Press Release
THUKELA ELEPHANTS FIND SANCTUARY AT LAST
14 November 2006
Animal Rights Africa (ARA) calls for an immediate, national moratorium on all hunting of
large predators and thick skinned mammals, as well as all other threatened and protected
species of animals in South Africa. Responding to the recent public announcement by the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism (DEAT) concerning the Draft Regulations on Threatened and Protected Species and Norms and Standards for Hunting, to be promulgated in March 2007, ARA says that this legislation does not in any way prevent the practice of "canned hunting", and actually contains several worrying grey areas as well as creating legislative loopholes that will entrench "canned hunting" as an integral component of the trophy hunting industry in South Africa.
Steve Smit, spokesperson for ARA, says, "DEAT has chosen to marginalize the animal rights and other animal care groups and has had its final consultations only with the provincial conservation authorities and the hunting industry. Between them they have agreed on legislation that panders to the profit-driven bloodlust of the hunters and breeders, people who relish the opportunity to make money out of killing animals."
"The continued breeding of large predators for the hunting industry is not materially affected in any way. The draft regulations also allow hunters to add the heads of endangered animals such as Cheetahs, Wild Dogs and Brown Hyenas, as well as locally bred tigers, jaguars and other exotics to their trophy list. Also, allowing landowners to apply for blanket permits to destroy so-called problem animals at their discretion, creates carte blanch for hunters to practice "canned hunting" without any direct control by the conservation authorities."
Smit said that the object of this legislation should be to prevent practices that abuse and exploit wild animals. "Instead, all this legislation really does is pander to the demands of the wealthy, politically well-connected hunting industry that sees wild animals as commodities to be killed for status, pleasure and profit. It entrenches the culture of violence as an acceptable form of entertainment and profiteering, and buys into the culture of guns. This is in direct conflict with the government's stated goals of reducing the use of guns as tools of violence in post-apartheid South Africa."
Michele Pickover, also of ARA, says that the draft regulations fail to provide for the rights and welfare of the individual animals affected by this policy. "Indeed, this document rejects the path of ethical ecotourism and animal protection-based environmental management. There are no effective controls over the breeding and disposal of large predators to the hunting industry, and there are very few conservation officials with the rehabilitation experience that will allow a meaningful monitoring of the processes that must be adhered to before an animal that has been released from captivity may be hunted," she said.
"The Minister has failed the animals very badly and the day that this legislation is signed into power will be a very sad day indeed for wild animals in particular and South Africa as a whole. We must do everything in our power to prevent this happening."
Supporting the call for a moratorium on the implementation of this "flawed" legislation, is Louise Joubert, director of SANWILD, an internationally renowned wildlife sanctuary and rehabilitation facility in Limpopo Province. "My experience with large predators tells me that the process of rehabilitation that large predators must undergo prior to being legally hunted, as stipulated in this legislation, is insufficient and will not protect these animals from exploitation by the 'canned hunting' industry. Killing these animals will always be 'canned hunting', no matter what the hunters and the government say."
ARA has handed this matter to its legal counsel with a view to taking Minister Marthinus Van Schalkwyk and DEAT to court in order to prevent this legislation being signed into law next March.
For more information contact:
ARA: Steve Smit - 082 659 4711 or Michele Pickover - 082 253 2124
SANWILD: Louise Joubert - 083 310 3882
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