Captive Lions /Canned Hunting in SA

[Klipspringer]

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article ... criminals/

South Africa’s legal lion bone trade exploited by criminals
By Andreas Wilson-Spath• 21 January 2020



Through what appear to be wilfully ignorant policies, South Africa is facilitating the illegal trade in lion bones, not only enabling the activities of notorious international crime syndicates, but also threatening the survival of tigers and lions in the wild.

This article was provided by the Conservation Action Trust.

Few South Africans would have taken note of a short statement released by the Hawks in November 2019, which details the arrest of two individuals with very similar names.

Yun Li had been on the run from authorities for years, having been set free on bail after being caught in possession of rhino horn in 2015. His associate, Yin Li, was arrested for his connection to some 600kg of lion bones worth R2.25-million seized at OR Tambo International Airport in recent months.

These arrests offer a small glimpse into the sleazy workings of a growing South African industry most people have never even heard of, revealing its extreme, greed-driven profitability and its deep entanglement with global criminal networks involved in the bloody slaughter of Africa’s rhinos, elephants and other wild animal species.

There is damning and public evidence that the people running the supposedly legal production and export of lion bones in South Africa have links to transnational crime syndicates that are involved not only in smuggling rhino horn, elephant ivory and pangolin scales, but also deal in drugs, prostitution and more.

Many of these connections are detailed in an investigative report published in 2018 by two South African not-for-profit organisations, the EMS Foundation and Ban Animal Trading (BAT). In continuing to provide support for local lion breeders and bone traders, South African authorities appear to have ignored the evidence contained in this document.

Perhaps the best illustration of the intimate association between the lion bone trade and criminality involves Vixay Keosavang of Laos, a man who has been described as the “Pablo Escobar of wildlife trafficking”. He is believed to be the head of the Xaysavang Network, an international wildlife trafficking syndicate with extensive roots in Africa and Southeast Asia.

Since 2013, the United States has been offering a reward of $1-million for information that will lead to the dismantling of this network.

Research indicates that the Xaysavang Network has been purchasing legal, CITES-permitted lion bones from South Africa since 2008.

In 2011, Chumlong Lemtongthai, a Thai national and a director of the Xaysavang Network, was arrested, tried and eventually convicted in the South Gauteng High Court for trafficking rhino horn. Investigators revealed that in his dealings with his co-accused Marnus Steyl, a Free State lion farmer, Chumlong not only “ordered” 50 rhinos, but also 300 sets of lion bones and that he personally “supervised the boiling of their corpses to separate the bones from the flesh”.

The authors of the EMS Foundation/BAT report point out that the addresses of lion bone importers in Laos, Vietnam and Thailand — the three main destination countries — listed on official export permits are almost always inaccurate and insufficiently verified by South African authorities. They demonstrate that even after the Xaysavang Network’s role in illegal wildlife trafficking was known, export permits for lion bones were issued to Xaysavang Trading Export-Import, a company owned by Vixay Keosavang.

The report furthermore provides hard evidence for direct personal connections between some South African lion bone traders and known wildlife traffickers, including Keosavang.

These are just a few of the revelations presented in the report. Others include similarly intimate relationships with wildlife criminals in Thailand and Vietnam, and suggestions that the industry is exploiting weaknesses in permitting and export procedures to under-declare the quantity of bones exported and that shipments may include laundered bones of other species, including tigers and ligers.

Lion bone harvesting

Asked to think of lions, many of us will recall a memorable experience of coming across a lazy pride waiting out the heat of the day under a cluster of shady trees in one of the country’s national parks.

Sadly, that idyllic scenario is no longer a reality for the majority of South African lions. They are much more likely to spend their entire life caged on a farm, raised exclusively to be killed for profit.

There are about 3,000 wild lions in South African nature reserves and national parks. In contrast, some 300 breeding facilities located mostly in the North West, Free State and Limpopo are estimated to host anywhere between 6,000 and 14,000 captive lions.

