On the hunt: Adri Kritzhoff, chief executive of the Professional Hunters Association of South Africa and professional hunter Tavi Fragoso at the Iwamanzi Game Reserve in Koster. Photo: Stefan Heunis/AFP
The Western Cape high court has suspended the decision by Forestry, Fisheries and Environment Minister Barbara Creecy to issue quotas to hunt and export 10 black rhinos, 10 leopards and 150 elephants.
The application for an interim interdict against the 2022 hunting and export quotas of the department of forestry, fisheries and the environment was brought by animal protection organisation, Humane Society International/Africa (HSI/Africa). The matter was initially heard by the court on 18 March.
On Thursday last week, the court held that interim relief be granted on two bases. The department was not permitted to defer the fixed trophy hunting quotas for the year 2021 to the year 2022. The deferral, it stated, was not authorised nor contemplated under respective regulations relating to the international trade of these species, and violated the common law principle of legitimate expectation.
The department, the court found, failed to comply with the consultative process prescribed by the National Environmental Management: Biodiversity Act when making the quota decision, in that the requisite public participation conditions were not met; the quota announcement was not published in the Government Gazette; and that Creecy may not issue a quota for trophy hunting and export of elephants, black rhinos or leopards without valid non-detriment findings.
The interim relief granted means that the department’s decision to allocate a hunting and export quota for elephant, black rhinos and leopard for the calendar year of 2022 “is interdicted from being implemented or given effect to in any way”.
The court ordered that the department is interdicted from publishing in the Government Gazette “or in any other way issuing a quota for the hunting and/or export of these species and the department is interdicted from issuing any permit for the hunting and export of these species, until the matter is reviewed on the merits” in part B of the application that is to follow.
In his judgment, Judge Patrick Gamble addressed the issues of irreparable harm and balance of convenience. “In the event that no interdict is granted pending finalisation of the review proceedings, of the order of 170 animals will be hunted during 2022; their respective trophies mounted by local taxidermists and thereafter exported overseas”.
“The primary beneficiaries of these killings will be the wealthy, foreign hunters who may wish to adorn their homes, man-caves, offices, club houses and the like with the hubristic consequences of their expensive forays into the wilds of Southern Africa. If the interdict is granted, those animals will be spared death at the hands of the hunters. The irreparable harm is thus the difference between life and death. It is, to use the vernacular, ‘a no brainer’ in the test for an interdict pendente lite,” he said.
Creecy had argued in her answering affidavit that irreparable harm would be caused to the hunting industry by virtue of the lost opportunities in circumstances in which hundreds of thousands of US dollars would have been paid by people hunting for trophies.
But Gamble said, “if the review is unsuccessful, the desire of the fortunate few who can afford to hunt protected animals exclusively for the purpose of transporting their trophies for display overseas will not have been lost, only delayed. So too the much vaunted inflow of foreign currency into South Africa’s hunting industry”.
Tony Gerrans, executive director for HSI/Africa, welcomed the ruling. “The relief ordered provides us with the rightful opportunity to fully review the minister’s record of decision in terms of which the quota allocations were determined,” he said in a statement. “This data needs to be considered before such an impactful decision can be made. We are thankful that the high court recognises that the killing of our threatened, vulnerable and critically endangered wildlife cannot continue while this matter is heard.”
The HSI/Africa cited its study in May last year detailing South Africa’s role in the international trade in hunting trophies of mammal species listed under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (Cites) during 2014 to 2018. This showed that South Africa is the second-largest exporter of hunting trophies of Cites-listed mammal species globally, exporting 16% of the global total of hunting trophies — 4 204 on average per year.
Between 2014 and 2018, the country exported 574 African leopard trophies, 98% of which were sourced from the wild. It exported 1 337 African elephant trophies, “virtually all wild-sourced” and 21 black rhino trophies, all sourced from the wild.
The department has maintained that South Africa supports the principle of responsible and sustainable use of natural resources and that trophy hunting is one of the most strictly regulated activities in the country.
“Research has found that trophy hunting creates economic incentives that promote conservation. Trophy hunting also provides a useful wildlife management tool, and is used as a means to remove (mostly) excess males from a population, while revenue is generated at the same time to cover the costs of conservation efforts. Because of this, the amount of land under wildlife has increased considerably in recent years,” according to the department.
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