Hunting

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Richprins
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Re: Hunting

Post by Richprins »

What convoluted logic. :O^

So cancel hunting at a whim, and good luck to the farms then after that, as long as they are deemed politically-correct. The hunters will simply go elsewhere, taking their fringe-economy money with them. If some families lose breadwinners due to their hunting-related incomes disappearing, too bad.

Should some farms close down and become derelict and invaded, with their stock brutally poached including animals from Kruger, too bad as well. the author will just move on to another target in the shaming twitterverse.

Why not whine about the hundreds of "innocent" buffalo officially shot in the adjacent national park every year?


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Re: Hunting

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Opinion: Our CEO asks whether the trophy hunting industry could ruin Kruger’s big expansion plan

Posted on 8 February, 2019 by Simon Espley in Hunting, Opinion Editorial, Wildlife and the Opinion Editorial post series

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Opinion post by Simon Espley – CEO Africa Geographic

NOTE: This opinion post relates exclusively to trophy hunting on land that shares an unfenced border with the Kruger National Park in South Africa. It does not refer to any other form or location of hunting, although I do refer to other areas in the opening paragraphs. Hunting is a complex and emotional topic, and my focus here is specific.

It is no secret that the trophy hunting industry staggers from one unsavoury incident to the next, be it baiting and shooting of pride male lions, illegal collared elephant hunting or the surgical removal of the remaining large-gene animals. Cecil the Lion was just one example that hit the viral stratosphere, but this kind of behaviour goes on all over Africa, often unreported or not picked up by mainstream media, and it swamps the good that does result from some hunting operations.

Recently, respected filmmaker and conservationist Dereck Joubert shared some of his experiences with trophy hunters that massacred their way through Botswana in the old days. His recollections make for harrowing reading. I have heard similar accounts from multiple people, including ex professional hunters.

In the latest trophy hunting-related disaster, South Africa’s Parliament has attacked Kruger’s magnificent and visionary 10-year plan by calling for the nullifying of the recently signed agreement between Kruger and neighbouring private and community reserves. Who knows what political manoeuvrings are behind this, but it is notable that trophy hunting and a perceived lack of local community benefits were at the root of the statement from Parliament.

The trophy hunting industry could play such a powerful role in African conservation (there are some examples where this does happen), but in practise it simply refuses to adapt to modern day conservation realities and rid itself of unsustainable take-offs, corruption and the bad apples that taint the entire industry. The main focus and revenue drivers are the targeting of big gene elephants, lions, leopards, buffalos etc and these have become increasingly scarce in the wild, resulting in drastic (sometimes illegal or contrary to agreed protocol) antics to secure the desired trophies. Fenced private game farms appear to be better managed as trophy hunting businesses, with arguably more sustainable practises. For open ecosystems though, this is a classic case of the Tragedy of the Commons. It appears that this rudderless industry will not change – it is what it is, and it simply does not operate in a manner that is conducive to sustainability in large ecosystems with multiple landowners and land use models. Such as the Greater Kruger.

BUT BACK TO MY HEADLINE…

Last year I wrote to the good people of the Associated Private Nature Reserves (APNR), a collective of private reserves that forms part of the Greater Kruger. I know some of them personally – good people who want the best for conservation. I cautioned them that their fund-raising model needs to change. Trophy hunting constitutes a sizeable chunk of the revenue pie that is applied to manage the reserve and keep wildlife safe from poachers. They acknowledged my letter politely, but I got the sense that the day-to-day reality of the issues that they face prevent them from taking too seriously warnings of the coming storm.

My warning was not based on ignorance as to the amount of revenue raised by trophy hunting and the significantly lower eco-footprint per Dollar raised of trophy hunting versus that of photographic tourism. I am well aware of these realities.

Rather, my warning was that the rolling snowball of public rage at killing animals (particularly large-gene individuals) for fun and ego is growing in size and momentum every day, and the consequences will only increase. And social media and other technologies are empowering millions of new-age activists to pursue and persecute trophy hunters and others in the industry. Ask that dentist Walter Palmer if he would do it again.

