it is both a threat to conservation and a massive impending threat to our eco-tourism industry. It also presents opportunities for foreign currency fraud on a large scale. (a way to get one's money out of the country)



Lets answer some more common hunting industry claims:



Claim: the captive breeders are boosting lion numbers so they are conservationists.

Answer: once you remove the animals from their natural environment and place them into factory farms to breed living targets, what you have is a straightforward commercial operation. Wild animals are now no longer wild - they have become alternative livestock being farmed. Being proud of boosting the numbers of these miserable prisoners is as absurd as boasting about our huge prison population, and claiming that it proves we are a healthy society.



Claim: every captive lion shot is a wild lion saved.

Answer: Virtually all lions shot in SA are captive bred, so the argument is that sacrificing a SA- bred lion will save a Zambian or Tanzanian lion. This is completely untrue – CITES tags are limited by wild pride populations, and whether there are a million captive lions or none, the same number of CITES tags would be issued.

Actually, the hunting argument is wrong on another ground: it boils down to saying that if other countries fail to protect their lions, then why should we?



Claim: Give it a value and it will be preserved ie the only way to save African wildlife is to systematically hunt it.

Answer: That is as absurd as arguing that it is only whaling which will save the whales. And any reasonable person would say that giving ivory and Rhino horn a high value is only driving elephants and Rhino to the brink of extinction.



Hunters seek to draw a line between 'ethical hunting' and 'canned hunting' based on fair chase.

This approach is transparently flawed. There is no relevant difference between ethical and canned hunting. The infliction of pain and death for fun on unoffending animals is the same. There is still a loss of biodiversity regardless of the method of killing.

All sport hunting is cruel. There is no logical reason to distinguish between cruelty to wild animals, and cruelty to dogs and cats. One reason why we focus on lions is that they are hand-reared, bottle-fed and habituated to humans before being turned out and having the dog pack set on them for hunting. See eg www.africancats-hounds.co.za

Karl Ammann’s Bio


The television series ‘Wildlife Wars’ follows investigative wildlife photographer, Karl Ammann

around the world in pursuit of those who break international law designated to

protect endangered animals.


Some years ago, while living in Africa, the acclaimed Swiss photographer began

turning his camera away from the beautiful to focus on the ugly, a face of reality

no one wanted to see… but which in good conscience he could no longer avoid.

The crimes he discovered compelled him to become a spokesman for the

voiceless, a relentless detective solving mysteries of kidnapping, smuggling and

murder. With his camera as a sidearm Karl follows the trails of those who

commit crimes against nature, against animals.


In Wildlife Wars, Karl Ammann travels the world posing as a wild animal

trader, a bushmeat buyer, or simply a tourist. He’s armed only with his quiet

composure, intelligent questions, and a firm belief in the rights of animals.

Myanmar, the DRC, Cameroon, Egypt are just a few of the targeted nations to

which his investigations will lead us.


Putting himself at risk time and time again, Ammann manages to get where few

people dare to go, using hidden cameras to reveal shocking scenes of animal

exploitation, and recording his thoughts and discoveries in intimate first person

journal entries along the way. As a result, the series has a raw, edgy quality and

is compelling, albeit shocking viewing.


Unabashedly, he shames governments into action

by exposing their failures and the desperate – and illegal -- measures taken by

their citizens.


Believing that humans have a kinship with the animal kingdom that has yet to be

fully understood and explored, Karl has moved beyond the question of animal

rights. The animals he protects he believes are sentient beings, with sophisticated

social structures and rich emotional lives… and like us they are wired to fight for

life.


His efforts have paid off and the world is taking note. For five years in a row

Ammann won the “World in our Hands” category in competition for the BBC

Wildlife Photographer of the Year. Time Magazine has named Karl a “Hero of

the Environment; people who have given the earth a voice.” In 2008 he won the

Humane Society of America’s Genesis Award for the third time. But as

appreciative as he is of these accolades, they are not his reason for doing

investigative reporting. His goal – to put an end to this senseless carnage -- is

one that cannot wait.


