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/
​

​
              How lions are helpless against money and influence
By
Chris Mercer
Campaign Against Canned hunting (CACH)

On 10th of March 2018 animal lovers in Cape Town got together for a March to protest the ill-treatment of animals, including wildlife, in South Africa. An estimated 400 to 500 people participated.
http://www.cannedlion.org/south-africa.html

At the outset I should like to stress how important it is for activists to raise public awareness of animal cruelty issues. Posting on social media and protest marches are useful tools for this purpose. They are also useful for building up networks of supportive groups. The Global March for Lions in 2014, which involved co-ordinated protest marches in 62 cities around the world, was particularly effective in that respect.

Whilst we are strong on social media, we activists fall down when it comes to working at a political and policy level with lawmakers.
To illustrate this with two examples, let us examine what the hunting industry was doing around the time that placard-carrying animal lovers were parading around the streets of Cape Town.

                                               Policy capture in Europe
In Europe, the European Federation of associations for hunting and conservation (FACE) were holding a conference at the European Parliament in Brussels. No expense was spared. High-level officials from African rangeland states were flown into Brussels to attend the meeting, where hunting fanatics mingled with European lawmakers.

It is worth reading this brief summary on the FACE website to see just how successful hunting public relations can be when employed at a political and policy level:
http://www.face.eu/about-us/resources/news/africa-leading-at-the-european-parliament

The theme of the conference was that European lawmakers should ignore the calls for bans on the import of trophies from iconic animals such as lions and elephants and let African nations decide for themselves how wonderful hunting was for money and jobs.

Naturally there were no voices representing dissenting views which could muddy the waters of hunting PR by pointing out all the flaws.

                                             What about the USA?
While hunting privileges for Europeans were being sewn up nice and tight in Brussels, over the pond in the United States the hunting industry was celebrating the lifting of the ban on the import of lion and elephant trophies by Secretary Zinke, the Trump appointee to head the Department of the Interior. Zinke, a hunting fanatic himself, has appointed an advisory Council that would effectively influence if not control conservation policy at US Fish and Wildlife (USFW).

To see how ‘insanely biased’ in favour of hunting this council is, read the excellent Associated Press report on this subject:
https://apnews.com/07c11b7884174e68b75d6fdd52e9da91

And there is a useful summary by Elly Pepper on the new Council:
https://www.nrdc.org/experts/elly-pepper/everything-you-need-know-about-trumps-new-trophy-hunting

As Elly sums up:
Yup, that means the administration now has a council dedicated exclusively to promoting the killing of more imperilled species, like elephants and lions, for sport. The council’s mandate includes counselling Trump on the economic, conservation, and anti-poaching benefits of trophy hunting, of which there are very few. Sadly, Trump doesn’t want advice on the many drawbacks of trophy hunting.

When you see how effectively the hunting industry invades and occupies conservation space by working at a political and policy level, you will not be surprised to see why we are losing the fight to save our wildlife from brutal exploitation and from ending up as living targets being bred for hunting on game farms.

We at CACH (Campaign Against Canned Hunting) are often approached by passionate animal lovers who want to assist us in our efforts to obtain a ban on canned lion hunting in South Africa.

Whilst we welcome such passion, we find that there is a dire need for keen activists to qualify themselves in our issue. Each activist needs to be trained and to get some personal experience of the issue. Even manning a stand at some event  ought to be done by a trained volunteer because, as sure as eggs, some hunting protagonist will want to debate the issue and the volunteers must be able to hold their own in debate.

They must know the pro-hunting arguments and the counter-arguments. They should if necessary be able to debate the issue convincingly on radio or TV with well-prepared hunting experts. Does hunting provide jobs and rural income as they claim, or is it a wasteful use of land? What are the facts? What are the statistics?  Advocates must know the arguments on both sides.

Looking at hunting as if it were a company with a proper Balance Sheet, the hunting industry is clever at publishing only alleged profit items from the profit and loss account, ignoring the losses. And claiming assets while ignoring the liabilities. The animal advocate should be able to force the hunter to account for the whole balance sheet of the hunting industry - not only a few selected items from the profit account.