(If you want to see the map, click on the title)
The Associated Private Nature Reserves (APNR), in light green, and Kruger National Park, dark green. The APNR forms part of the Greater Kruger – private and community-owned land that shares unfenced borders with Kruger © Africa Geographic

I stressed to APNR management that their personal faith in the trophy hunting industry and their granular understanding of what it actually takes to manage, and keep safe from poachers, vast tracts of wild lands, are simply not deemed relevant in the court of public opinion. Unfortunately, what is relevant is that the emotional tidal wave will quite simply swamp all of that, and reduce the APNR to tatters if public opinion is ignored. We now live in a world where accumulated opinion becomes fact, emotion trumps knowledge, and experience on the ground has low ranking. Those are the cards that we have been dealt. Thank you, Facebook. I am not suggesting that APNR management surrender and let public opinion and the hordes of ’emotional keyboard warriors’ (favourite hunter term) manage the Greater Kruger. Heaven forbid! I am suggesting that they make wise decisions about aspects of their model that do not seem to have longevity, and where the risk of brand destruction is high.

My parting comment was that surely they had no choice but to stop trophy hunting as soon as possible, and seek alternative revenue-raising strategies. I expressed faith that the significant combined intellectual and financial muscle amongst the landowners and lodge owners (often separate entities/people) would come up with a plan.

Timbavati, one of the APNR reserves, recently increased the conservation levy paid by visiting tourists, and now cover 55% of their operational budget from this revenue source (the rest comes primarily from trophy hunting). Based on simple maths explained to me recently, increasing that levy from the current R368 to about R750 per person per night would remove the need for any trophy hunting. This arithmetic is of course subject to assumptions, such as demand staying the same, but in broad strokes this number holds water.

The 19 commercial lodges in Timbavati charge on average R8,275 per person per night, so the suggested increased conservation levy would still pale by comparison. So there is one workable solution for one particular reserve.

Would travel agents and tourists agree to this increase? Time will tell. This model of increasing conservation levies paid by photographic tourists will not work in all of the reserves incorporated into the APNR, because some simply do not have enough commercial lodges relative to land size and management costs. Those reserves have to find another model – perhaps including funding by the passionate and powerful anti-hunting lobby?

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Two community-owned reserves in the Greater Kruger (but outside the APNR) only have trophy hunting as a revenue source. The larger of the community-owned reserves with open fences to the Kruger (the 42,000 hectare Letaba Ranch) is now buried in chaos, after the trophy hunting operators left after being accused of unsustainable offtakes, baiting animals from the Kruger and of channelling little or no benefit to the community landowners. That reserve is now in a nosedive, with increasing illegal mining on the property, and poaching. Remember that there are no fences between this reserve and our beloved Kruger.

If the current situation persists (trophy hunting of Kruger animals in neighbouring properties), the probable result of the rising public anger and politicisation by opportunists could see the APNR and others being forced to disband and fences going back up. In that case some of the landowners will revert to livestock and crop farming and intense trophy hunting. After all, they own the land, and can utilise it as they choose. That would be a catastrophe, and the knock-on effects could be significant – Kruger’s big westward expansion plans could wilt and die, and the tourism industry in that area would collapse – taking with it many jobs and trickle-down benefits.

Remember that by far the best way to protect species such as elephants, lions and wild dogs going forward is to secure more land for them to roam, and that the vital east-west migration patterns are at stake. Kruger’s 10-year management plan does just that. Kruger has to expand, and its laudable ten-year plan to do so depends on this model of incorporating other land under one conservation footprint. The Greater Kruger (and APNR) is a majorly important part of the 10-year plan, and a shining light on the conservation landscape. It is a thriving working model that requires ongoing evolution, and this discussion is part of that process of constant change. We have to get this right.

The trophy hunting industry seems, by virtue of its behaviour, not capable of playing a constructive role in the future conservation landscape on the western border of the Kruger National Park. Plus, the increasing public awareness and assertiveness will most likely eventually take down any attempt to involve that industry. Decision-makers can ignore these realities, or they can undertake the hard task of finding alternative conservation-funding models.

Keep the passion
Simon Espley

About Simon Espley
I am a proud African, of the digital tribe, and honoured to be CEO of Africa Geographic. My travels in Africa are in search of wilderness, real people with interesting stories and elusive birds. I live in Hoedspruit, next to the Kruger National Park, with my wife Lizz and 2 Jack Russells. When not travelling or working I am usually on my mountain bike somewhere out there. I qualified as a chartered account, but found my calling sharing Africa's incredibleness with you. My motto is "Live for now, have fun, be good, tread lightly and respect others. And embrace change". Connect with me on LinkedIn and follow me on Twitter.


