Mpumalanga will not issue permits to hunt trophy elephants with unlimited tusk weights

17 May 2017 - 21:00 By Jan Bornman
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The Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks Agency has said it won't be issuing permits to hunt trophy elephants with unlimited tusk weights.

In March this year‚ SANParks announced it had approved requests by private reserves including the Timbavati private reserve to hunt a "trophy elephant bull" with unlimited tusk weight.

In a change of events‚ Riaan de Lange‚ from the Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks Agency's permitting authority‚ said he would instead issue permits to Timbavati for four 30lbs bull elephant trophies and one white rhino trophy.

The Timbavati private reserve shares an unfenced border with the Kruger National Park‚ and conservation experts said South Africa should be duty-bound to protect elephants falling in the trophy bull categories‚ instead of issuing hunting permits.

In a statement by Conservation Action Trust‚ it quoted Dr Lucy Bates‚ a Sussex University elephant researcher‚ as saying: "Kruger is one of the last bastions of large-tusked bull elephants in the whole of Africa. South Africa should be duty-bound to protect and preserve these super tuskers and their genes for the benefit of the entire continent."

The Conservation Action Trust said South Africa remains the second largest exporter of elephant trophies in Africa after Zimbabwe. With a current annual CITES export quota of 150 elephants it has exported nearly 2‚000 trophies over the past ten years.

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