All this is very well explained by Julie Lewin in her admirable work at National Institute for Animal Advocacy:   
                                      http://www.nifaa.org/
                            
       So what is the political policy on conservation in South Africa?
“Biodiversity is an economic sector in South Africa that can be tapped into to contribute to radical socio-economic transformation in South Africa. 
One of the major contributors to wildlife tourism and the South African economy is the hunting industry.  Besides contributing to the growth in GDP and creating job opportunities, this sector remains largely untransformed.” -  Edna Molewa, Minister for Environmental Affairs, in South Africa.

One can see at a glance that animal welfare concerns about cruelty are excluded by policy. Wildlife is merely an economic resource that must be used to transfer wealth from white people to Blacks. That is SA government policy in a nutshell.

In fact, former president Jacob Zuma was (in)famously quoted as stating at a public meeting that: “compassion for animals is un-African.”

In order to feed into this ideology, the animal advocate has to put aside all sentiment and focus on the money; to be able to convince African governments that hunting is a wasteful use of land and that the rural economy will benefit far more from non-consumptive ecotourism. ie protecting wildlife.
                                                         Conclusions
Until animal activists learn to compete effectively against the hunting fraternity at a political and policy level, hunting propaganda will continue to be the mainstream narrative in conservation services.

We are not winning this battle, people. I have been campaigning for twenty years against a cruel and senseless canned lion industry, only to see it mushroom from about fifteen hundred lions in captivity at the turn of the millennium, to more than 8000 currently.

Terms of trade are moving against us. At the moment, hunting fits into African politics in a marriage made in hell for the animals. The seething, discontented underclass of an exploding human population will force political imperatives to push out all other considerations, such as conservation. Animal welfare is not even in the game. An increasingly desperate human population will regard animal welfare concerns as not only irrelevant, but positively subversive - if not racist.
​
So although time is against us, two questions are raised:

1. How to fund and organise professional training for animal advocates.
2. Commissioning academic studies that show the fallacy of hunting as a beneficial land-use for all but a tiny elite.

 
 
 
 
 
 

​          Canned lion hunting – SA Govt  ‘Scientific Authority’ says everything is awesome.

But even Safari Club International has thrown PHASA and canned lion hunting under the bus – making this insane Non-Detriment Finding ( NDF) largely irrelevant..
​
http://www.traveller24.com/Explore/Green/shockwildlifetruths-largest-safari-club-in-the-us-slams-the-door-shut-on-south-africas-canned-lion-industry-20180203
 
In government Gazette No. 41393 published  23rd January 2018, the South African government Department of Environmental  Affairs (DEA) set out its non-detriment findings (NDF) for the African lion.

https://cer.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/African-lion.pdf

This is of extreme importance to the hunting industry since without an NDF, no lion hunts would be allowed and no lion trophies could be exported.

Let us unpack some of the gems contained in this 21 page government document which basically gives the green light for lion trophy hunting to continue.  And the starting point for the NDF is its confident assertion that:  ‘The national and provincial permitting systems are effective.’
We shall see….

False reporting.

Statement 1:  ‘Currently wild lion hunts are less than 10 per year.’

Statement 2: ‘According to the CITES trade database that is administered by UNEP -WCMC, just over half (53 %) of the lion (3508) exported from South Africa between 2000 and 2009 are wild sourced, but this is due to a reporting error. Lions bred in captivity, then released in extensive systems for a period of time before being hunted have in the past been incorrectly reported as source code "W' (i.e. wild). Delegated provincial management authorities have subsequently been requested to ensure the correct use of source codes so that the CITES trade records correctly reflect the trade in wild specimens. There is also a major discrepancy between reported exports and reported imports, with reported exports of captive sourced specimens greater than reported imports and conversely the reported exports of wild sourced specimens less than the reported imports. This would have contributed to inflated export figures overall and of wild sourced specimens in particular.’

So even though less than 10 lions who are truly wild are shot every year by hunters in SA, more than half the Lions exported which number about 1000 a year, are classified as wild. So which is it? Is it 10 wild lions or 500 wild lions shot every year in SA?

What is the cause of this false reporting?
Are the provincial nature conservation officials so incompetent that they do not know the difference between a wild lion and a tame captive bred one? Or is there another, more sinister, interpretation?

