Press Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
29 March 2007
Startling Findings of Animal Rights Africa Report on the Poaching of Wild Animals in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Zambia
The illegal killing of wild animals poses an urgent threat to their survival and involves enormous cruelty, untold suffering, pain and death for individual animals, family groups and social networks. The raison d’etre for this report was to get an overview of the current scale of illegal killing of wild life in South Africa and the southern African region more broadly. A startling picture is revealed – one of enormous suffering, an inability by state agencies to adequately monitor the illegal killing of wild animals, a lack of centralised statistics and data, an uncoordinated response from authorities, insufficient enforcement and a general way of thinking that promotes killing instead of protection and respect.South Africa and its neighbours have flourishing illegal wild animal markets and in South Africa, particularly, this is compounded by its geographical location and relatively sophisticated infrastructure. Indeed, poaching is taking place in an increasingly organised scale. Africa has seen the unprecedented annihilation of wild animals as a result of poaching and it is being fuelled by the profits that are made by commercial wildlife traffickers (often to satisfy consumer demand abroad) and uncontrolled commercial exploitation. This is part of a global problem which according to Interpol is worth some US$12 billion a year. Throughout Africa, money is the driving force of this illegal trade and it is motivated by greed and aided by corruption, inadequate ranger staffing, public attitudes to wildlife, lack of public awareness, lack of data and lack of adequate law enforcement.
Poaching, trafficking and the bushmeat trade continue to thrive and expand in the region because there are flawed efforts to combat it. In particular, it is as a result of:
- The ‘sustainable’ and consumptive use context, i.e., the belief that animals are a resource to be used
rather than protected. An illegal activity occurs within a framework where the same activity
(killing for food or for profit), is legal. The key to this problem is that animals are seen as property,
whether the property of the landowner, of governments or of rural communities.
This commodification of sentient beings implies their exploitation. - Inadequate leadership from government – insufficient priority is being given to wildlife crime. Protecting wildlife is often viewed as a low priority.
- Poor conceptualisation and implementation of non-consumptive poverty relief and development projects.
- Wildlife laws are too weak, ambiguous and contradictory.
- Prosecutors and magistrates are often unfamiliar with wildlife laws.
- Strong enforcement and compliance is lacking.
- Low levels of staffing and capacity.
- Lack of effective anti-poaching strategies, nationally and regionally.
- Effective public awareness-raising is wanting.
- Create and coordinate long-term programmes and strategies at a national and regional level;
- Reduce national demand;
- Mitigate poaching activities;
- Expose the extent of poaching and trade;
- Gather intelligence for future analytical reports and to identify enforcement priorities;
- Determine what animals are being targeted.
- Establish national and regional Wildlife Crime Databases.
- Review policies and legislation.
- Review policy of ‘sustainable use’ and consumptive use.
- Ensure that legislation and judicial systems support prosecutions and higher penalties.
- Build capacity, increase numbers, train and support rangers.
- Forge partnerships; between government agencies, with NGOs and inter-governmentally.
- Actively seek participation of civil society.
- Promote public awareness and education which is aimed at protecting and respecting animals in the wild.
- Investigate non-consumptive ways of addressing hunger.
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