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Re: Hunting

Post by Lisbeth »

Dereck Joubert sets the record straight about trophy hunting impact on lions and refutes claims of so-called benefits

Posted on 6 February, 2019 by Dereck Joubert in Opinion Editorial, Wildlife and the Opinion Editorial post series. —

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© Dereck and Beverly Big Cat Conservation

Opinion post by Dereck Joubert

I’ve been asked to respond to the following remarks that came up in a discussion following the broadcast of our latest Documentary, Birth of a Pride:

The remarks:


"He is exaggerating the extent to which hunting had anything to do with the near absence of lions and the extent to which his taking over the area contributed to the lions coming back again. The whole of northern Botswana has very unstable rainfall (like Namibia) – if it is dry (or flooded) in an area for a couple of years the herbivores move out and the predators go with them. When it rains (or the floods are lower) they all come back again – nothing at all to do with human interventions. They were certainly involved in moving SA rhinos to the Okavango, an intervention which allowed Great Plains and Wilderness to market themselves as big 5 destinations. They are not fake conservationists, but their approach to hunting and other forms of ultilisation is driven by a very narrow focus on the bottom line. Joubert is on record as saying that he would give a job to every hunting employee post ban, in reality he gave no jobs to anyone and his company did not take over any of the vacated hunting concessions.”

My response is detailed but is as follows:

Actually we lived in the area permanently through the hunting era unlike so many of the old ‘Hunters Africa’ hunters and friends of mine, who probably spent three or four months in the bush each year, and would probably not be considered ‘reliable witnesses’, in particular they were doing the shooting. There will always be different opinions of how to USE the land and wildlife and the South African policy is pro-hunting, while the Kenyan, Uganda, and Botswana one is of no hunting. So the differences will always be there, and I have learned that trying to convince someone who has firm views one way or another is probably not going to be successful, but I can speak to some of the details you mention, just for accuracy for those who may be interested.

The demise of wildlife in what was once called Area 6 and now NG 16 is very clear. I wrote a paper on this for government in 1993 and lion researchers – Drs Winterbachs – similarly presented the results of zero recovery from excessive lion hunting in 2004 at the Lion Symposium. So the science is irrefutable. I personally saw hunters shoot the last 6 of 11 tsessebe, with sable antelope being shot for ration meat and fed to hunters’ dogs at home in Kasane. Elephants were wild and attacked Beverly and me nine times during that era as a result of being persecuted or wounded by hunters.

Once I may have been one voice in dozens at these symposiums, who felt that big cats were suffering from over-hunting. Today there are very few scientists that disagree. There are parallels to the Climate Change debate. People can simply deny it over and over – but it doesn’t go away.

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© Dereck and Beverly Big Cat Conservation

With regard to the Selinda ecosystem, rainfall and trophy hunter behaviour

To suggest that an area in an open ecosystem like northern Botswana can collapse because of a drought is incorrect, especially along a permanent river system like the Linyanti! If anything it should be even more concentrated with wildlife as pools dry up in the interior and the Spillway, but with water remaining in the river. Droughts happen all the time and unless the wildlife is dying up against fences in closed systems, they simply follow the water and adapt most of the time. Some local resident species don’t move, but our study showed that even resident species like impala moved when they had to.

In fact, this dry cycle you talk of is exactly when most of the hunting took place, when the tectonic shift caused the drying up of the Savute channel, starting in 1981. As that happened, large numbers of wildlife flocked to the rivers – and were shot.

I have 15 years of detailed logs of hunters shooting madly from vehicles – at night, on baits – almost in a frenzy. And today, many of those same hunters tell me it was a crazy time of abundance and excess. Lions were shot down to such low numbers that male cubs started breeding with their mothers and sisters, and were then shot. New sub adult male cubs mated with their sisters, mothers and grandmothers just because hunters had shot out every breeding male in the region and beyond. Again, I documented this, as well as the rash of deformities the subsequent cubs were born with. Then it collapsed. So the notion that when it floods again, ’they all come back’ is a wonderful idea but not realistic if you are shooting them all, year in and year out.

By chance, when we took the concession over, the rains brought water into the Selinda Spillway again. We have annual game counts and official censuses on that recovery process. But there are still have species here that were very highly desired by hunters, and once occurred in good numbers but that have simply not recovered. In over 136,000 ha we have fewer than 400 zebras, and wildebeest are half that number. It took years for hyena numbers to recover, and they usually do really well in dry conditions. But as I recall, one hunter who had just slaughtered nine of them in one moment around a den (1997) answered me when I asked how he decided which to shoot, males or females (only males were legal even then): “Oh, hyenas are both male and female, they are hermaphrodites!”. This was 1997 I see in my notes – not 1897!! And this was by a licensed professional hunter.