Most foreign hunters are gifted to us from the land of Stars & Stripes. And because of restrictions imposed upon the imports of trophies of captive bred lions by US Fish and Wildlife, together with the ban by the trophy record books of accepting trophies of captive bred lions, it is very much in the interests of the US trophy hunter to um.. persuade the government conservation official to classify his dead lion as ‘wild.’

This false reporting is then carried forward to the CITES database and makes a nonsense of the statistics there.

Canned lions - the buffer between wild lions and …what?

Statement 1:  The Scientific Authority does not consider the export of captive -bred lion trophies or captive -bred live lion for zoological or breeding purposes to be detrimental to the wild lion population in South Africa. At present there is no evidence to suggest that the lion bone trade between South Africa and East - Southeast Asia is detrimental to South Africa's wild lion population.

Statement 2:  Although captive bred lions are not considered to be of any conservation value to the wild lion population (Hunter et al. 2013), it is thought that they may serve as a buffer to potential threats to the wild population by being the primary source of hunting trophies and derived products (Lindsey et al. 2012a) (e.g. bones).

A buffer against what? The NDF has already told us in statement 1 above that there is no threat from the lion bone trade to wild lions.  So why is a buffer needed for a non-existent threat?

And why would hunting trophies be such a threat to wild lions when the NDF has already told us that:  ‘The national and provincial permitting systems are effective.’ 

If hunters are so well regulated by the permitting system, then why would you need a buffer for a non-existent threat from trophy hunters?  Are the wild lions not adequately protected by ‘national and provincial permitting systems?’

This NDF is full of contradictory statements.

Saving wild lions by preserving habitat for them to be hunted.

Statement  1:   The economic benefits to the private sector of keeping and trading in wild lion may provide some incentive for conserving the species and its habitat.

Statement 2:  Hunting of wild lion on private property is limited, with less than 5% of lion hunts conducted over the 2008 to 2010 reporting period having targeted wild lions.

I wonder if the DEA can even see the contradiction between these two statements in the NDF?

Why on earth would a landowner want to preserve large swathes of land to keep a pride of lions in a wild state when less than 5% of lion hunts inside Africa involved wild victims.  Where is the economic advantage of allocating so much land to so few hunts?

Surely the correct answer for the NDF to the question of how much conservation benefit to wild  lions and their habitat accrues from hunting is either:  ‘None’ or  ‘Uncertain.’

One could go on ad nauseam pointing out the logical flaws and false assumptions that characterise this non-detriment finding which means in effect that lion trophy hunters can continue their cruel bloody addiction with the ardent support of SA conservation structures.

Why do I call this NDF ‘insane?’

Because it compresses the whole complexity of preserving the natural functioning ecosystems into mere numbers.  So long as the numbers go up or stay stable, then the ‘Scientific Authority’ will issue an NDF for the species.

But numbers alone are a wholly inadequate measure of the health of the environment. It is like looking at a football match through a half closed door where you can only see a small sliver of the pitch, and deciding from that narrow view who is playing, what is being played, and who is winning.

Take Rape as an analogy.  What if Rape were de-criminalised because the suffering  of the victim were regarded as irrelevant?  What if Government issued an NDF for rape on the ground that it did not cause a decline in the number of women and therefore represented no threat to the survival of the female human species. 

President Trump for all his faults made a far more scientific conservation statement than this insane NDF when he summed up trophy hunting as ‘a horror show.’
                                         
                                    *****************

Hunting’s Threat to Conservation

​21 December 2017

By Steve Wiggins and Chris Mercer

Peter Flack’s (“South African lawyer, business man and hunter”) recent piece in the Daily Maverick, titled “It is canned killing, not hunting, that hampers conservation efforts” (17 December 2017) offers a hunter’s perceived threats to conservation in South Africa (and beyond):
1.       canned hunting;
2.       hybrid breeding of target species; and
3.       the animal rights movement.

