Provincial conservation officials are issuing permits for lion-breeding centres in the face of a national moratorium placed on such facilities because they are often used for “canned” hunting.
The Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism said this week that the long-awaited public input on breeding and hunting large predators such as lions will finally take place this month. Fundisile Mketeni, deputy director of biodiversity and conservation, said notices inviting public comment will be published in the next fortnight.
Provincial contempt for the moratorium put in place pending a national policy, was highlighted when a traveller who stopped for petrol at a garage in Tzaneen earlier this month was surprised to see a convoy of vehicles transporting 12 white lions in crates. She took photos of the lions and asked the Mail & Guardian to investigate.
The lions were being transported from a lion-breeding farm in Hoedspruit to a farm near Ellisras in Limpopo. The new lion-breeding centre in Ellisras is owned by a company called Capensis Investments 500.
Capensis is linked to and situated next door to Rhinoland Safaris, a hunting operation, though consultants working for the company vehemently deny it is being set up for hunting purposes.
Marius Kotze, a professional hunter and outfitter, who is also the manager of Rhinoland Safaris, helped set up the Capensis project. He says there are 14 white lions at the new centre, but they are not for shooting.
Gideon de Klerk, a former Limpopo conservation official who did an environmental impact assessment (EIA) for Capensis, says he advised the company against hunting. The centre’s major source of income will be sales of live lions to zoos and collectors.
De Klerk says the centre will also be used for educational purposes.
“Nobody can guarantee the lions won’t be hunted, but that is not the intention. I advised them during the EIA that it would be suicide to do canned hunts.”
Live white lion cubs can fetch up to R450 000 each. A white male lion sold to a trophy hunter in the Free State last year was shot for more than R1,5-million. White lions, which are white because of a recessive gene, have become fashionable among breeders in the past couple of years. But Rick Allan, manager of the wildlife unit at the National Council of SPCAs, says the captive market is becoming saturated.
“The Johannesburg Zoo is breeding its own white lions. How many zoos can accommodate white lions?”
The Cooke Report, an international film documentary, exposed canned lion hunting in South Africa in 1997. Subsequent investigations have shown that most lion-breeding facilities are little more than factories canning live fodder for hunters.
In the wake of The Cooke Report, the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism placed a moratorium on the establishment of new lion holding and breeding facilities pending a national policy to regulate the industry. The minister at the time, Pallo Jordan, requested provincial departments to impose the moratorium voluntarily — and it appears that only Mpumalanga has strictly adhered to the moratorium.
Gareth Morgan, a Democratic Alliance MP and spokesperson on the environment, says it appears the national department has no idea how many lion breeders there are in South Africa, or how many predators are caught up in the industry.
“While the minister [Marthinus van Schalkwyk] has condemned the practice and requested a special report on the problem from his department, the question is, why has this report not already been done? It seems his department does not know what is going on,” Morgan said in a statement last month.
In June last year the department published a policy document on “national principles, norms and standards for the sustainable use of large predators in South Africa”. It outlawed canned hunting, defined as “any form of hunting where a large predator is tranquillised, artificially lured by sound, scent, visual stimuli, feeding, bait, other animals of its own species or another species, or any other method”.
It also prohibits the hunting of captive cats and only allows for the hunting of wild predators. Morgan says this is the most problematic point in the policy: “A lot is left to the discretion of conservation officials.” The provinces agreed to apply the national policy as a minimum standard, pending a public consultation process. Limpopo and North West have held workshops on how to apply the policy, and Gauteng is planning a workshop soon.
In the meantime, the pressure for permits to set up new captive breeding centres mounts.
Questions sent by the M&G to the Limpopo permits authorities this week had not been answered by the time of going to press.