Umbabaat/Ingwelala controversial lion hunt

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Re: Umbabaat/Ingwelala controversial lion hunt

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The world trend is moving steadily against trophy hunting.
That's a fact! There will continuously be fewer trophy hunters and sooner or later it will get too expensive and they will die out. They will also have to keep their "hobby" secret in order not to become an outcast of society.


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Re: Umbabaat/Ingwelala controversial lion hunt

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They are most certainly nowhere near being outcasts in the real world. :no:


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Re: Umbabaat/Ingwelala controversial lion hunt

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In the near future they will be!


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Re: Umbabaat/Ingwelala controversial lion hunt

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Re: Umbabaat/Ingwelala controversial lion hunt

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Of High and Low roads: A brief reply to Don Scott

Opinionista • Don Pinnock • 29 June 2018

The real issue is that the private reserves in the Associated Private Nature Reserves, as opposed to those in Sabi Sands further south, apply to Kruger Park each year and ritually get the right to hunt thousands of animals. Many of these are protected animals from Kruger Park, because there are no fences to prevent them entering the Associated Private Nature Reserves.

I had a high-school English teacher, Mrs Paxton, who taught us to look for the sense behind the words we read. It’s advice that has served me well. Don Scott’s piece The High Road to a greater Kruger National Park this week reminded me of her.

He complains about urban white people, particularly in faraway Cape Town, engaging in “emotive and often violent exchanges” over the hunting of a lion in Umbabat Reserve within the Greater Kruger biosphere a few weeks ago. He, on the other hand, lives there, so by implication he’s a suitably rural white person to be an authority on the issue. It’s a bit like saying journalists should only ever report on their home town.

But let’s leave that aside. Apart from telling us of great things about Greater Kruger – and that’s a good story for the most part – the heart of his article is a refashioning of Clem Sunter’s High Road/Low Road scenario to fit Scott’s conservation argument and lambaste “emotive and often violent” reporting.

His High Road, he tells us, represents the “willingness to understand that different stakeholders have different values, and that in order to integrate all our efforts in favour of conservation, we need to have tolerance for each other and our values” – ie let’s be tolerant. No problem with that.

The Low Road, he decides, is a “conservation landscape being driven by low-level divisive arguments and mud-slinging from within – social divisions are deepened and the whole system begins to fragment and collapse. What is the result? Less land available for wildlife to range in, and an eventual loss of many if not all wild animals”.

Now let’s apply the Paxton dictum. The issue Scott is really pissed about is journalists writing about the hunting of what is most likely a pride male lion named Skye much loved by tourists and lodge owners and whose death would probably result in the killing of his cubs when another male takes over.

Journalists, furthermore, have let the public (to whom they are responsible) know that the hunt, the American hunter, the PH outfitter, the taxidermist and even sight of the skin have been kept secret and are still mostly under wraps. If all is in order, then why the secrecy?

Our reporting of the hunt and its secrecy Scott claims is division-causing mud slinging leading to fragmentation, system collapse and eventual loss of all wild animals. Really? Well, maybe hunting them to extinction might do that. The only division it caused was between the hunter and outfitter and concession holders outraged by the hunt. The resignation of the chair and deputy chair of the Ingwelala Board over the non-disclosure on their doorstep attests to that.

The real issue, buried under the Scott word cloud, is that the private reserves in the APNR, as opposed to those in Sabi Sand further south, apply to Kruger Park each year and ritually get the right to hunt thousands of animals. Many of these are protected animals from Kruger Park, because there are no fences to prevent them entering the Associated Private Nature Reserves.

About that lion hunt: here are a few observations I’m not sure qualify as mud-slinging.

Journalists have been told that it was “an old lion, older that eight years” but nobody is being allowed to confirm this or see the carcass. Riaan de Lange of the Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks Agency (MTPA) who licensed the hunt, has denied any access to it.

He produced a photocopied image of the face of a dead lion that was clearly not Skye, but would not hand it over for further verification. He admitted that he “could show a picture of any dead lion”.

He said the hunting permit included permission to bait the lion, which is not normally allowed, but that it was done to allow the hunter to make sure he and the accompanying professional hunter could identify the correct lion to shoot.

But he told a journalist: “It’s pity we didn’t have more pictures. If the hunter had other pictures, then there would be no excuse, but he only had this one, so one can’t blame him if he did shoot Skye.”