Dealing with those claims seriatim:
Canned Hunting
How can ‘canned’ possibly be a major threat to conservation on the basis advanced by Flack; namely, the absence of fair chase - where in theory, the hunter’s quarry has a (limited) chance to evade its own unnatural death? What on earth does fair chase have to do with conservation?
Whether a target is fairly chased or not, it still bleeds and dies and is removed from the environment.  On the contrary, there is an argument that the canned hunting of captive bred lions causes less damage to lion conservation in one respect than hunting wild lions, with all the damage the latter causes to pride dynamics.

No, the real objection that Flack has to canned hunting is that it is a reputational threat to the existence, ‘good reputation’(sic) and profitability of the whole hunting industry. He fears that the increasing public disgust ‘canned’ is causing is pulling down the whole trophy hunting industry with it.

We should not forget the negative conservation implications of ‘canned’ (the hunting and lion bone trade) due to its lack of any credible proven positive conservation contribution or conservation need.

There are no proven conservation benefits of 'canned' (‘captive’, ‘ranch’) - but quite the opposite, with the potential detrimental impact still to be adequately acknowledged and addressed by the Republic of South Africa's Department: Environmental Affairs (DEA);
In their 29 November 2017 “Open letter to Secretary Zinke: The African Lion Conservation Community’s Response,” the need for any conservation (rewilding potential) from South Africa’s ‘canned’ industry was rejected.  
Hybrid Breeding
Indeed the cross-breeding of species to produce mutant freaks for the hunting industry merely underlines the threat that hunting poses to wildlife. If the breeders will do anything to grasp at the almighty dollar then this supports our view that hunting is not about conservation at all, but is driven by commercial profiteering.
Animal Rights
It is popular in hunting circles to blame ‘animal rightists’ for hunting’s shortcomings and to throw epithets like ‘radical, extremist, and a threat to conservation.’ But these labels assume that hunting is conservation. The animal welfare movement certainly damages the hunting industry, but whether it damages conservation depends on the proven truth of hunting’s animal welfare claims, and the falsity of hunting propaganda. The truth is always subversive of an entity built upon lies.

Accordingly we would contend that the three major threats to conservation in Africa are:
1.       the unrelenting growth of the human population which is devouring the wilderness and causing massive habitat loss for wildlife.
2.       the lamentable failure of African governments to devote available resources to protecting wilderness and existing wildlife populations.
3.       The hunting industry. Not only does the hunting industry inflict massive damage upon wildlife populations in Africa, but by expanding its profitable business model of breeding wildlife species as alternative livestock, the industry is effectively changing the land-use from the serious business of producing food for the nation, to mere entertainment.
Is it really in the national interest that vast tracts of land which represent food security are being converted into providing hunting entertainment for a wealthy elite?

Compare the three items above that Flack contends are the major threats to conservation with our own.  We doubt if there is a single conservation scientist in the world who would agree that the Flack list is defensible.

The assertion is made by Flack that the “1977” trophy hunting ban implementation in Kenya and Botswana’s move to ban trophy hunting in 2014 have been “manifest disasters” for wildlife because of the loss of trophy hunting’s claimed ‘benefits’ – an oft repeated pro-hunting mantra. 
Scientists conducting a 2009 study (“Effects of human – livestock – wildlife interactions on habitat in an eastern Kenyan rangeland”) believe the surge in domestic livestock is predominantly accountable for the drop in Kenya’s wildlife population – the three main causes cited for the drop in wildlife numbers are illegal poaching, larger numbers and ranges of domestic livestock, plus changing land use patterns on the ranches. There is no mention of trophy hunting’s absence as a cause/effect for the decline in Kenya’s wildlife since the ban was implemented in 1979.

Is Kenya an example of what will happen if trophy hunting is banned in a country? No, it is not. Kenya would seem to be an example of poor land management, poaching and wanton over-grazing, based on a culture where a man’s wealth and social status is directly linked to owning large herds of cattle, which dominate the grazing available to the detriment of wildlife.

Botswana's tourism figures surpassed 2 million in 2016, so clearly there is demand within Botswana for non-consumptive tourism (and long may it continue).

In support of his ‘hunting is a saviour’ arguments, Flack states “some simple, scientifically established facts” including the statement at point 5 of his article “…..those [endangered species] that had been hunted most assiduously had recovered best, for example….rhinoceroses.…” So, the claim is hunting saved the rhinoceros (referring to ‘Operation Rhino’ in the 1960s no doubt) and by logical extension of this claim, “assiduously” hunting and killing endangered species is a guaranteed saviour.

