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Canned Lions
| Date: |
13 May 2007 12:00 |
| Producer: |
Hein Ungerer
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| Show: | Carte Blanche |
Fundisile Mketeni (Biodiversity and Conservatin: DEAT): 'Canned hunting will be prohibited.'
Thys Mostert (Commercial lion breeder): 'They want to close us down ... that's all this is about.'
Fundisile : 'This practice will stop.'
John Webb (Carte Blanche presenter): 'Images from a decade during which Carte Blanche brought you the sometimes menacing, often brutal underbelly of the hunting industry. We introduced you to some of the characters involved in shooting captive bred lions and the people who supplied the industry with this once proud king of the beasts.'
In 1997 the 'The Cook Report' ripped the lid off lion hunting in South Africa. It showed how captive bred lions were being shot and the programme coined a new phrase - 'canned lion hunting'.
A canned lion hunt involves an animal that is captive bred. It's also hunted in an fenced area, where there is no fair chase of the animal. The lion might also still be drugged from being transported and sometimes it's hunted from a vehicle and not on foot.
Through the years Carte Blanche has looked at canned hunting from different angles.
In 2002 we took a journey through the Free State to search for a young lion called 'Tokkelos'. He started out his life as a pet on a farm in the Bothaville area and then was passed on from owner to owner, eventually simply disappearing into the canned lion industry. Our conclusion was that he had probably ended up being killed by an overseas trophy hunter, but without us being able to trace any permits we just could not be sure.
Two years ago Carte Blanche visited a lion breeding farm in Limpopo province that belongs to this man, Piet Warren.
We went there when the government first threatened to close down canned hunting. The plan then was to release lions for six months into the wild before they could be hunted. That, Piet Warren told us, would kill his business.
[Carte Blanche 2005] Piet Warren (Limpopo lion farmer): 'If the regulations go through in their present form, I have no place, I don't want one lion, you can have them all.'
Piet Warren's words may well prove to be prophetic because for lion breeders the future has darkened even more.
Environment minister, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, dropped a bombshell earlier this year when he announced his department's new regulations for threatened and protected species.
The gist of this was that from 1 June, no captive bred lions were to be hunted unless they had been living free and catching their own prey for at least 24 months.
That the minister said was the first of two steps that would bring different provincial regulations under a national framework.
[Carte Blanche March 2007] Marthinus van Schalkwyk (Minister: Environment &Tourism): 'It is because of these loopholes, provinces having different standards and different regulations that we have a lot of abuse. And I believe that a country must deal with its hunting industry as one industry and as one government.'
But there's been resistance now from some of the provinces and as a result the minister has had to postpone his 1 June deadline to 1 February next year. But he's advised the lion farmers to start registering as soon as possible a move the government hopes will bring transparency to an industry that's been at best, opaque.
Ian Michler is a safari guide and a photo-journalist who has spent more than a decade tracking the development of hunting in Africa. He says he found the captive breeding industry very organised, but also very secretive.
Ian Michler (Wildlife journalist): 'What they're doing is not acceptable, that's why you struggle to get footage on these properties. That's why you struggle to get information. Today it's still impossible to get an absolute exact audit on how many lions, leopards, cheetahs are out there. And why? because it's unacceptable behaviour and they don't want that information known.'
John: 'The new regulations have been lambasted by lion breeders and hunters. They say that they weren't given enough notice, that the so-called two year wilding period is unreasonable, and that in some cases they spent many hundreds of thousands of rands upgrading infrastructure.'
Farmers feel betrayed because they say they built the industry with tacit government approval.
Thys: 'The minister gave us permission. Every corner post on this farm, every fence that was erected, was done with his permission. I have the permits for every lion ... for every fenced camp. I established my entire infrastructure here with his permission.'
John: 'So what you're saying is you're getting mixed messages from national government?'
Thys: 'Yes. I mean we are sitting with a problem. All this infrastructure, what am I going to do with it?'
Thys Mostert is a lion farmer from Bothaville in the Free State and he started breeding lions in 1994. More as a hobby at first but he soon discovered their huge commercial value for hunting and he's never looked back. But, he says, if his lions can no longer be hunted, his business will collapse.
