Africa Wild

Trophy hunting quotas for South Africa in 2020: leopards, elephants and lion bone exports

Posted on September 14, 2020 by Team Africa Geographic



Trophy hunting quotas for South Africa in 2020: leopards, elephants and lion bone exports

South Africa’s Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, Barbara Creecy, replied as follows to questions posed to her during sessions in the country’s National Assembly:

LEOPARDS

Concerning how many leopards will be hunted in 2020, she replied that 11 trophy hunting quotas would be issued for male leopards over the age of seven in South Africa.

Zero quotas were issued for 2016 and 2017 after the country’s Scientific Authority expressed concern that the number of leopards in South Africa was unknown and that trophy hunting posed a high risk to the remaining population. After an effective two-year moratorium on leopard hunting, the Department of Environmental Affairs issued a quota of seven male leopards in 2018, based on findings by the Scientific Authority that the leopard populations in certain areas would be able to sustain a limited quota.

While in theory, South Africa has a CITES-approved leopard export quota of 150 per year, the country has adopted an adaptive management framework that adjusts quotas annually based on available population data.

In 2019, the government once again did not issue any leopard hunting quotas for the year but convened a stakeholder consultation meeting in June 2019. The Department confirmed that the written submissions of various stakeholders expressed a range of divergent views and that these were taken into consideration before a decision was made to issue a quote for 11 leopards for 2020.

ELEPHANTS

In answer to a question regarding the elephant trophy hunting quota for 2020, the Minister did not give an exact answer but instead referred to South Africa’s existing CITES-approved export quota of 300 tusks (150 animals). This quota is allocated based on requests from provinces, which on average equates to about 50 elephants per year in total, limited to solitary male animals or “damage-causing animals”.

LION BONE EXPORT

The Minister was also asked whether an export quota for lion bone is being considered for 2020. The response to that question was that the judgement of National Council of the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals v Minister of Environmental Affairs and Others requires the Minister to consider welfare issues relating to lions in captivity when determining the quota. As a result, the Department was not able to determine the 2019 lion bone export quota, and the process would be deferred.

Does trophy hunting hurt giraffe populations? A planned lawsuit says it does

by Elizabeth Claire Alberts on 16 October 2020

- Conservation groups are suing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for failing to respond to a petition seeking protection for giraffes under the nation’s Endangered Species Act, a move that would severely limit the import and trade of giraffe trophies and other giraffe products.

- Between 2006 and 2015, trophy hunters legally imported 3,744 giraffe hunting trophies, as well as thousands of giraffe parts and products such as skin pieces, bones and bone carvings.

- While some conservationists say trophy hunting is having a large impact on the global giraffe population, others say it is not a major threat, especially when compared to other issues such as poaching, human-wildlife conflict, and habitat loss and fragmentation.

Skinned, stuffed and tanned, wild giraffes are up for sale at dozens of stores across the United States. While importing and selling wild giraffes and giraffe products, such as giraffe rugs and taxidermied trophies, is legal in the U.S., conservationists and animal welfare advocates say these practices are nudging the species closer toward extinction.

On Oct. 15, a coalition of groups, including the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), Humane Society International (HSI), and the Center for Biological Diversity, filed a notice of intent to sue the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS). The federal agency is tasked with managing wildlife and natural habitats, but the groups say it’s failing to protect giraffes (Giraffa camelopardalis) through the nation’s Endangered Species Act (ESA).

Three years ago, the coalition had petitioned USFWS to uplist giraffes as an endangered species through the ESA, but the agency failed to respond, even though it’s legally obligated to do so within a year, Laura Smythe, staff attorney at HSUS, told Mongabay in an email. The groups filed an initial lawsuit against USFWS in 2018, which prompted the agency to say that giraffes may qualify for protection under the ESA — but no further steps were taken, according to HSUS.


Giraffe in Uganda. Image by Rod Waddington / Flickr.

The agency’s inaction, Smythe said, implies that it is “catering to the special interests of trophy hunters, and not doing what is in the best interest of the species.”

“[T]he U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has made a habit out of failing to meet its statutory deadlines regarding petitions to list species under the ESA,” Smythe said. “In fact, the agency only made its initial determination that the species may qualify for listing after we brought it to court. Yet, there have been no further actions from the agency since.”

The groups argue that trophy hunting poses a substantial threat to giraffe populations, which have seen a 40% drop over the past three decades. Current estimates say there are only slightly more than 68,000 mature adults remaining in the wild, and the IUCN lists the species as vulnerable.