However, it is also a ‘fact’ that unregulated and excessive hunting pre-‘Operation Rhino’ overwhelmingly contributed to the decimation and plight of rhinoceros in the first place:
"South African populations of black and white rhinos (subspecies C. s. simum), both of which had been nearly extinct in the year 1900 due to uncontrolled hunting….”-  ”Sustainable rhino horn production at the pointy end of the rhino horn trade debate,” Taylor et al., Biological Conservation (Vol. 216, page 60 - 68), December 2017.

So, any claims that hunting was the saviour of the rhinoceros as a ‘fact’ are somewhat disingenuous. Hence, any claims that “assiduously” hunting therefore must be endured as the saviour of all endangered species should be treated with incredulity.

​Is PHASA staring down the barrel of its own demise?
Simon Bloch
Correspondent
 
Durban - South Africa’s professional hunting association, PHASA, found itself in the firing line this week over the body’s reversal of its 2015 policy around hunting captive bred lions.
 
Several board members, founding fathers and past presidents resigned in protest and the Operators and Professional Hunters’ Associations of Africa (OPHAA) withdrew and suspended PHASA’s membership indefinitely.
 
International sponsors and affiliate organizations attending PHASA’s 40th AGM at the Champagne Sports Resort were left stunned when PHASA members voted on a new resolution to allow the hunting of captive bred lions by members and clients.  
 
The Wild Sheep Foundation and hunting agency BookYourHunt.com immediately withdrew all future support to PHASA, and a coalition group calling itself CONCERNED PROFESSIONAL HUNTERS, condemned PHASA in a mass-mailed e-mail, as well as on social media.
 
“In the light of the recent acceptance of the shooting of captive bred lions as a legitimate form of hunting by PHASA, we, as a concerned group of professional hunters, distance ourselves completely from such acceptance and no longer view PHASA as the legitimate mouthpiece for professional hunting in South Africa.
 
“A new association will be formed in the very near future and will once again reflect the traditions of responsible, ethical and conservation based hunting in South Africa”.
 
PHASA’s new policy back-tracks on its 2015 resolution, whereby members voted to “distance themselves and PHASA from all captive bred lion breeding and hunting until such time that the South African Predator Association SAPA is able to convince PHASA and the IUCN that captive bred lion hunting is beneficial to lion conservation” (enhancement of the species in the wild). 
 
OPHAA‘s media release said: 

“The Operators and Professional Hunters’ Associations of Africa are deeply troubled by the decision made by PHASA at their AGM on November 22, 2017 to adopt a new constitution that accepts the practice of captive bred lion hunting. The practice of captive bred lion hunting inevitably brings the entire African hunting industry, in every African nation where hunting is permitted, into ill repute.
 
“Phasa’s actions completely disregard one of the fundamental concepts of hunting, namely fair chase, and will, without doubt, jeopardize not only conservation efforts, but also the livelihoods of those who rely on well-managed and ethical hunting practices, far beyond the borders of South Africa. As a result, the majority of OPHAA members have decided to indefinitely suspend PHASA’s membership in OPHAA until further review”.
 
PHASA President Dries Van Coller acknowledged that while captive bred lion hunting had damaged Brand South Africa, he was under immense pressure from all sides in the hunting industry, but bound by the constitution to remain neutral.
 
“The matter was on the agenda, we took a vote by members who participated in the meeting, and as in any democracy, the majority won.
 
“The resolution as such enables PHASA to engage with SAPA (the South African Predator Association) to further enhance and create an environment where we can find the platform to address all these concerns.
 
“We know that it will never be accepted by everybody. I have already received letters from some of the lion people that a thirty day release period for lions before hunting, which we stipulated, is too long for them.”
 
“I think that this is probably the best thing that could happen to the industry, with the divide that will take place once and for all. We need to expose all the rotten eggs and all the issues that we have in the industry, and address it from there in a constructive manner” he said.
 
NAPHA (Namibian Professional Hunters Association) disassociated itself from PHASA.
CEO Tanja Dahl said “The approval of this motion flies in the face of all that is deemed to be ethical hunting by the overwhelming majority of hunting associations in Africa and around the world.
 