Thys: 'The bottom line is who will I sell my lions to? Who will purchase a lion for R30 000 or R100 000? What will he do with that lion? How will he get his money back?'
Commercial breeding and hunting lions in South Africa has been a very lucrative business over the past ten years or so. And there's no better place to see this than on a hunting farm.
Serapa Safaris near Tosca in North West province does a large slice of their hunting business with Americans. Serapa's owner, Apie Reyneke, flies to America once a year to sign hunting contracts in Reno and Dallas.
John: 'Apie, is this good business for you?'
Apie Reyneke (Serapa Safaris): 'This is our main business because that's the attraction to get the overseas hunter here. He's either, in our case, the lion hunt will be number one, buffalo number two and rhino number three.'
Apie meets his hunting clients in Johanensburg and then flies them directly to his hunting farm in his own plane.
Apie: 'I fly them out here to save time. The type of hunters we get are talking about are all big businessmen and time is very valuable to them. So they want to be as quick as possible in the hunting area and they want to spend as much quality time in the bush.'
Apie says if the new regulations kick in, his business will suffer.
Apie: 'Seventy-five percent of our business will be gone. We're hunting plains game and that makes about R1-million of our business, the buffalo and rhino makes another R1,2-million and the lion hunters in this business is over R8-million a year.'
And if you multiply that R8-million rand by all the other hunters out there you begin to see the value of the industry.
An industry that is now firmly in the government's crosshairs and the national minister has taken a fine aim at it's heart.
The breeding farms that feed lions into the hunting industry will, with the help of the new regulations, become open to scrutiny - a move welcomed by Ian Michler.
Ian: 'At some properties the conditions are atrocious you know. I've got video footage of six, eight lion cubs in a small sort of half a foot by one foot metal bottom. Excrement everywhere ... little cage you know. Other little lion cubs in nothing more than a baby's cot size. And then on many occasions I came across properties where I was told by people who were running the farm or by the farmer himself that you know if times are hard they just cut the feeding costs and they'll only feed the animals which they know are going to be shot or they know are going to be sold.'
And with the spotlight now on the industry, the gloves are off - a group of 150 farmers have now formed a national organisation to oppose the minister's regulations.
Carel van Heerden is their chairman.
Carel van Heerden (SA Predator Breeding Association): 'To suddenly take one part of the hunting industry and say it's corrupt, or as the minister puts it, that this type of activity must be stopped - that's laughable. We feel that room can be made in the overall legislation for this industry with specific regulations pertaining to it.'
Another stakeholder not thrilled with the new regulations is the North West province. In fact the MEC for conservation, Mandlenkosi Mayisela, says he has a full madate from his provincial cabinet to ask to be excluded from the national regulations altogether.
Mandleinkosi Mayisela (MEC North West province): 'We may as well want to ask the minister for a complete exemption from these regulations as a province, given the fact that that the regime that we currently have in place as a province is sufficient enough and has never posed any problems in the past.'
Mandleinkosi adds that their biggest concern is around the practical implementation of the regulations and the impact on people.
Mandleinkosi: 'The industry currently has people who are working as skinners, people who are working as tracers, the majority of whom by the way in provinces like ourselves come from your rural communities. They assist in the tracking of these animals, you know. If this farm is closed, what happens to these people?'
To help provinces prepare for the regulations, the minister has given them an extra eight months. But the central government is emphatic. They won't get more. Fundisile Mketeni is the man responsible at national level for the implementation.
Fundisile: 'There are two issues here. There is the actual canned hunting which is a practice that we want to get rid of. And there's a period to register, because by registering we are looking for a lot of information because we want to create a database so that we know what is happening in the industry with regards to these species.'
John: 'Do you have people being specifically trained to ensure that these regulations are going to be enforced?'
Fundisile: 'Yes we are, we are doing that. And once farms are registered and they are in our database, we can do spot checks, because we know whose doing what in the country. Now we don't have that full picture.'
A huge bone of contention for the farmers is the minister's 24 month 'wilding period'.
