Hunting in the APNR & SANParks Involvement

[Lisbeth]

ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS COMMITTEE STRONGLY CONDEMNS THE ACTIONS OF SANPARKS IN PROCEEDING TO SIGN THE COOPERATIVE AGREEMENT BETWEEN KRUGER NATIONAL PARK AND PRIVATE RESERVES DESPITE THE DIRECTIVES OF PARLIAMENT

BY CHAIRPERSON OF THE PORTFOLIO COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS, MR PHILLEMON MAPULANE - 6 FEBRUARY 2019 - PARLIAMENTARY COMMUNICATION SERVICES

Parliament, Wednesday, 6 February 2019 – The Portfolio Committee on Environmental Affairs strongly condemns the actions of South African National Parks (SANParks) in proceeding to sign the cooperative agreement between the Kruger National Park and the Association of Private Nature Reserves despite the directives of Parliament.

In September last year, the committee requested SANParks to compile a concept paper on the sharing of benefits arising from the collapse of the fence in the western boundary of the Kruger National Park in the interest of broader society to be presented to the committee in October/November 2018. The committee wanted to engage with SANParks and subsequently hold public hearings to determine the best way forward. Despite this clear committee resolution which was subsequently publicly communicated through a media statement, SANParks defied Parliament and went ahead with the signing of the cooperative agreement even after it was brought to their attention by the chairperson of the committee that by proceeding with that action, they will be in breach of both the committee and the National Assembly resolutions on this matter.

The committee is appalled by the conduct of SANParks and believes that there should be consequences for defying Parliament. The committee will engage with the Minister of Environmental Affairs to ensure that an appropriate sanction is taken in this regard.

The committee has also requested SANParks to once more prepare a comprehensive presentation on the benefit sharing to the communities, arising from the collapse of the fence in the western boundary of the Kruger National Park. The presentation must also include the current hunting protocols that allow hunting of animals in the Greater Kruger National Park as a result of an open system.

ISSUED BY THE PARLIAMENTARY COMMUNICATION SERVICES ON BEHALF OF THE CHAIRPERSON OF THE PORTFOLIO COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENTAL AFFAIRS, MR PHILLEMON MAPULANE.

https://conservationaction.co.za/resour ... ves-of-pa/

[Richprins]

I agree with SANParks. Kruger is not a political and social tool and Parliament should rather investigate themselves and leave the professionals to do their jobs.

[Lisbeth]

Actually, it is no business of theirs at all. What do they know about conservation

[Richprins]

They know about stealing money made from conservation?

[Lisbeth]

A completely different subject

[Bushcraft]

I agree with SANParks. Kruger is not a political and social tool and Parliament should rather investigate themselves and leave the professionals to do their jobs.

[Richprins]

Don Pinnock

Kruger National Park has been condemned by Parliament for signing an agreement which it had been expressly forbidden to sign by the Portfolio Committee on Environmental Affairs.

Portfolio Committee on Environmental Affairs chairperson Philemon Mapulane was furious with the Kruger Park’s senior management for sneaking through an agreement with the Association of Private Nature Reserves (APNR) as well as hunting quotas for wild animals moving between the park and reserves along its western boundary.

Mapulane was clearly aware that a government department showing the finger to Parliament constituted a serious threat to parliamentary oversight, an issue far beyond the signing of a document and setting a hunting quota.

At a committee colloquium last week, Kruger and SANParks officials attempted to filibuster their way out of the corner, but Mapulane is far too sharp to be talked around:

“That agreement has no validity,” he said at the colloquium. “Kruger has to go back and see how it gets itself out of that mess. It was clear. I phoned you (Kruger Park) and SMSed you saying: ‘Don’t do it.’ You ignored me.


“So, for Parliament, that agreement has no standing. You are directly questioning the authority of Parliament. We cannot have that.”

On the sidelines, Mapulane wondered what prompted Kruger to push ahead with the signing.

“There’s something behind this whole issue that we need to find out,” he told Daily Maverick. “We’re dealing here with experienced people. They claim they signed in error, that they didn’t know, that they misunderstood. But they were there at the previous colloquium where this was decided. They received the parliamentary report and were aware that it had become a parliamentary resolution. They can’t claim ignorance.”

The conflict had its roots in a colloquium on South Africa’s captive lion breeding and hunting held in August 2018. It found that the conservation value of predator breeding was zero and undermined the country’s tourism brand value. It also questioned the export of lion carcasses for the production of fake tiger-bone wine in Asia. Hunting captive lions might be legal, it found, “but this did not make it ethically, morally or socially acceptable”. It should be halted.

