The breeding of captive lions for commercial purposes in South Africa will be shut down if a draft notice, “prohibiting certain activities involving African lion (Panthera leo)”, is implemented without exceptions. The exceptions could be abused, conservationists warn.
About 8,000 lions are being held in captivity in 366 facilities in South Africa, the department of forestry, fisheries and the environment told parliament in 2019. They are used for tourism, hunting and the bone trade and mostly held in the North West, Free State and Limpopo.
DFFE communications director Peter Mbelengwa said: “We will be holding consultations on the draft prohibition notice and the public has until November 20 to make submissions.”
Dr Louise de Waal, the director and campaign manager of Blood Lions — a multi-award-winning film (2105) and global campaign to stop the captive lion industry and canned hunting — said they supported the minister’s decision to prevent the establishment of new captive lion facilities.
Yet she also flagged the following concerns: “Providing exceptions for facilities that either offer a ‘public function or operate on a nonprofit basis’ could be abused and open legal loopholes for facilities.”
Providing exceptions for facilities that either offer a ‘public function or operate on a nonprofit basis’ could be abused.
— Dr Louise de Waal, Blood Lions director
Only about 10 of South Africa's nonprofit sanctuaries are “true sanctuaries, offering a safe haven for lions and making their wellbeing the top priority, with no breeding, interacting and trading”, she said.
The Blood Lions submission to DFFE states: “We are hugely concerned (that the exceptions) will allow for the establishment or registration of new captive lion facilities and pseudo-sanctuaries that may operate under the guise of providing, for example, an educational function ...
“There are numerous examples of commercial captive lion facilities that have registered a nonprofit as a sideline, in particular facilities with public access, voluntourism, and/or research interests.”
The World Wide Fund for Nature, SA (WWF-SA) supports the department’s “intention to develop processes to end the captive keeping of lions and closely associated facilities”.
Khungeka Njobe, WWF-SA head of programme, said: “We do not support the promotion of captive breeding unless breeding programmes are part of science-based conservation management and populations in the wild are in dire numbers.”
Africa has about 25,000 wild lions and South Africa is one of six countries on the continent with more than 1,000 wild lions, according to the African Lion Database, run by the Endangered Wildlife Trust.
Natural resource economist Dr Ross Harvey wrote in The Conversation Africa that captive breeding does not seem to buffer the exploitation of wild lion and the “legal supply availability (of lion parts) undermines efforts to reduce demand”. The poaching of wild lions has not been declining, he wrote, making a case for a total ban on captive breeding.
The publication reported, in June this year, that a man was arrested at OR Tambo International Airport as he was about to fly to Vietnam, with five lion carcasses in his luggage.
South Africa is the first choice for hunters who want to kill captive-raised, or canned, lions the Born Free Foundation revealed in its 2018 report, Cash before Conservation: An Overview of the Breeding of Lions for Hunting and Bone Trade. The majority of its 7,500 lion trophy exports in the decade to 2013, were from canned hunting.
Breeders interviewed for a government-commissioned study threatened to sell their skeletons through illegal outlets if the government restricted export quotas.
But slowly the development of policy and legislation to phase out the captive lion industry is gaining momentum and the decision by DFFE minister Barbara Creecy to publish the draft prohibition notice on September 29 for consultation, is a step closer to the end.
Timeline:
- 2018: parliamentary portfolio committee for environmental affairs holds a colloquium on Captive Lion Breeding for Hunting in SA: harming or promoting the conservation image of the country.
- The portfolio committee’s recommendations include: a policy and legislative review of captive breeding of lions for hunting and lion bone trade should be initiated as a matter of urgency, with a view to putting an end to this practice.
- October 2019: Creecy appoints a high-level panel to review policies, legislation and practices relating to the management, breeding, hunting, trade and handling of elephant, lion, leopard and rhinoceros.
- HLP recommendations include that: South Africa should not captive breed lions, keep lions in captivity, or use captive lions or their derivatives commercially.
- April 2021: cabinet adopts the high-level panel’s report and recommendations
- March 2023: cabinet approves The White Paper on Conservation and Sustainable Use of SA’s Biodiversity
- 14 June 2023: The White Paper sets the broad overarching policy from which the species-specific legislation, policies and strategies are developed.
Source: Blood Lions and the WWF-SA
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.