Karl Ammann's CV

1948 Born in St Gallen, Switzerland

1972 Attends St Gall Graduate School of Economics

1974 Graduates from Cornell University in hotel management. Moves to Kenya to start work with

Intercontinental. Spends six months helping the Zairean government organize the Rumble in the Jungle.

1978 Moves to Cairo to manage Hotel.

1980 Spends two years in the Masai Mara to do some research on Cheetah resulting in the first

photographic title: Cheetah (1984)

1983 Sets up ecotourism camp in Maasai Mara.

1986 Sets up camp in Virunga Mountains, Rwanda.

1988 Sells camps to concentrate on photography. During journey up the Congo river witnesses

Commercial bush meat trade first hand.

1992 First investigative expedition in Africa, looking into apes orphaned by the bush meat trade.

1995 Initiates campaign with the European Zoo Association leading to a 2 million signature petition

being presented to the European Parliament.

1997 Wins the Dolly Green award for artistic achievement for his work to publicize the bush meat issue.

1998 Starts research into the "The lost Gorillas of Bondo."

1999 Wins the Chimfunshi Pal award in recognition of his work to raise awareness of the plight of chimpanzees.

2000 Wins special Genesis Award for the media work in exposing the bush meat crisis.

2003 Eating Apes published.

2004 Consuming Nature published.

Karl writes:


At the CITES meeting in Bangkok I attended a press conference where  the South African minister for the environment announced that South Africa had tried a wide range of measures to curtail rhino poaching, but she confirmed that so far they  had failed and it was now time to look at the option of legalizing the trade.



Having visited ranches in South Africa with very happy live rhinos enjoying what to me  looked like a good quality of life – and being alive - made for a pretty convincing argument that having a dehorned rhino grazing or browsing with its calf is a better option than  an orphaned calf trying to suckle on its slaughtered mother.



However, on my last trip to Laos and Vietnam in October this year I once  again investigated  the tiger bone trade a TCM product in the same league as rhino horn. I found a situation that might have relevance when discussing the  proposed  legalizing of the rhino horn trade.



But first, a bit more background on the tiger bone/cake trade and demand which is most pronounced in Vietnam with tiger wine being the equivalent in China.



In 2010  a group of Vietnamese journalists managed to get into one of the biggest tiger farms in Laos. They reported in their story that a tiger carcass was selling for U$ 140 a kg.  The buyers, usually from China or Vietnam, chose a live tiger and then pay per kg after the cat has been shot or electrocuted, with 7-10 kg deducted from the weight for the intestines. The price in 2010 per kg was  a little more than the quoted U$ 140 per kg for cats above 100 kgs, a little less for tigers below that.



In October this year,  a Swiss print journalist and myself managed to get a Vietnamese investigator to visit the same farm and film with a hidden camera. In 2010 the Vietnamese writers mentioned a stock of 100 tigers, now the farm has over 300, plus some bears and clouded leopards. The farm is also  being expanded to hold about 700 tigers. This will be achieved with breeding and imports of other captive borne tigers mostly from Thailand and Malaysia . Plus there are  new such  farms  being set up. All of this is illegal under CITES resolution (14.69) passed in 2012 and stating:



“Parties (to the convention) with intensive operations breeding tigers on a commercial scale shall implement measures to restrict captive populations  to a level supportive ONLY FOR CONSERVING WILD TIGERS. Tigers should not be bred for their parts or derivatives.”



There is no explanation how tiger farming in any form will support the conservation of wild tigers since they cannot be reintroduced into the wild and  while commercial captive breeding might  be viewed as having the potential  of  satisfying demand and bringing down prices and as such  taking  the pressure of the wild populations. However  that seems not to be what is advocated with the above notification.



Plus, as with other such regulations the above is totally ignored in countries like Laos where national laws do not seem to apply to rich foreign investors. The CITES enforcement regime would allow a country like Laos to be suspended with all legal aspects of the trade having to stop but that is a last step measure as far as CITES is concerned. The policy seems to have more member states irrespective of their ability and willingness to comply with the convention.



