Farmers in the western Free State hate small wild predators so much that after killing them they string them up along a public fence in a grisly head-hunting competition.
Their trophies are on display at a T-junction of farm roads near Soutpan.
The Mail & Guardian this week counted at least 13 jackal corpses and four dead caracals tied to the fence by their back legs and in varying stages of decomposition. Piles of bones and fur on the ground indicate that many more carcasses have been exhibited there.
Ria Taljaard, wife of one of the big farmers in the area, says the gory exhibition is ”a competition among the men here. They hang the animals up to show each other what they have caught.”
The average jackal hunt in the area involves a team of people on a bakkie going out at night with a powerful spotlight and rifles. Sometimes a tape of jackal calls is played to lure the predators. Often small terriers owned by the farmers are sent into the jackals’ dens to force them out and then greyhounds are used to chase them down.
Caracals — small, red lynxes with characteristic tufts on the tops of their ears — are more difficult to catch. The farmers usually set traps for them, including cruel jaw-like gin traps, or find them on a kill.
Taljaard says the farmers kill the predators to protect their sheep.
”A jackal can take out up to 15 lambs in a single night. This is our income; just like you earn a salary, we make money out of our sheep.”
”This public display of corpses is offensive, stupid and in bad taste,” says Gerhard Verdoorn, director of the Endangered Wildlife Trust, which works with farmers to find ecologically sustainable solutions to predator problems.
”It creates a bad image, even if they are having real difficulties with the animals.”
He saw the same attitude on display while driving through the Eastern Cape a couple of years ago. A farmer had hung a baboon corpse, crucifixion-style, on a public fence.
Conservationists say farmers are not doing themselves any favours by killing jackals — in fact, they exacerbate their troubles. By targeting jackals, farmers have created a species of wild ”super dogs” that are wily, have developed a taste for domestic stock and are virtually impossible to control.
Jackals are territorial and work in pairs. When the alpha male in an area is killed, it leaves a gap for sub-males to fill. Because the sub-males are less established, they have learned to survive by inventive hunting methods — such as killing sheep.
The female who pairs with the alpha male dominates breeding cycles in her territory, keeping numbers down. When she is killed or driven off, younger females begin to breed — meaning that soon there are more jackal puppies in the area, all learning from the sub-males how to kill sheep.
”Pretty soon the farmer is losing sizeable chunks of his flock. From where he sits it looks like a vendetta. Each generation is harder to trap, to poison, to fence out, fool or kill. And every one is genetically hard-wired to outwit him,” says veteran predator researcher Thys de Wet in an interview with Getaway magazine.
Verdoorn says the farmers are often the losers in this war of wits. ”The guys who persecute these animals are often the ones who have the biggest stock losses.”
Faced with a losing battle, some farmers have developed innovative ways of protecting their flocks. Some use trained dogs, others put the sheep inside at night and a Namaqualand farmer has developed a plastic collar to protect the sheeps’ throats.
Killing the predators is condoned by ordinances that apply in most provinces, with the exception of the Western Cape. Most of these ”problem animal control” ordinances classify jackals and caracals, as well as baboons, vervet monkeys and bushpigs, as vermin — and in some instances the law compels farmers to kill them.
Retired advocate Chris Mercer, who has established a wildlife rehabilitation centre in the Kalahari, was arrested in terms of one such ordinance after a farmer gave him three orphaned caracal kittens to raise last year. Mercer was convicted and fined for keeping and transporting the kittens without permits.
In an appeal against the sentence due to be heard in the Kimberley High Court soon, Mercer argues that the ordinances — many of which date back to the 1950s — are outdated, discriminatory and unconstitutional.
”The problem animal control ordinance is a chilling reminder of the days when all laws and policies were framed to protect the narrow commercial interests of a tiny minority –the white, livestock-farming community … It specifically excludes blacks by stipulating, inter alia, that ‘any six persons who are not black may form a hunt club’,” he says in legal papers.
Mercer points out that caracals are defined as a threatened species by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites). By allowing farmers to persecute them, he argues, South Africa is contravening its obligations under Cites and several other conventions the government has signed.
Because of the ordinances, provincial conservation officials alerted to the grisly carcass exhibition near Soutpan will not take any action against the farmers. But this may change for caracals when a draft National Biodiversity Bill is finalised and passed — perhaps next year.
The new Bill will give caracals special protection in terms of Cites, and any farmer who wants to kill one will have to apply to a national biodiversity institute for permission. As for the jackals, the battle will continue: because they are not listed as endangered, they will continue to be head-hunted by unscrupulous farmers.