“This is in direct conflict with the aims and objectives of NAPHA, and NAPHA distances itself from the short sighted and immoral decision taken by PHASA and as such, can no longer afford or wish to associate itself with PHASA”.
 
Linda Park, a director at CACH (Campaign Against Canned Hunting) called PHASA’s new policy “morally reprehensible. 
“This comes from an industry that is ethically bankrupt and driven solely by financial greed.  The damage to Brand South Africa is huge. Even some of PHASA’s own members and sponsors have broken away in outrage, and when sponsors withdraw financial support, it clearly spells out their displeasure” she said.
  
And BookYourHunt.com officially announced the termination of its sponsorship agreement with Professional Hunters' Association of South Africa on Wednesday before PHASA’s gala ball.
 
“The reason is PHASA’s resolution allowing its members to organize and participate in hunting captive-bred lions, reversing PHASA’s previous position on the issue. For a number of years, BookYourHunt.com has been proudly sponsoring PHASA.
 
“However, the practice of captive bred lion hunts is incompatible with BookYourHunt.com’s standards of fair chase and hunting ethics, and is something we cannot possibly tolerate or endorse in any form.”
 
 

 
This blog criticises a letter sent to the Chinese government by well-known hunting apologist Eugene Lapointe.  
 
After wrapping himself in a cloak of assumed credibility arising from previous association with international organisations such as CITES, he writes to the Chinese government asking it to resist calls for it to ban the trade in ivory. The self- important homily then proceeds to expound upon the alleged efficacy of the doctrine of 'wise use'.
 
Nonetheless, he finds support for his view that elephants are merely a resource to be exploited from some African media:
http://www.herald.co.zw/china-must-not-ban-ivory-trade/
 
All his tired old arguments are half-truths that can be reduced to the following syllogism:

1.        all cats have four legs
2.        my dog has four legs
3.        therefore my dog is a cat.

In his philosophy, hunters are wonderful conservationists and the plight of wildlife can be laid solely at the door of shrill animal rightists in the developed world.

Quoting himself: “As I stated in 2007, the beneficiaries of a complete ban on all legal ivory trade are the poachers, criminal gangs and corrupt officials who drive the illegal trade — and who the campaigners suppose they are opposing,” said Mr Lapointe. “Of course, the animal rights groups themselves raise billions of dollars through their campaigns in the United States and Europe, so a ban also satisfies their financial needs”.

Lapointe’s argument is: there was a ban; there was also a surge in poaching; ergo, the ban must have caused it.  This is a perfect example of the ‘my dog is a cat’ syllogism. How simplistic. How childish. If only it were that simple.  No doubt he would argue that the only way to save whales is by whaling, and that any ban would merely ‘satisfy the financial needs’ of Sea Shepherd.
 
Actually there were many causes for the upsurge in poaching, including the rise of affluence in China and the rest of Asia, as well as the CITES –approved ivory stockpile releases in 1997, 2000 and 2008.
 
The truth is that saving Africa’s wildlife is a hideously complex and deep issue involving environmental, political, socio-economic, cultural and geopolitical considerations.
The root of the problem lies in the reckless and irresponsible human population explosion in Africa. Unless the human population can be brought under control there is no hope for the wildlife. 
 
The uncontrolled breeding of the human population is presently overwhelming all social services such as health and education, the economy and ultimately the ecology. Poverty and unemployment are the inevitable consequence, and so is the migrant crisis in Europe. 

Animal rights campaigners are not responsible for poverty and unemployment in Africa. 
 
Here is another truth.  African governments and administrations are notoriously corrupt.   Some years ago, I was travelling through a ‘protected’ wilderness area near the Zambesi river.  Such marvellous wilderness - and yet there was no wildlife to be seen.  We could not understand why.  Then we came across the game ranger’s camp and right there, strung up on wires all around the camp, was the reason for the absence of wildlife: hundreds of pieces of meat drying in the sun to be turned into biltong and sold.  Give a man like that a government vehicle, a government rifle and salary and all you are doing is equipping him to run his own private game butchery business.
 