The breeding is obviously commercial, which appears to be legal in Laos and the cats are pumped full of antibiotics with a weekly injections due to past outbreaks of epidemics which killed a lot of tigers in many of the farms  which in some cases also impacted farm workers.  The estimates are that the above mentioned  farm alone sells  several hundred tigers a year to be turned into TCM.



Plus there are the imports of lion bones and skeletons from South Africa which are then also sold as “tiger bone” to be turned into tiger wine (China) or tiger bone cake (Vietnam).  We are talking of several hundred  skeletons being exported and imported on an annual basis  and being told of  a 3 ton shipment about to arrive (CITES trade statistics show the export of 101 full skeletons in 2010 which increased to over 500 in 2011 with no figures available yet for 2012) . When comparing prices between Hanoi,  the Laos and Vietnam border and the ones quoted by the journalist team in 2010 the per kg rate now averages out at U$ 200. A 30% increase in three years despite the drastic increase in supply.



If we then put that in context with the estimate of some 3000 tigers remaining in the wild and only a handful left in a country like Laos, the message is that prices are  still  going up and more so for wild tigers (a wild tiger can be identified by the color and damage to its canines, while a captive tiger has snow white teeth with no crack or breaks, as they are fed on chickens ). The poacher today also gets more per kilo then he did three years ago and while it might be a fraction of the  sales price of some U$ 25 000 per carcass it is still more than enough for qualified tiger poachers to spread out from countries like Vietnam to far off destinations in Malaysia and Myanmar to get hold of some of the last wild tigers.



The question arises would the same demand supply scenario  play out if the market was supplied with stocks of legal rhino horn?



One thing which has not happened, on the back of the additional supply from captive farming and the  introduction of imported lion skeletons, which by now far exceeds the supply from the remaining wild population, is that the overall price has come down with the incentives for poachers decreasing which is clearly one of the main objectives in discussing the possibility of legalizing the rhino horn trade.  There are a lot more tigers today in many of the countries concerned but  it involves  tigers  in a small cages about to be electrocuted at the request of a Chinese or Vietnamese buyer. Is this  the kind of flagship symbol the world wants to see preserved?



Is this an aspect of the demand and supply characteristics which should be studied in more detail  and be analyzed as a model for what might happen – on a much larger scale – if the rhino horn trade was legalized?

Richard writes:

In January 2011 (well before the 2010 figures on the attached report were published by CITES) I noticed the entries on the CITES Trade Database showing export of 250 kilos of lion bones, 80 lion bodies and 5 lion skeletons from South Africa to Lao PDR in 2009. 

I immediately brought this to the attention of a contact in the South African Parliament who, in February 2011, requested South Africa's Panthera genus export figures for 2009 and 2010.

The South African Minister for Water and Environmental Affairs was asked for details of all Panthera exports under the provisions of CITES, in the categories of live, skins, bones, trophies, specimens, bodies and skulls - to "….see how government's 'official' figures compare".

The Minister's figures, published on 11 March 2011, made headline news in South Africa as they provided evidence of over 1,400 lion and leopard trophy export permits having been issued in 2009 and 2010:

http://www.timeslive.co.za/local/article966456.ece/Over-1400-Lion-Leopard-trophies-exported--Minister

Whilst it was good that awareness was raised of those exports I was personally more alarmed by the 327 lion 'carcasses' that the Minister's figures showed were exported from South Africa during 2009 and 2010 (92 and 235 respectively). 

I asked for a follow up question to be submitted requesting the destination of these carcasses and, based on the CITES data available at that time, guessed it would be Lao PDR. On 11 April 2011 the Minister published her answer confirming my suspicions. 

 If you wish to know more analysis about CITES’ efforts to address the illegal tiger trade and China’s tiger farms, go to my publication in the Journal of the WCCLAS.
 http://wcclas.org/images/forms/jwcclastoc2011V.pdf )