Between 2006 and 2015, trophy hunters legally imported 3,744 giraffe hunting trophies into the U.S. — equivalent to more than a giraffe a day — and an additional 1,402 giraffe bone carvings, 4,789 bones and 3,008 skin pieces were brought into the country, according to the coalition. Smythe told Mongabay it had acquired this data from the USFWS’s Law Enforcement Management Information System (LEMIS) database through a freedom-of-information (FOIA) request.

The groups have not managed to obtain data for the last five years, despite annual FOIA requests for LEMIS data, Smythe said.


A full giraffe hide for sale at a supplier, African Market’s Trophy Room Collection, in Myakka, Florida. Image by HSUS.

“Because of the agency’s lack of transparency, the public unfortunately has no way of knowing how many giraffes or giraffe parts have been imported into the U.S. in the last five years, or where they have come from,” she said. “Since giraffes were listed under CITES in 2019, the CITES trade database will give us some idea of the numbers of giraffes being traded internationally in the future. However, there is about a two-year lag for most CITES data, so none is yet available for giraffes, and the CITES data are not nearly as detailed as LEMIS data.”

Giraffes are currently listed under CITES Appendix II, which places restrictions on international trade, but doesn’t prohibit it. If giraffes were added to the ESA, hunters and traders would need to obtain special permits to import or sell giraffe or giraffe parts, which Smythe says would “significantly limit the U.S.’s contribution to the extinction of the species.”

“Giraffes are in serious danger of extinction, and that is why the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service must act quickly to list the species as endangered under the Endangered Species Act and put in place necessary restrictions on trade,” she said.

Mongabay reached out to USFWS, but did not receive a response at the time of publication.

However, the issue isn’t as straightforward as it appears, says Julian Fennessy, a giraffe expert and director of the Giraffe Conservation Foundation (GCF).


Masai giraffe. Image by Alex Proimos / Flickr.

While the IUCN only recognizes one giraffe species, Giraffa camelopardalis, and nine subspecies, GCF classifies giraffes into four species: Masai (G. tippelskirchi), southern (G. giraffa), northern (G. camelopardalis) and reticulated giraffe (G. reticulata), as well as five subspecies. According to Fennessy, it’s the southern giraffe that tends to be legally hunted for trophies, but this species is doing much better than its counterparts. Using the IUCN’s terminology, the southern giraffe’s conservation status would be ranked as “least concern,” he said.

“Giraffe legal trophy hunting or [hunting] for legal meat is not having an impact on the overall population of giraffes in Africa — it’s not causing a decline,” he told Mongabay. “It’s a moral issue about hunting giraffes, or any other animal, whether it be in Africa or the world.”

The bigger threats to giraffes are illegal hunting, habitat loss and fragmentation as well as human-wildlife conflicts, he said. The most threatened giraffe species of the four is the northern giraffe, which would be considered “critically endangered” in IUCN terms, Fennessy said.

“You’ve got 5,600 remaining in the wild, so that’s less than black rhino,” he said.

Even so, Fennessy says the conservation groups’ efforts to obtain protection for giraffes through the ESA could help global conservation efforts.

“I hope it’s a positive move because it can actually enable resources and funds to be used for giraffe conservation,” he said. “I would like many of these environmental organizations that have been lobbying … to use some of that money for conservation of giraffes on the ground.”

Trophy hunting – how do African people feel?

Posted on October 26, 2020 by Team Africa Geographic in the DECODING SCIENCE post series.



Much of the scientific understanding of the public perception of trophy hunting is based on the views of the Western public, while most existing studies tend to overlook the opinions of African people. One researcher set out to analyse the responses of three social media pages with predominantly African followers to understand better how African people view trophy hunting.

Mucha Mkono of the University of Queensland focused her research on the Facebook pages of BBC News Africa, News24.com and NewsDay-Zimbabwe, exploring and categorising the responses to posts relating to trophy-hunting subjects (1,070 posts in total).

She identified the prevalence of three major patterns and themes in the responses of African readers:

1. The neo-colonial privileging of the Western elite;

2. animals being valued over human lives; and

3. the perceived greed of African politicians allowing the exploitation of wildlife resources.

The first of these – the neo-colonial character of trophy hunting – was one of the dominant patterns in the analysed social media responses, with 70% of African participants viewing trophy hunting as a privilege given to rich Westerners, economically excluding Africans. Many of the objections to trophy hunting were based not on animal welfare concerns but rather on the more complex historical and postcolonial associations surrounding it. Mkono points out that this pattern of responses resonates with the concept of “distributive (in)justice”, which centres around concerns related to whether monetary gains from the system flow back to local communities. Where this fails to happen, accrued revenues re-enact economic imbalances of the colonial past.