At the colloquium, concerns were also raised about hunting in the greater Kruger National Park and the contractual arrangements between the Kruger and the APNR — particularly after the hunting of a male lion named Skye in Umbabat Reserve in Mpumalanga in June 2018, which caused an international outcry.

Portfolio committee members felt that the 1996 agreement between Kruger and the APNR needed to be revised to ensure a sharing of benefits resulting from the dismantling of fences. At the August colloquium, the committee directed SANParks to develop a concept paper on this for discussion, after which the committee would hold public hearings to determine the best way forward after its engagement with SANParks.

At the colloquium, Mapulane said his committee wanted to understand the key elements that were to be agreed on. What would the responsibility of the private nature reserves be? What would the responsibility of SANParks be? What would the benefits accruing to the community be?

The committee had been told that the agreement was nearing completion. SANParks had to report on how far they were in terms of that discussion. Mapulane asked for it to be sent to portfolio committee members before going ahead, but it was not.
By way of a phone call and an SMS, Mapulane communicated to SANParks that, by signing the agreement, they would be in breach of both committee and National Assembly resolutions. This position was also publicly communicated through a media statement. However, SANParks defied Parliament and went ahead with the signing of the co-operative agreement.

A central issue, and cause for Mapulane’s concern, is who benefits from such an agreement. There appears to be very little benefit for Kruger apart from an extension of wildlands, and minimal benefits for the communities surrounding the park. There are, on the other hand, considerable benefits for the wealthy owners who comprise the APNR.

According to a parliamentary press statement:
“The committee is appalled by the conduct of SANParks and believes that there should be consequences for defying Parliament. The committee will engage with the minister of environmental affairs to ensure that an appropriate sanction is taken in this regard.”

Why would Kruger go so far as to defy Parliament on the signing of the agreement? Michele Pickover of EMS Foundation suggests that it was to head off the possibility of the portfolio committee and environmental NGOs tampering with the agreement, which would probably happen if it underwent a review process.

Hunting may also have had something to do with it. After the moratorium on conducting any binding contractual agreement before a wider investigation, the park signed off on the APNR’s hunting quotas. Was that business as usual, or an attempt to set the quotas in stone before Parliament came sniffing around?
These quotas, recommended by Kruger and approved by the licensing agencies — Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks Agency and the Limpopo Department of Economic Development, Environment and Tourism — are considerable. They permit the killing of 7,141 wild animals in the APNR, including 47 elephants.

SANParks appears to be adopting a puzzled stance. In the colloquium last week, the CEO of SANParks, Fundisile Mketeni, claimed that SANParks was not aware that it was not permitted to sign and hadn’t received documents to that effect. Mapulane pointed out that he and SANParks officials were in the colloquium and received reports of its decisions, so that excuse simply didn’t wash.

Later, Kruger spokesperson Ike Phaahla told a journalist:

“We cannot comment if we do not know why the committee is unhappy about us signing the agreement with the APNR.”

Attempts to contact Kruger and SanParks for comment were unsuccessful at the time of publishing this article.

In summing up, Mapelane said the meeting had been to hear a briefing on the co-operation agreement for Greater Kruger, including how the communities around the area would benefit. It had, however, been sidetracked by the hunting issues and illegitimate signing of the Greater Kruger agreement.

“We acknowledge the letter from the minister (who said she did not object to the signing), but acknowledge that she did not receive all the necessary information. She is new and may not have an appreciation yet where we are coming from. It is clear there must be consequences for this clear defiance of Parliament.

“The inquiry was into benefit-sharing with local communities. We did not hear their voice about how dropping of fences benefits them.

“As far as I’m concerned, that signing never took place. How it is corrected is a subject for ongoing engagement. I want to send a message for all board members of Kruger Park: Please take Parliament seriously. Don’t give it a middle finger and act in a way that suggests that you don’t care about the directives from Parliament.” DM

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

[Flutterby]

Hunters triumph over Parliament in SA
2/13/2019

I refer to a report in the latest newsletter from that excellent conservation source Conservation Action Trust:

https://conservationaction.co.za/media- ... eighbours/

​So here we have Kruger National Park conservation officials promoting and facilitating the hunting of Kruger Park animals in the adjacent privately owned conservancies, the association of private nature reserves. (APNR)

The hunting quotas approved by these ‘custodians of our wildlife’ are truly shocking; more than 7000 wild animals including 47 elephants.

And this after Kruger Park officials were expressly forbidden to sign off on this agreement by the Chairman of the Portfolio Committee for Environment Affairs of the South African Parliament, Philemon Mapulane MP.