Having had its origins in the 1990s, the commercial lion breeding industry was started to supply docile targets for the bullets, arrows and crossbow darts of wealthy international trophy hunters.

When the ethical deficiencies of canned lion hunting became an embarrassment even to the most traditionalist international game hunting associations, local lion farmers found eager new customers in Southeast Asia’s markets for wildlife products.

Tiger bones are used in traditional Chinese medicine and the animal’s teeth, claws and skulls are worn and displayed as status symbols in countries such as China and Vietnam.

With tigers receiving much-needed legal protection to save them from extinction, their bones have become difficult to procure and lion bones from Africa have increasingly been used as substitutes to supply this vast market.

Government has been fostering the growth of the captive lion breeding industry and the lion bone trade by enacting supportive policies and regulations, and by being extremely lenient when monitoring its operations, including conditions on breeding farms and in lion slaughterhouses.

Officially sanctioned by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), then Minister of Environmental Affairs, Edna Molewa, established an annual export quota of 800 lion skeletons in 2017 and promptly increased it to 1,500 the following year (subsequently decreased to 800).

In August 2018 the High Court ruled that the setting of the 2017 and 2018 quotas was “illegal and unconstitutional” and that the government was obliged to consider animal welfare in all its wildlife-related decisions.

The industry is a poster child for government’s doctrine of “sustainable use” under which wild animals are considered to be “faunal biological resources” which should be exploited commercially to justify and fund their very existence and survival.

Contrary to the scientific consensus that there is no conservation value in raising lions in captivity, government and its supporters claim that legalising the trade in lion bones will protect wild lions and tigers from poaching by satisfying demand on Southeast Asian markets. This is despite growing evidence that the opposite is the case: selling lion bones legally stimulates demand, encourages poachers and threatens the survival of tigers and lions.

If the recent arrests of Yun Li and Yin Li had revealed the first, tentative suggestions that the trade in lion bones may be connected to illegal wildlife trafficking, we might be inclined to give the South African government the benefit of the doubt with regard to its promotion of the captive lion industry and lion bone trade.

Given the fact, however, that there is long-standing, detailed and documented hard evidence that this business is intricately associated with international criminal networks, it is of grave concern that the breeding and slaughter of lions appears to be facilitated for the sole purpose of making profits for a small group of people at the expense of the country’s reputation with commensurate risk to the greater wildlife economy. DM

Andreas Wilson-Späth is a part-time freelance writer and ex-geologist who lives and works in Cape Town.

[Richprins]

It is ironic that the complainants don't exert any pressure whatsoever on for example SANParks killing buffalo in Kruger or the issuing of crazy fishing permits in National Parks. What is "sustainable utilisation" exactly?

[Lisbeth]

What is "sustainable utilisation" exactly?

It depends on who is using the phrase

[Lisbeth]

Given the fact, however, that there is long-standing, detailed and documented hard evidence that this business is intricately associated with international criminal networks, it is of grave concern that the breeding and slaughter of lions appears to be facilitated for the sole purpose of making profits for a small group of people at the expense of the country’s reputation with commensurate risk to the greater wildlife economy.

Like so many other businesses in this country

[Lisbeth]

Photo by Ian Michler of Blood Lions documentary and campaign

Canned lions: Remove van Coller from TBCSA board

BY ELISE TEMPELHOFF - 25TH FEBRUARY 2020 - NETWERK24

A coalition of 35 conservation organizations, in a letter to the Tourism Business Council of South Africa (TBCSA), requests the removal of Dries van Coller, president of the Professional Hunters Association of South Africa (PHASA) as non-executive director of their board, because this association is believed to support the hunting of canned lions.

The Coalition, which refers to itself as the “Coalition to Stop Captive Breeding and Keeping of Lions and Other Big Cats for Commercial Purposes,” writes in the letter that it is encouraging that TBCSA has now got the fragmented tourism industry under one umbrella.