Around 80% of posters also criticised the Western community for championing animal rights causes while overlooking the suffering of African people living in proximity to the wildlife –and questioning the West’s assumed moral authority. From the analysis of the social media comments, the suggestion is that many African people feel that Westerners fail to appreciate or understand the impact or cost of co-existing with wildlife. Many of the responses also indicated a general dismissal of the West’s criticism of violence against animals as being exaggerated.

The final major criticism of trophy hunting was directed at African politicians and leaders, characterising them as greedy and lacking a moral compass. 60% of the responses indicated a feeling that elite groups were taking advantage of both the economic climate of Africa as well as the corrupt politicians, with trophy hunting resulting as a product of this complicity.

Naturally, there are acknowledged limitations to some of these results, not least of which is that it excludes by default the opinions of Africans not active on social media, particularly in areas where internet access is non-existent. The opinions of those living on the boundaries of protected areas or employed by the trophy hunting industry may not have been expressed. Mkono also suggests the possibility that sensationalist stories and bias in the original articles may also have directed the nature of the responses. There are also outlying views of certain responses by African people, including those who objected strongly to the animal welfare aspects of trophy hunting and the potential ramifications to the tourism industry.

Mkono’s study offers a different perspective on a debate that tends to centre around the moral acceptability of killing animals and the links between trophy hunting and conservation. The critiques of trophy hunting presented by African opinions on social media come from an alternative standpoint – one which observes a neo-colonial distribution of power, wealth, and access to resources. The study concludes that regardless of the conservation aspects of trophy hunting, “it is crucial to continue to interrogate consumptive forms of tourism such as trophy hunting, not only in terms of their economic value but also concerning their moral integrity, and from the perspective of local communities. In that endeavour, Africa’s leaders are likely to have more support if they find meaningful ways of engaging their citizens in wildlife policy decisions.”

The full study can be accessed here: “Neo-colonialism and greed: Africans’ views on trophy hunting in social media”, Mkono, M., (2019), Journal of Sustainable Tourism

Maybe reading the full study will make more sense and will be it less superficial

The killing game: In praise of hunting

By Ed Stoddard• 8 November 2020


Adri Kitshoff-Botha, CEO of Wildlife Ranching South Africa. (Photo: Twitter/@JulianJansen)

South Africa’s alpha female hunter reflects on conservation as she retires from the wildlife industry.

First published in Daily Maverick 168

A few years ago Adri Kitshoff-Botha was buying men’s clothes, but it’s not because there was a lack of womenswear to her taste. Kitshoff-Botha was sporting men’s wear because she hunts and, in South Africa, hunting apparel for women is rare, though that is changing.

“I used to buy men’s clothes for hunting, but now ladies can find suitable clothes,” she said with a chuckle.

Last month, Kitshoff-Botha retired after almost two decades in the hunting and wildlife industries. Along the way she broke a few glass ceilings. In 2010, she became the first female CEO of the Professional Hunters’ Association of South Africa (Phasa). In 2015, she left that role to become the CEO of Wildlife Ranching South Africa (WRSA).

Hunting has a decidedly male image and has been bound up in concepts of masculinity, for better or worse. In recent decades it has become a flashpoint of broader cultural conflict, the target of animal welfare activists offended on grounds of cruelty by the notion of hunting as a sport or legitimate outdoor activity.

Some activists are opposed to the “consumptive” use of wildlife for commercial purposes.

Recreational hunting in Africa seems especially emotive as it is home to the world’s last great populations of megafauna, which pulls on the heartstrings of affluent Westerners who don’t actually have to share living space with big, dangerous animals. Subsistence hunting is perhaps another matter, but also has its opponents.

For Kitshoff-Botha, her gender has meant much less than her message: that the hunting and private game farming industries are a force for good in conservation. In 2015, Bloomberg TV filmed her stalking and shooting a blesbok under a blue winter sky. The shot was a good one and the animal, struck in the neck, died instantly. The headline for the text story that accompanied the video, published in June that year, was: “South African Hunters Say Best Way to Save Animals is to Kill.”

The headline was clearly “clickbait”, perhaps appropriate for a hunting tale. Some airlines and governments had recently banned the transport of carcasses or trophies such as mounted animal heads, and the uproar over the hunting of Cecil the Lion in Zimbabwe would erupt just a few weeks later.

Many hunting groups are wary of the media. But Kitshoff-Botha sees no reason to hide, clad in camouflage, behind a blind. Taking her case to an international news service such as Bloomberg was a case in point. “Knowing how the conservation model in South Africa works, I know I have contributed to conservation,” she said at the time, as she stood over the blesbok carcass.