Carel: 'There is no reason why you would want a lion to spend three months or a longer period of time in a wild situation. Are you trying to bluff the lion by saying to him, hey old chap, you've been bred in captivity but I'm now going to let you run free for three months or six months, to feel what it's like to be a free lion? That will never change where that lion came from.'
Thys: 'All that I can think of is that they want to make it as difficult for the industry as possible. They want to close us, that's all this is about.'
But what about the ethical questions? It's still the same lion you're killing, just 24 months later. And if that is the case, how dead will canned lion hunting be?
Ian: 'If you're going to ban canned hunting, ban it. You know, don't string it out and say well if an animal can be in the wild for two years then it can be shot. I mean why allow even a small loophole? Because you got to believe that that loophole will be chinked away at.'
And if hunting a captive bred lion is an ethical problem, what implication is there for hunting other captive animals? How acceptable is put and shoot hunting - buying a rhino on auction in KwaZulu-Natal and transporting him to and later shooting him in North West province? Or buying sable or kudu or giraffe for that matter at an auction in North West and then shooting them in Limpopo? It seems as if attempts to solve the lion issue might just be opening a huge can of other species worms.
Many lion farmers were already preparing themselves for the impact of the regulations before the minister gave them more time.
Thys Mostert has 65 hectares under lion camps at present. According to Free State law he is allowed to keep 130 lions. He had 80 but he's reduced the numbers now, selling off all but his breeding stock which now numbers 25. These animals he intends keeping.
Thys: 'My lions will stay here. They are my children and they will stay here. I will not kill them and I won't get rid of them. My lions stay here, they are my property. They belong to me.'
John: 'On a personal note Thys, it's very obvious to me that you're passionate about these lions, there's almost a love there. How do you feel knowing that these lions are sold on to be hunted?'
Thys: 'It's very difficult when a lion gets hunted. But it's just as difficult for that farmer whose cow is called Daisy. She's given him ten calves but now she's old and she doesn't have any teeth left and has to be slaughtered. It's the same for me. Why must I let a lion die of old age, let him suffer and die when I can at least get money for him that I can plough back into my other lions and continue with my business?'
And what Thys says really sums it all up - there is no way out for the lions. They are seen as mere commodities to be bred, traded and killed. And the new government regulations won't change any of that. These animals will never be part of an eco system where they form prides, catch their own prey, fight their lion battles, breed and die of old age.
In captivity their lives were mapped out - now there is uncertainty - whats going to happen to the thousands of lions caught up in the industry?
Thys: 'And of those 4 000 lions at least 500 will be pregnant. If they have just three cubs each, you can add another 1 500 to the total. I don't know if they thought about where they were going with all these lions because there isn't a single lion farmer who can keep a lion and feed him and not get money out of him.'
So for the lion farmers now it's a race against time. They have just more than eight months to run down their stocks and already the indication is that lion hunting has gone into overdrive. The next few months will show exactly how popular this industry has become.
Fundisile: 'How big is this market interested in these captive bred animals, to shoot them, because it's a complete slaughter. It's not a sport anymore, it's not a conservation activity anymore, it's like putting an animal in the butchery and just slaughter it.'
Opposition against the ministers regulations is growing. The postponement only puts off the inevitable, the regulations are still in place. That's why the SA Predator Breeders Association has started a legal action to have the new regulations thrown out.
Carel: 'We are very positive. We have obtained expert opinion on the process that has been followed and on the scientific reports on which the minister based his decisions.'
The outcome of this looming legal battle could very well have far reaching implications for stakeholders, including of course, thousands of animals.
Ian: 'I have no doubt that that this kind of behaviour is going to be exported. Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, possibly Zambia as well it's starting, so it's just going to move. So as long as its still socially acceptable there will be a demand. And I think that the hunting industry needs to take note of what happened to the smoking industry.'
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER:While every attempt has been made to ensure this transcript or summary is accurate, Carte Blanche or its agents cannot be held liable for any claims arising out of inaccuracies caused by human error or electronic fault. This transcript was typed from a transcription recording unit and not from an original script, so due to the possibility of mishearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, errors cannot be ruled out.
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