Shocking Failure of conservation: Regulatory Capture and the 2015 Hunting Notice for the Western Cape Province, South Africa.
South African 'conservation' services have completely lost their way. So much so, they need to be abolished and replaced with a service that will protect our wildlife.
Go to the Home page of the Cape Nature website www.capenature.co.za/ and you will see some smarmy assurances about how "We care for Nature" or "We conserve the unique natural heritage resources of the Western Cape".
But if you go to the 'About Cape Nature' page the vision becomes "to establish a successful conservation economy.... to transform biodiversity into.... local economic development."
Right there you see the problem: it is now all about money.
Tax payers might naively expect their taxes to go to the preservation and protection of our wildlife heritage. But that is not Cape Nature's vision, which is to extract maximum financial benefit from the exploitation of wildlife 'resources'.
I have written before about regulatory capture, where big business invades and occupies its own regulatory bodies. Anyone who doubts that Big Hunting controls conservation in S.A. should read the 2015 Hunting notice:
http://www.capenature.co.za/permits/hunting-permits-2/
( click on the sub-link that reads 'Download the Hunting notice for 2015'.)
The legal ban on bow hunting (because of its barbaric cruelty) in Sec 29 of the Ordinance is simply 'suspended' - without public input or debate.
1. Are you mentally ill enough to want to hunt a buffalo with a bow and arrow? No problem, so long as you use a bow with a kinetic energy of 80 Ft/lbs and an arrow weight of at least 750 grains. Cape Nature please explain in simple terms how shooting arrows into a poor buffalo can properly be characterised as conservation - a service for which you are paid by the taxpayer.
2. Want to shoot arrows in to wildebeest, nyala, zebra or impala? No problem - and there are no daily bag limits. You can kill as many animals as you like. Cape Nature, how does this constitute conservation?
3. Want to shoot primates, namely vervets and baboons? No problem, you can kill two a day. (72 a year) WTF???? But both primate populations are severely compromised in the western cape. Cape Nature knows this.
Primate groups are tightly linked families with a hierarchy and social structure. Killing animals randomly can have serious effects on the viability of the troop. Cape Nature knows this too.
Now why would any true conservationist permit random slaughter of individual primates in troops that are already stressed? And what possible conservation reason can there be to allow ethically illiterate bozos to shoot such primates?
4. Love killing birds for fun? No problem, kill up to 10 guinea fowl and 40 pigeons/doves a DAY - with Cape Nature's blessing.
5. What about caracals and jackals? No problem there either. Kill ten a day.
But caracals are listed on Appendix 11 of CITES as deserving special protection? Cape Nature are you paid by the taxpayer to protect our wildlife heritage, or to subsidise the landowners' war on threatened species?
Why are our tax- funded conservation officials promoting and permitting the excessive killing of an Appendix 11 animal to which it ought to be affording special protection?
Well, it is plain to see that regulatory capture has taken place - Cape Nature has become an arm of the hunting industry, and the military wing of the landowners' war on caracals and jackals.
As for the long-suffering SA taxpayer, are you happy that your tax money for conservation has become a subsidy for the hunting industry and for some brutal landowners?