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Campaign Against Canned Hunting (CACH)

Cub petting and animal welfare in SA

2/1/2017

8 Comments

 
Picture
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.
 

8 Comments
Desiree_Laverne
2/2/2017 12:08:57 am

How else can we help apart from social media and marches??.. This is so distressing and disgusting...

Reply
BijouPo
2/2/2017 12:22:18 am

If you want people to come on board and improve 'welfare' reach out to the welfare agencies and ask them to come on board. Like intensive farming (of any 'food' animal), elephant back riding and touching wild animals like dolphins, you will not be appluaded for making bigger cages or making less 'psts' frm the large proportion of animal rights advocates. Yes we all understand incremental steps are important but do not expect applause for prolonging an industry that should be shut down all together. Jus make it better, MAKE IT BETTER and implement the most strongest best practice "welfare' you CAN while people transition out of this terrible trade which is the BEST outcome. If you want people on baord sell it in terms of 'steps' - we will take these steps and then these steps. No one is going to applaud making the little slaves comfier, eh? Please understand where people are coming from. No quarter WILL be given to an industry associated with VCanned hunts and lion bone sales. If you want to make it better, great! but do not expect us to appease the people who have been doing it badly for the duration who suddenly take a tiny step. Strides! Stride toward closing the industry and look after your animals properly along that journey.

Reply
Chris Voets
2/2/2017 01:23:48 am

"BijouPo" (who likes to hide her real name), Chris Mercer and CACH have been fighting this for decades. And STRIDES have been made! But now it's time to try things from a different angle, and that's obviously what they have decided to do. The very least they can expect is our support. It's very easy to criticise as you are doing because ALL OF US WANT THIS TO COME TO AN END TODAY, not least Chris and his Team. Or do you for one second think it's easy for them to sit around a table and negotiate about this?

Reply
Michael McKeown
2/2/2017 01:32:14 am

Firstly, let me commend you for all your efforts over the past decade. As you rightly say the SouthAfrican government has been infiltrated by the hunting industry, in particular Safari Club International. (Slaughter Club Unternational) The only way the government may listen us if there is a sustained international campaign targeting their tourism e.g 'the not so beautiful rainbow nation.'

Reply
Gwen Merrick
2/2/2017 09:58:17 am

Hope something positive comes out of this gathering.

Reply
Alexia Abnett link
2/3/2017 12:48:21 am

I would love to offer SAFFR up for any volunteering to make strides Chris. We will avail ourselves to your guidance whenever you want. We dont make many friends in the wildlife world of corruption and I am not afraid. Allow us to assist you under your guidance of course. As you know we specialise in rhino, but the demand on our wildlife is overlapping and so although not so clued up on the captive industry, we are willing to learn.

Reply
Chris Mercer
2/3/2017 07:43:23 am

Thank you Alexia. I'll respond more fully by email. Best wishes Chris.

Reply
Frank Payne
2/4/2017 03:38:52 am

Right behind this move. It's proving to be a nursery for animal exploitation of the worst sort and needs to be stamped out.

Reply



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