However, the Coalition believes van Coller’s directorship and his close association with PHASA are “problematic” because responsible tourism organizations are moving away from “human-animal interaction” and exploitation of wildlife worldwide.

According to the Coalition, research has shown almost half of the facilities where lions are bred in captivity are directly linked to tourism.

The Coalition believes this industry is damaging Brand South Africa as a tourism destination and warns that prospective, responsible tourists may turn their backs on the country in the future. This could mean that South Africa could lose R54bn in revenue in the future, if the canned hunting industry is allowed to continue.

PHASA denied on inquiry that some of its members were involved in hunting captive bred lions. Some of their members do hunt lions and they are captive bred, but they are kept in large areas for a long time and “get wild” before they are hunted.

To this end, the Coalition says it is precisely this reason – the fact that lions are bred in captivity and later hunted – that resulted in PHASA breaking up in 2017. The key members meanwhile, formed in an organization called Custodians of Professional Hunting and Conservation-South Africa. “These ex-PHASA members were concerned about the organisation’s lack of ethics,” the Coalition writes.

PHASA was also kicked out of the International Council for Game and Wildlife Conservation (CIC) during this time. PHASA’s membership of the Namibian Professional Hunting Association was also revoked.

The Coalition also says some of PHASA’s members are also members of SAPA, the South African Predator Breeders Association, to which many of the breeders of captive-bred lions belong.

Van Coller stated that he had nothing to hide and that he had the support of his colleagues, as well as those of the larger wildlife industry.

“I have no criminal record and have never committed a crime, and yet I am condemned by a group of radicals. Because of their condemnation, I have already received hate emails, as well as death threats against me and my family.”

He emphasized that he also “has rights like any other citizen of the country”. “The fact that I am willing to serve my industry and make a contribution to make a difference in society is nullified by some uninformed, unqualified and emotional extremists.”

“My views, beliefs and actions have never been questioned and I have always acted with integrity. The TBCSA is not a state institution. It is a private initiative aimed at promoting the South African Tourism Industry. The hunting industry plays a role in this.”

Beeld reports that the TBCSA has not yet responded to the coalition’s letter.

Original article: https://www.netwerk24.com/Nuus/Omgewing ... d-20200224

[Lisbeth]

The captive lion breeding industry puts conservation and public health at risk


Opinionista • Jared Kukura • 2 April 2020

South Africa is replicating China’s policies that resulted in the Covid-19 outbreak, including mandates promoting domesticating and breeding wild species.

South Africa’s captive lion breeding industry will go down as one of the worst chapters in the sustainable use book of conservation. Horror stories of disease-ridden lions living in squalor made international headlines and forced the country to take a hard look at how the industry is impacting its national brand.

Looking to distance themselves from the negative media attention, many pro-sustainable use organisations publicly condemned the captive lion breeding industry on conservation grounds. Safari Club International stated its opposition to hunting captive-bred lions while the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) called for an end to breeding lions for commercial purposes as far back as 2016, though it should have made this call at the turn of the century.

Contrary to the South African Predator Association’s belief, lions bred on game farms serve no direct benefit to conservation efforts since they cannot be successfully reintroduced to the wild. Reintroduction success is severely hindered because captive-bred carnivores lack essential survival skills. Captive-bred carnivores often succumb to starvation, disease, and unsuccessful avoidance of other predators when released into the wild.

Game breeders claim their industry can indirectly benefit conservation by providing a buffer for poaching due to the lion bone trade. However, research shows lion poaching increased along with the number of legal lion skeleton exports destined to fulfil lion bone trade demand. This mirrors the results in China where poaching continues to deplete wild bear populations despite the wildlife breeding industry’s claim that farmed bear bile can help reduce poaching.

The captive lion breeding industry also brings another major risk affecting conservation efforts and public health, bovine tuberculosis. Both captive and wild lion populations suffer from bovine tuberculosis, with high levels of infection in Kruger posing a conservation risk. Lions were previously thought to be a dead-end host for the disease, but recent research suggests infected individuals can transmit the disease to other lions.