There was no science behind what to kill, how many and when to stop. It was the Wild West, and these declines are just too easy to blame on a dry cycle. The recovery, as it is, is also not to be accredited to a wet cycle, but on sane wildlife management. At the time, by the way, wildlife advisors to Chief Tawana came to me to tell me what used to happen 100 years ago, and even then there was basic science on what not to shoot and kill, as hunters accounted for their kills, and if the chief noticed fewer of a certain species, or the stories were about how much harder it was to find something, he would place a ban on either that species or on all hunting. Those representatives asked me to help take their call for a ban to government.

I won’t go into the detail of what I saw and recorded in this post, but I can say that if there is a solid record of what happened in that area at all over a 30-year period of time, it lies in my notes, footage and photographs in my office, not in the rhetoric in the bars of Maun. That humans could behave like that was a disgrace, to be frank. Dragging a squealing and gutted duiker across the ground to a tree where it was wired up (still alive) to attract a leopard to shoot after dark (also illegal), diesel used to pour into warthog holes where a wounded leopard had run, and then set on fire; over 200 rounds of gunfire shot into a palm island where they thought a male lion was holed up, but ended up shooting his pride and eight cubs, and then later, setting the palm alight to “smoke the sucker out” – are all testaments to the atrocities. The male was wounded so couldn’t escape and burned to death, but the hunters logged it up to an accident and went on to shoot his brother. I saw all these things, and heard the hunters tell the stories with no remorse afterwards around the campfires. Well known local professional hunters were nicknamed ‘Matches xyz’ and ‘Fireman xyz’ for burning the swamp to attract the rare sitatunga to kill, amongst other unsavoury hunts.

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© Dereck and Beverly Big Cat Conservation

Buffalo herds, science tells us, are often indicator species and when you see them in their ideal numbers of around 250 in a herd, there is a balance. Larger herds in this habitat indicates high predator numbers (so their behavioural response is to band together as a defence). But very low herd sizes indicate massive human persecution (where the better defence is to disband and hide in the thickets). Selinda, between 1993 and 2010 had average herd sizes of 15-20. We have just taken over an ex-hunting area in Zimbabwe where the hunting was very heavy, and the herds are small there as well. In Duba Plains or places like Kidepo in Uganda those herd sizes are well over 1,000 – not because of habitat or drought, but because of high lion numbers. Anyone who denies that hunting, and in particular heavy or overhunting has no effect, is not being logical or totally truthful with themselves.

On the rhinos, we don’t actually market rhinos in Great Plains Conservation and with regards to this area, Selinda, we actually refused to move rhinos here, partly because it may be seen as us providing some commercial advantage to ourselves, which would probably be fine given that with our partners we raised the full $5m and brought them in, but I was always determined to “give” them as a gift to Botswana and the people of Botswana. If Wilderness Safaris do indeed market rhinos, it is not from the batch of nearly 100 we have donated to the nation of Botswana, but something they may have done themselves and nothing to do with me or marketed or condoned by me.

Besides that, frankly I don’t think there are many people who would book a ticket to come to Africa to see rhino. Studies show rhinos to be quite low down the list of requested species (in Kruger), and below giraffe, for example. Booking a ticket to come and shoot a rhino – as is possible in South Africa or Namibia, is another thing however, and studies also show that the more endangered a species the more desirable it becomes as a hunting ‘trophy’. If the price to shoot an endangered or threatened species is higher than the ‘yet to be threatened’ species, then my mind questions the conservation ethics of those hunters.

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© Dereck and Beverly Big Cat Conservation

With regards to employment and other benefits

Selinda was a hunting area when I purchased it, so it came with its financial records, and I was able to analyse the different benefits to the two opposing management styles. It turns out that, where 12 semi-permanent staff were hired before, we now hire 140. (On the day we took over, 100% of our staff were therefore ex-hunting staff so in fact that alone refutes the statement that we didn’t hire any ex-hunting staff in itself.)

Those (all ex-hunting staff,) under the previous management, were hired for five months of the year and let go every year, so no 5, 10 or 15 year gratuities were ever paid to them. In addition very few advanced their careers. The most senior was a tracker earning about $1.60 a day. Today we have those same cooks and trackers as managers, as guides, as PR and HR staff in our offices, earning more than ten to twenty times that. And more relevant to me, is that many have left us and moved into other sectors, in banks and businesses, and started their own companies. Airline tickets, curios, food supplies, fuel transport, etc. etc. all developed as a result of this conversion from hunting to photographic tourism.