The dwindling wildlife areas in Africa are precious resources which ought to be ferociously protected by governments.  Alas, trees and animals do not vote and therefore get no money from patronage-dependent political structures.  And into this vacuum where governance and protection should exist comes the hunting industry, trumpeting (sorry!) its conservation credentials.
 
Game farmers point at the infrastructure they have built and the control that they exercise over their fenced- off ranches and claim righteously that they are the only defence standing between the wildlife and the rapacious poachers who would kill all the animals, whereas the hunters will only kill some of the animals.  What on earth does this have to do with conservation? Domesticating wild animals and then rearing them like sheep to be slaughtered by hunters is not conservation, it is farming with alternative livestock.  Farming for commercial purposes should never be confused with conservation, which is the preservation of natural functioning ecosystems for their own sakes.
 
Yet this totally irrelevant argument for hunting is seized upon by many role players in the conservation spectrum.  Like large organisations such as WWF.  And politicians and bureaucrats in the United States, who are terrified of offending the hunting/NRA block vote of 4 million votes that can easily swing an election.
 
Hunting is an ugly, dirty, bloody business, but the proponents make it sound almost acceptable with the use of euphemisms such as: ‘well-regulated hunting can serve as a tool of conservation’. This is Africa, for goodness sake. Name anything which is ‘well-regulated’.
 
And now, following the flawed hunting narrative, comes the lamestream media, desperate to infuse cultural Marxism into the conservation space.  Well-known publications like Newsweek publish articles by journalists like Nina Burleigh, who attacks and seeks to discredit hard-working anti-poaching organisations like Damien Mander’s IAPF. In her philosophy, Damien is white and therefore evil, whereas the poachers that he is tackling are black and therefore innocent victims.  Again, how simplistic.  How childish.  If only it were that simple.
 
Not to be outdone by the other threats to the survival of wildlife, here come the ivory tower academics in the UK, infusing their brand of liberal fascism into the debate.  Any academic who has spent a little time in Africa doing research on this, that or the other species is suddenly an expert on conservation and Africa.  In their philosophy, the use of para-military force against poachers is morally unacceptable and repressive.  Rural African communities should be proactively courted and persuaded to participate in saving wildlife.  Liberal philosophy demands that it should be all carrot, and no stick.
 
How naive.  No doubt they would be much happier if Damien Mander’s game rangers were carrying flowers instead of weapons and handing them out to poachers, along with an audio-visual presentation of how important it is to preserve wildlife.  Africa does not work that way and their naive liberal views merely show how little they understand Africa.
 
Why are so many African governments ruled or controlled by dictators? The answer is that Africans understand the concept of chieftainship.  In tribal culture, the Chief is king and everything belongs to him - including your wife if he wants her.   Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe repressed political dissent in Matabeleland by throwing whole villages down abandoned mineshafts. That makes him a genocidal monster - but it also helps to explain how he stayed in power for 37 years. There is a lesson there, reinforced by the fact that the African Union elected him Chairman – knowing full well his murderous history. Liberal attitudes do not fare well in Africa.
 
None of the existing role players in conservation understand what is required to save Africa’s vanishing wilderness.  The issue is just too broad and deep - and politically charged.  Until there is a human population crash, which is the only thing at the end of the day that will save the wilderness, I would suggest the following stopgap measures:

1.        all aid from the developed world to African countries should be rigidly tied to environmental compliance.
2.        the hunting fraternity should transition to turning their guns on to poachers, and to protecting the animals.  The hunting fraternity is a well- armed, wealthy militia, and can serve a useful purpose if properly directed.
3.        no expense should be spared to protect remaining wilderness areas.  The money is there.  If an old da Vinci painting can fetch half a billion dollars on auction, and trillions can be created out of thin air to be thrown at zombie banks to rescue them from their own greed, do not tell me that there is no money to save the environment and the wilderness.

 
After that it is up to Nature.  Perhaps the microbes will mutate in time to save this wonderful planet from the cruel, polluting excesses of industrial man. In the meantime let us at least have an honest debate about conservation issues without sustainable use propagandists like Eugene Lapointe hurling blame and pejorative epithets at the animal welfare community, simply because we can see that the theory always collapses in Africa to become sustained abuse.