Giving the finger to Parliament in this manner will surely cause outrage in Parliament. (I had to put the following in as a picture as the forum security does not like something there. )

Picture1.png (53.84 KiB) Viewed 918 times

This all follows on from the Colloquium held in Parliament in August last year. I declined to attend that colloquium and published a blog explaining why in which I wrote the following:

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.

Nothing demonstrates the power of the hunters’ stranglehold on conservation better than this - defiantly going ahead and signing off on hunting quotas for over 7000 wild animals in direct contravention of a specific instruction by Parliament not to do it.

I have long been complaining that conservation in South Africa is nothing more or less than an arm of the hunting industry.

20 years ago when I first started campaigning against the hunting industry I felt like a lone voice crying in the wilderness, although I remember Ian Michler was also making a noise about it at the time. But our arguments that captive lion breeding had no conservation value, would sabotage our tourism industry, would lead to an increase in the poaching of wild lions, would stimulate wildlife trafficking and carry huge veterinary risks; were unfashionable.

Now, only 20 years later, a mere scantling of time in the SA government dimension, our arguments have been adopted wholesale by mainstream conservation right up to the 12,000 scientists of the IUCN.

Yet despite the public outrage, the pressure from IUCN, the directions from Parliament and the divisions caused within the hunting fraternity itself, hunting continues to be blindly promoted by what passes muster for conservation in South Africa.

This is why I have started to offer a three day course at my Karoo Wildlife Centre, for animal activists who need and want to be informed on how to tackle the hunting industry effectively. We march with placards; the hunters laugh at us. We expose the horrors of hunting on social media and the lame stream media; the hunters laugh at us. We drag a reluctant IUCN into the fray to support our condemnation; the hunters laugh at us. And now we drag the hunting industry before Parliament; the hunters laugh at us.

I believe that my course, if it is supported by an adequate number of dedicated animal lovers, is the best way to break the stranglehold on conservation enjoyed by the hunting fraternity.

http://www.cannedlion.org/blog/hunters- ... ment-in-sa

[Sprocky]

BALULE NATURE RESERVE
P.O. Box 1187
Hoedspruit
1380
Chairperson: Sharon Haussmann
Tel: 082 465 2292
chairperson@balulenr.co.za


08/02/2019

PARLIAMENTARY INQUIRY

Following the Parliamentary Inquiry on Tuesday and Wednesday which I attended, I
would like to summarize the proceedings as follow:

Parliament was poorly attended, and only anti-hunting groups were invited to present
arguments.

The discussions were dominated by the anti-hunting groups, lobbying against trophy
hunting.

Highlighted in these presentations were the Skye hunt, and of course our Maseke
Elephant hunt incident.

Unfortunately very poor inter-governmental communication relating to the Cooperative
Agreement process was followed during the three years when the Agreement was
negotiated, resulted in the Chairman of the Environmental Portfolio Committee
lambasting SanParks for the process, using the platform created by the anti-hunting
presentations.

The Chairman of the Portfolio Committee was not informed as to the multitude of
meetings held with all stakeholders during the Cooperative Agreement process, he
therefor was not aware of the intentions, benefits and consultation process followed
over the last three years which involved numerous stakeholder meetings, public
meetings and intensive legal inputs and reviews.

The Committee requested specific clarity and further inputs from The Cooperative
Agreement relating to:
*Community benefits
*Hunting and the hunting protocol

SanParks is currently preparing a portfolio of evidence relating to the process, and
details of the agreement, to be submitted to the Committee.
With relevance to this, please note the following:
*It is the opinion of Kruger, and our own provisional legal opinion, that the Cooperative
Agreement has legal standing. (We are in the process of obtaining legal constitutional
opinion.)
The Agreement was signed by SanParks with full support and approval of the
Department of Environmental Affairs.
*It is the opinion of Kruger and the APNR that the principles of The Cooperative
Agreement will not be affected as a result of the Inquiry.
*The events in Parliament have no bearing on the process of being / becoming a Nature
Reserve.

It was a tumultuous two days in Parliament, with an emotionally charged platform set
by the anti-hunting activists.

While the hunting is under severe criticism, the Chairman of the Committee did say that
sustainable utilization is embedded in the constitution of South Africa and will be
defended, the focus however is on benefit sharing and the protocol followed.

I do however need to emphasize that the attack on hunting in the open system will not
stop, and Balule will be ridiculed and scandalized at every opportunity.

I am of the opinion that for the long term survival of Balule we will have to consider a
significantly altered income model to sustain the management of the reserve.

In closing I would like to Thank the Balule committee, land-owners and friends of Balule
who supported me during this challenging week.

Yours faithfully
Sharon Haussmann

[Richprins]

Much more sensible comment there, Sprocket!

Pinnock has a bee in his bonnet.