This vagueness flies in the face of the Greater Kruger Hunting Protocol which states that “reasonable steps should be taken to gain knowledge of the males with pride affiliations and their ages, thereby ensuring that pride males under the age of eight years are not selected”. Skye was under eight, so if he was shot it would constitute a permit violation.

Even the Managing Executive of Kruger National Park, Glenn Phillips, is concerned about this issue. He told an Umbabat concession holder that “if Umbabat does not sort out their governance issues, KNP will re-erect the fence”.

Regarding Timbavati, where you hang out Mr Scott, the latest Kruger Park response to the reserve’s request to hunt had four serious concerns about your hunting practices.

These included that your reserve representatives had not passed required courses at the Kruger Wildlife College, that the reserve failed to submit the ages of elephants hunted as required because “rodents ate the tags attached to jawbones”, that two elephant hunts illegally exceeded the permitted tusk size, and that two lions were hunted without notifying Kruger rangers as required. Perhaps these are not things you feel comfortable with me mentioning as a journalist?

Your diatribe does not deal with the ethics of the baited Umbabat hunt. Or possibly the hunting of the “wrong” lion. Nor does it blink at the large-scale hunting that takes place in reserves which lure tourists to expensive lodges without telling them that the animals they pay to photograph could end up mounted over a hunter’s fireplace. Another muddy secret journalists shouldn’t be speaking about? 12

So thank you Mrs Paxton for training me to cut through the guff to the meat of the matter. About the core of the issue, Mr Scott, you have said precisely nothing. In fact it is you who are attempting to throw mud and blow smoke at legitimate reporting of an event that your hunter friends are trying desperately to cover up. DM


https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinion ... znYjtIzbIV


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Re: Umbabaat/Ingwelala controversial lion hunt

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Digging for the truth about Skye


BY DON PINNOCK - 5 JULY 2018 - DAILY MAVERICK

The hunting of a lion in Umbabat Reserve alongside the Kruger National Park has been cloaked in secrecy ever since it was discovered. With the worldwide outcry at the killing of Cecil several years back, that’s hardly surprising. Here’s what we know so far.

The message arrived as a WhatsApp. It said: “I can give you the hunter’s name and phone number. Can you assure I remain anonymous? I do not want to be exposed.”

It popped up the day after I’d published a story in June 2018 about the trophy hunt of a lion in the Umbabat Reserve adjacent to the Kruger National Park. There are no fences between the park and the reserve, so it was very possible it could have been a Kruger lion.

I’d been alerted to the hunt by a concession holder in the reserve who also wanted to remain anonymous, plus a letter from the chair of one of the reserve’s concessions to board members trying to head it off (he failed).

The story had evoked damage control from the hunting fraternity, as any stories I write about hunting generally do. (It’s a rather self-protective industry) When I followed up with the reserve and the Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks Agency (MTPA) – which licensed the hunt – they did not take my calls.

I messaged the Umbabat warden, Bryan Haverman, asking him which lion had been hunted and why – when Kruger Park had expressly forbidden a lion hunt in their quota – one had been shot. I got no reply. But he confirmed to Simon Espley of Africa Geographic that the animal had been baited.

So of course the WhatsApp message was intriguing.

Who was the hunter?

I messaged back: “Okay, anonymity assured.” The reply was more detailed than I had anticipated:

“The outfitter and professional hunter was Graham Sales, the US hunter was Jared Whitworth from Hardingsburg, Kentucky. Riaan de Lange was the MTPA official who issued the permit. The hunt was marketed to the client as a hunt where baiting was allowed.

“There never was a ‘skinny old lion’ in the area they claimed they were hunting. Had there been, he would have been run off by the dominant male.

“Unfortunately I cannot prove this to you, but the client was told they would be baiting a big Kruger Park lion. This was in communications sent (to) the client prior to the hunt. They are now all trying to cover this up, including Umbabat, hence the refusal to let anyone see the skin.”

Whoever my source was, they knew a lot about that hunt. It seemed legal, according to several journalists’ follow-up inquiries. So the problem wasn’t about a wrongdoing but about receiving information from a single source. You can’t name people without fact-checking and verifying information. But nobody except the “Deep Throat” was talking.

A bit of research turned up a Graham Sales who owns a safari hunting outfit of the same name in Mbombela and offers hunting trips in Klaserie and Timbavati private reserves which border Umbabat. Lions aren’t on its website’s inventory, but buffalo, elephants, leopards, rhinos and crocodiles are. It offers ethical hunts and “selective use of renewable resources”.