Captive populations of infected lions can theoretically serve as sources of transmission to previously uninfected wild populations. The spread of chronic wasting disease exemplifies this risk. Anthropogenic movement of farmed deer and elk is spreading the disease across the globe and infecting wild populations.

In terms of public health, humans can contract bovine tuberculosis directly from infected livestock during the slaughter process. South Africans should be particularly cautious of any industry with a potential of transmitting TB to humans. Research shows bovine tuberculosis is “a concern for vulnerable communities” in the country. Additionally, the WHO lists bovine tuberculosis as one of the seven neglected zoonoses perceived to pose severe threats to public health.

South Africa is also replicating China’s policies that resulted in the Covid-19 outbreak, including mandates promoting domesticating and breeding wild species. In a world at risk of future SARS Cov-type viruses spilling over from animals to humans, South Africa should not be contributing significantly to that risk through exporting diseased carcasses from lions slaughtered in the country with zero regulation.

To South Africa’s credit, it looked like the country was finally ready to close the horrific chapter of captive lion breeding in 2018. A Portfolio Committee of Environmental Affairs (PCEA) report called for the Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA) to review the captive lion breeding industry with the express intention of “putting an end” to it.

Unfortunately, the DEA ignored the resolution to shut down the industry and, instead, adopted the stance of reviewing the industry with the intent of properly regulating it. Should Hanlon’s razor be applied here? Is the DEA (now DEFF) ignoring Parliament’s call to end the industry a form of ignorance or is it malice?

In this case, it is clear the actions taken by government officials, particularly Barbara Creecy, Minister of Environment, Forestry and Fisheries, demonstrate malice in the form of prioritising the welfare of a few industry leaders over the welfare of South Africa’s lions and the health and safety of the general public. The appointment of a biased expert panel and reclassification of lions as farm animals are deliberate tactics intended to combat the negative view of the industry.

Creecy appointed a high-level panel of experts to review and properly regulate the industry. On the surface, this seems perfectly reasonable and can enable informed decision making. However, the panel of experts is heavily weighted towards industry proponents that have long benefited from poor regulation. The panel is full of CEOs, directors, and presidents of game farming and hunting organisations.

Industry leaders are not on the panel to give their expert opinions and help solve problems. Their opinions were already heard back in the 2018 colloquium that resulted in the PCEA report asking to eliminate the industry. Industry leaders are on the panel simply to legitimise their poor excuses for continuing the practice.

Creecy attempted to reassure detractors by stating the panel was developed with everyone’s best interests in mind. She stated experts were selected based on a range of skills through a robust process by a selection evaluation panel personally appointed by herself. The necessary skills of the experts and the details of the process are yet to be made public.

Interestingly, the welfare of wild animals was noted by Creecy as an important consideration in the appointment process. How leaders of an industry built on exploiting wildlife for maximum profit were appointed to a panel based on animal welfare is beyond understanding.

The silent amendment of lions to the list of species on the Animal Improvement Act (AIA) in 2019 reclassifying the species as farm animals makes sense now that animal welfare is, supposedly, a criterion for the regulation of the captive lion breeding industry. The reclassification eliminates any ethical obligations for raising wild species in captivity.

The ambiguity surrounding the DEA’s decision to ignore the PCEA recommendation to shut down the industry and Creecy’s appointments to the panel of experts makes one thing clear. South Africa’s government officials have chosen to put the welfare of a few industry leaders ahead of the country’s wildlife and the general public.

Jared Kukura is freelance wildlife conservation writer based in California. He founded Wild Things Initiative to highlight the negative ramifications of the wildlife trade and hunting industries. His work can be found in the ‘Journal of African Elephants’.

[Richprins]

Now canned lions is linked to Covid.

[Lisbeth]

All the opportunists are on their toes

[Richprins]

Bored social justice warriors, in my opinion. A simple court case will do.

[Lisbeth]

No court case is simple in SA and is also expensive