In converting Selinda from a marginal area for hunting to one of the most productive wildlife areas in Africa, it has generated jobs and businesses around it for local communities. In fact, the net benefit (in a paper I did about six years ago), to the nation is 2,500% better than it is for trophy hunting! Jobs, taxes, skills, costs are all included, and we do that by inviting fewer than 50 people a day into the area, so the environmental footprint is minimal, and we do it without killing an animal. An analysis of benefit to communities is interesting because, by way of example, our guests have left behind around $1M in donations over the past few years, and a lot of that goes to providing communities with solar lanterns and a range of projects, We are about to start the Great Plains Academy to prepare some of the forgotten community members for higher education. This was not going on before.

By the way, around 15% of our current staff are ex-hunting employees and actually finding staff who were once hunting workers is getting even harder as time passes, as they are either absorbed into the tourism market or retire. We are constantly looking for staff to hire. Obviously we have to train them and they need to be willing to be trained, but we are growing and will probably see the need for another 50 people to join us in the short term (18 months). We hire about 300 people in Botswana alone and over 660 across the group. According to the UN benefit proportion of breadwinners:dependants that means we put food in the mouths of over 4,000 each day. And we do it without shooting sable or elephants as ration meat. So the claim of us not hiring a single person is factually incorrect.

With regard to former hunting concessions

The allocation and management of retired hunting concessions has been a disappointment to all of us, and some areas have actually been gazetted as part of the National Park scheme, so they actually aren’t available for me or others to take over, even if we wanted to. But some of these concessions came up for tender two years ago, and we were the only company to apply to take over all eleven of these old hunting concessions. Unfortunately, that process was stopped for some internal government reason (possibly to do a survey on what could be incorporated into National Parks). We can hardly be blamed for not taking over an area that was not awarded at all, let alone to us.

Finally,

The debate on whether to hunt or not is not really relevant anymore as we stare down the barrel of 8 billion people on Earth and over 1 billion head of livestock in East Africa alone – and massive disenfranchisement across Africa, and within our communities. This is the real threat to wildlife. The answer, in my humble opinion, is in education, creating real benefits (like the Selinda model does), and in being respectful to those people who need us to drive the increase in their basic wealth and to fight poverty and corruption. The Okavango and the few wild places like it in the world deserve complete protection. The people who look after it deserve our respect. Dumping a rotting elephant carcass at their villages from time to time is not respectful or of real benefit to the poor. It may feed people today, but it doesn’t lift them up to that place where they can feed themselves. Together we need to tackle the far bigger problems with knowledge and passion and the deeper insight that local communities bring from generations of living side by side with nature, something we in the Western mindset are losing daily.

Kind regards,
Dereck

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© Dereck and Beverly Big Cat Conservation


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Re: Hunting

Post by Lisbeth »

First Article from 28.11.2018 https://www.africawild-forum.com/viewto ... 31#p431431


Balule elephant hunters acquitted, despite eyewitness reports


2019-03-28 07:34
Louzel Lombard Steyn

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Balule Associated Nature Reserve in Limpopo has justified the killing of a young elephant bull in front of tourists as an "act of self-defence", backtracking on an original announcement condemning the act and ignoring eyewitness accounts.

The young elephant bull was shot 13 times in front of four eye-witnesses standing on a viewing deck overlooking Balule's Maseke Game Reserve, where the hunt took place, reports Conservation Action Trust.

Balule's Hunting Incident Report states: "The elephant charged [the hunting party] and they shot it when it was a five metres from them."

However, the hunters were never in any danger, says Annelize Slabbert, one of the four onlookers who witnessed the shooting.

She says guests at the lodge saw the whole incident from their unobstructed vantage point.

Her husband, Gerard, affirms this.

"After the first shot, I saw the three men standing by their vehicle in the road; the elephant was 80 to 100 metres away from them and starting running in the opposite direction."

The Slabberts also say the elephant never charged the hunting party.

According to Annelize, "It was calmly feeding on a tree when the first shot rang out. The elephant then gave a loud cry and ran for cover in the thicket, with the hunters running in pursuit, firing more shots. Thirteen shots later, after the elephant had fallen in a ditch in an attempt to escape the hunters, its shrieks ceased."