Research also turned up Whitworth Tools in Hardingsburg, Kentucky, and the Kentuckiana Chapter of Safari Club International which has a Jared Whitworth as sponsor and donor. Both he and family members were listed as members of the local hunt club.

The source included phone numbers for Sales and Whitworth. I called repeatedly but they all went to voicemail. A colleague in the US tried, but got the same result. He then had a friend in Kentucky try (in case the cell was not taking foreign calls) but still no answer. The next step was to message the named people to see whether they could throw some light on the lion hunt and offer them right of reply. I sent them both a similar message:

“Hi Graham, my name’s Don Pinnock, an environmental writer. There has been a lot of interest in the hunt of a lion in Umbabat. I have details, including that it was legal. However I’m sure you are aware that there’s quite a bit of public heat around hunting, so before publishing the details, I’d like to afford you the space to give your side of the story. So I await your comments. However if you have not got back to me before the end of this weekend, I will assume that to be a ‘no comment’, which of course is also perfectly acceptable.”

And I waited. The weekend came and went.

Was the lion Skye?

It’s not definite it was the pride male until the carcass has been checked by an independent viewer, but evidence is stacking in that direction.

Following the hunt, the Umbabat Private Nature Reserve (UPNR) put out a statement that “the hunted lion was well past his prime – as per the hunting protocol – and was not a pride lion. The hunted lion had worn down and broken teeth, a protruding spine (all signs of advanced age).”

But a WhatsApp I received from a different anonymous source arrived the same day saying the lion wasn’t an “old skinny male with broken teeth” but the well-loved Umbabat pride male named Skye. If that was so, he was younger than the permitted hunt age of six years so it would constitute a permit violation. If he was baited (as Umbabat warden Haverman confirmed to The London Times) that’s a violation in terms of the 2007 Threatened or Protected Species (TOPS) legislation.

Riaan de Lange of the MTPA denied access to the carcass, which is alleged to be at Life Form taxidermist in White River. He said it was owned by the hunter who needed to give permission. But he wouldn’t provide the hunter’s name and refused to produce the hunting permit. But an email from a hunting “insider” included the claim that he had seen the skin. Oops. Insiders only.

For journalist Adam Cruise, who went to see him, De Lange produced a photocopied image of the face of a dead lion that was clearly not Skye. But he would not hand it over for further verification and admitted that he “could show a picture of any dead lion”.

He said the hunting permit included permission to bait the lion, which is not normally allowed. But it was done, he said, to allow the hunter to make sure he and the accompanying professional hunter could identify the correct lion to shoot. Then he told Cruise:

“It’s a pity we didn’t have more pictures. If the hunter had other pictures, then there would be no excuse, but he only had this one, so one can’t blame him if he did shoot Skye.”

It sounded as though he was hedging his bets in case it turned out to be the pride male. And he would naturally be aware that the Greater Kruger Hunting Protocol requires that “reasonable steps should be taken to gain knowledge of the males with pride affiliations and their ages, thereby ensuring that pride males under the age of 6 years are not selected”. He would also be aware of the TOPS non-baiting regulation.

In the US, meanwhile, a legal team for the Center for Biological Diversity and the Humane Society for the United States fired off a letter to the head of the US Fish and Wildlife Service asking the agency to block the import of the trophy pending an independent identification of the lion carcass.

According to Ingwelala concession holder Kevin Alborough, Skye has not been seen or heard since the hunt. One of his cubs has been found dead, a sign he is not around to protect them.

“In my personal opinion,” he wrote to the Ingwelala board of directors, “until conclusively proved otherwise, it appears that on a balance of probability the lion shot was the dominant male of the Western Pride. I find this morally despicable.”

If Skye was not the hunted lion, why the secrecy? Showing a journalist the hunting permit and the carcass of a skinny old lion would make the story go away.

Deep Throat’s information was looking increasingly solid, but I really hoped he or she could find a way to get it further corroborated.

“Not in the country. Give me a few more days,” was the answer. So I waited some more.

Meanwhile an old hand in the wildlife game outlined how a “redirected” hunt could take place (no relation to this hunt intended, of course):

“The PH gets a permit to shoot a non-pride lion of the ‘right’ age. Around the fire before the hunt he mentions to his client that there’s a big pride male around, but he’s not permitted to shoot it. For the hunter, bragging rights and an honours listing with Safari Club International is very important and he wants in.

“The PH allows himself to be ‘persuaded’ to go for the pride male for a considerable, no-contract, extra fee. The PH then uses some of that to pay off any wardens or officials and they hunt the pride male at the end of the hunt so it can be whisked out the country fast. It’s an old trick.”

Maybe that happened at Umbabat, but there’s no proof of it. Just lots of secrecy.

What was the fallout from the hunt?

Kruger Park, meanwhile, seems to becoming concerned about issues surrounding the hunt. Its managing executive, Glenn Phillips, told an Umbabat concession holder that “if Umbabat does not sort out their governance issues, KNP will re-erect the fence”.

And Alborough, the chairman of non-hunting Ingwelala (a concession within Umbabat) and another member resigned from the board as the issue developed. Alborough had tried to stop the hunt taking place and was probably disgusted when it did.

John Varty, one of the key developers of the Greater Kruger concept, waded into the debate. On his website he wrote:

“This lion is a national asset. It does not belong to Umbabat. To attract the tourist, the ecotourist lodges are dependent on the ability to find iconic animals for their guests. Therefore, by allowing a hunter – who has no skin in the game – to shoot Skye or a 100lb [tusk]elephant, you have removed one of your prime tourist attractions.

“I suggest that Timbavati and Umbabat, who have fine reputations, should not engage in the murky world of money, professional hunting and the killing of iconic animals by wealthy people for fun. It will catch up with you and taint your reputation. Rather build your lodges, create jobs, uplift communities and travel the high road.”

Neither Sales nor Whitworth answered my WhatsApp message, but the double tick in the message frame indicated they had received them. If they were not involved, why no objection or attempt to rectify the claim before publication? After all, I’m not accusing them of doing anything illegal, though there may have been some permit violations that have yet to be tested.

If they were involved in the hunt, though, I can understand their reticence. The international storm over the baiting and killing of Cecil the Lion in Hwange, Zimbabwe, by Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer was a startling indication of the growing unpopularity of lion trophy hunting among the general public.

Greater Kruger is an internationally famous sanctuary for wild animals and Kruger Park is a Unesco International Man and Biosphere Reserve visited by millions of people each year. Unlike Hwange, there are a lot more people who would be concerned about its iconic lions and make their objections heard.

Personally, I couldn’t pull the trigger on a beautiful wild animal. But if ethical hunting is to continue, this is not the way to go about it. Secretive hit-and-run hunting by foreigners searching for iconic trophies is the best way to give the business a very bad name.

Read original article here: https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article ... z3CkdIzbIU


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Re: Umbabaat/Ingwelala controversial lion hunt

Post by Richprins »

Inspector Pinnock talks a lot about "if", "probably", "likely" etc.

While he bemoans the secrecy around total strangers not being allowed to look at someone's private property (the skin of the lion), his single source also remains secret.

Anyway, it has already been spouted as fact on a particularly unpleasant, childish and malicious facebook page:

https://web.facebook.com/Expose-Trophy- ... rdc=1&_rdr

Here is the professional hunter that baited the lion Skye out of Kruger National Park. The client was told "they would be baiting a big KP lion." The lion was younger than six years, so that was a permit violation

With a picture of the hunter.

The TOPS hunting regulations are to be found here:

http://www.shingelani.co.za/downloads/S ... uly_10.pdf


Special Restrictions on Lion and Rhino hunting
– (Lion however, temporarily
excluded from Large Predators list)

Bait
– No use of bait for listed threatened or protected species, except
o
dead bait for , leopards and hyaenas
o
bait for marine or aquatic species


From this page:

No luring (bait, smell, sound or any other) except for:

Lion, leopard or hyena – dead bait;
Marine or aquatic species – dead bait;
Invertebrates for scientific purposes – dead bait;


http://www.kznhunters.co.za/hunting/leg ... cies-tops/


So well done, Pinnock. Hope you never get hauled before the court of social media outrage.


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Re: Umbabaat/Ingwelala controversial lion hunt

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So well done, Pinnock. Hope you never get hauled before the court of social media outrage.
Why should he be, he is a nice guy and if the journalists could only write when they have irrefutable news on everything, the newspapers would have a lot of blank pages.


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Re: Umbabaat/Ingwelala controversial lion hunt

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Tell that to the hunter. Don't worry, it has only been a few hours. The hunter will be properly crucified soon enough. :evil:

One can plow through a lot of less hysterical stuff here: https://www.wrsa.co.za/tops-list-as-on- ... pril-2015/


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Re: Umbabaat/Ingwelala controversial lion hunt

Post by Lisbeth »

I do not care about the hunter! :evil:


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