Later, a TLB, tractor and trailer had to be called in to retrieve the carcass from the deep ditch, the hunting report confirms.

"It is something I will, unfortunately, never forget," Annelize says. "It was heart-breaking."

Balule management has vehemently rejected any claims of alcohol use, but the final report states that one member of the hunting party, Sean Nielsen did, in fact, "mess his whiskey" on one of the witnesses who had approached the hunting party after the incident.

The report reads "A heated exchange took place between the witness and Mr Nielson."

Photographs taken on the scene show Nielsen, the long-term lessee of Maseke Game Reserve, with a glass of tawny liquid in hand. He reportedly acted as the reserve representative on the hunt.

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Photo: Supplied by a witness.

The photographs, Balule chairperson Sharon Haussmann argues, were taken after the shooting and are, therefore, not indicative of a breach of any ethical or general hunting protocols.

Change of tune

When the incident occurred on November 23 last year, Haussmann initiated a full investigation and said that the parties involved would be held accountable.

She labelled the incident as "completely unethical and inconsiderate and a huge embarrassment for Balule".

She said "It did not comply with the sustainable utilisation model of ethical hunting in accordance with the hunting protocol that governs all reserves within APNR and to which Balule and hence Maseke are bound."

The full investigation report was shared in full in February this year. The outcome painted an entirely different picture.

Haussmann backtracked on her initial statement and said in January, "According to the APNR protocol there were no ethical transgressions.

"We don't approve that it happened in front of a lodge, but unfortunately, the lay of the land was such that it was in view of a lodge."

The full investigation concludes: "Besides poor site selection, there is no evidence of ethical breaches that can be actioned by us."

When asked about the contradicting statements between Balule's final report and the witness reports sent in as part of the investigation, Haussmann said it was a case of "he said, she said".

"I wasn't there. I wish I was; then I could tell you for sure [what happened]," she said. The report simply concludes that there's no reason to doubt the "version put forward by the 'hunting party'".

Hunting continues

Kruger National Park's managing executive Glenn Phillips also previously condemned the hunt and said SANParks was "keenly awaiting the finalisation of the [Balule] investigation".

When questioned on the outcome of the investigation, no further comment was received.

The increasing number of questionable hunting incidents occurring in the Kruger's adjoining reserves underscores the growing conflict between hunting and photographic safaris operating on the same land in the Associated Private Nature Reserves (APNRs).

While this conflict ensues in meetings regarding protocol and ethics, poaching in the park is on the rise and Kruger's elephants are caught in a dangerous gap between licensed and unlicensed killers.

Kruger recently launched a campaign aimed at fighting elephant poaching in the park's northern region, however Balule was given approval by the Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks Agency (MTPA) to hunt 22 elephants during the 2019/2020 hunting season, which begins on April 1.

This amounts to nearly half of the 47 elephants permitted to be hunted in all the APNRs this season.

In the previous year, a total of 53 elephants were legally hunted in the APNR, while 71 elephants were poached in the Kruger Park.


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Re: Hunting

Post by Peter Betts »

Fence them off and out of Greater Kruger ..FOREVER


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Re: Hunting

Post by Lisbeth »

You can fence them off, but not out of Greater Kruger O**


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Re: Hunting

Post by Richprins »

Did they break any law, though? :-?


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Re: Hunting

Post by Lisbeth »

The hunters have been judged innocent of un-ethic behaviour by Balule Associated Nature Reserve, because if not also the reserve would have been partially guilty. It was not in their interest to judge them otherwise O**

What a joke!!!


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Re: Hunting

Post by stefan9 »

Absolutley terrible. Why was no impartial judge used to judge...


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Re: Hunting

Post by Sprocky »

Below is a message from Ian Novak, the Vice Chairman of Balule:

I have signed statements from all 4 eye witnesses taken the morning after the incident. Not one said they saw the entire incident unfold. They went onto the deck after hearing the first shot. Now 4 months later they suddenly saw everything from before the first shot. No one was charged with a crime so there can't be an aquittal. Although this was a terrible incident, no crime was committed. I don't condone what happened but this article is factually flawed and designed entirely to this kind of reaction. Anyone is welcome to see the statements we received from the eyewitnesses at the time. The police also found no evidence of a crime and there was a legal permit. We cannot prosecute anyone​unless a crime is committed. Again I personally don't condone or justify the incident at all, but the authorities can only work with the evidence that is real. Morality or lack thereof cannot be prosecuted. All we can do is implement more control over people that can damage our brand, which we have done.


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