“There was a period when much more prominence, especially from the media, was devoted to the breeding side of wildlife ranching, which created a perception that breeding was the main focus of the wildlife industry, which isn’t correct,” Kitshoff-Botha told President Cyril Ramaphosa, who famously bid millions of rands for a buffalo bull.

The wildlife industry – at least the part that stems from game farms – has four subsectors: breeding and game sales, hunting, ecotourism/game viewing, and game products such as the kudu biltong you find in some shops. This is all business, but it is business in Kitshoff-Botha’s view that has had conservation spin-offs, such as the transition of marginal agricultural land into a wildlife habitat. Making wildlife economically valuable is a great incentive to conserve it. Some critics take issue with this “commercialisation”, or the fencing involved, but it has paid conservation dividends.

“The private ownership of wildlife, the role that it has played over the past few decades to prevent species from extinction has been absolutely crucial,” said Kitshoff-Botha. Examples of this “wildlife privatisation” include South Africa’s white rhino population, about half of which is now in private hands on privately owned game ranches.

“There is still an onslaught from people who do not understand the role that hunting plays in conservation,” she said.

In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and the lockdowns to contain it, the industry has been taking strain. In May, Daily Maverick reported the hunting industry was in serious trouble because three key sources of revenue – hunting, game viewing and live game sales – had been shut down under lockdown. Kitshoff-Botha has no new hard data on the issue but she said the industry was not out of the woods yet.

“More diversified operations will have a better chance of surviving this,” she said. Game sales were allowed after initially being banned under the hard lockdown, while game products such as meat carried on as these were regarded as part of the essential service agricultural sector. But Kitshoff-Botha said operations that mostly cater to hunters or game viewers could experience serious financial difficulty. A survey of wildlife ranchers earlier this year found that losses for 2020 in the industry were expected to top R9-billion.

Kitshoff-Botha may be retiring, but it seems more women are taking up hunting, even as the sport is in general decline. Much of the evidence for this is anecdotal, but surveys by the US Fish and Wildlife Service show that the percentage of hunters who are women in the US rose from 9% in 2006 to 10% in 2016.

This has relevance for South Africa, as many of the foreign hunters who come here are American. And in 2016, US hunters spent more than $26.2-billion on their activity. If 10% of that was spent by women, it helps to explain why female hunters no longer need to buy men’s clothing.

For Kitshoff-Botha, her gender has meant much less than her message: that the hunting and private game farming industries are a force for good in conservation. BM/DM

She continues to say that hunting is good for conservation, but not in which way or to what extent.

A good and balanced article!

Over-balanced to one side

PETA: Ramaphosa response to trophy hunting recordings ’embarrassing’

24.11.2020 | Tom Head



People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) have doubled-down on their criticism of Cyril Ramaphosa this week, after they allegedly recorded a group of ‘trophy hunting rangers’ speaking about the president’s links to their operation.

Ramaphosa accused of ‘profiting’ from trophy hunting

The office of the presidency has flat-out denied that Ramaphosa’s Phala Phala farm is being marketed for guests to shoot down some of the rarest and most endangered animals in South Africa. Although Cyril’s spokesperson did confirm the property allows for legal hunting expeditions, all connections to ‘unethical activities’ have been rejected:
______________
“The allegations are patently false and are refuted in full. Neither Phala Phala nor President Ramaphosa is engaged in illegal or unethical activities in any form. In the light of allegations that Tsala engages in the hunting of threatened or protected species on other properties, Phala Phala has given notice to Tsala Safaris to terminate the hunting arrangement.”

Presidential officials deny connections to trophy hunting racket.

PETA respond to president’s denial

However, this rebuttal has only enraged PETA further, who released a follow-up statement earlier this week:

PETA claim their recording – which the President denied the existence of – has ‘dug a deeper hole’ for Ramaphosa.
The animal rights group says that the official response from their presidency is ‘an embarrassment’.
By terminating an alleged hunting arrangement with Tsala Safaris, PETA says Cyril has already admitted wrongdoing.

PETA vs Cyril Ramaphosa

The group recently released hidden footage, purportedly taken at the Phala Phala farm, documenting conversations that implicated Cyril Ramaphosa in a lucrative trophy hunting scheme. He stands accused of raking in 50% of all profits raised by gun-toting holidaymakers. However, the presidency is not budging from its steadfast denial.
_______________

“Cyril Ramaphosa’s hidden connections and investments in the trophy hunting industry. Footage reveals that Ramaphosa is quietly developing and expanding a trophy hunting property called Diepdrift—stocking it with animals from his own wildlife breeding operation, Phala Phala – and that he owns a 50% stake in Tsala Hunting Safaris.”

“PETA U.S. recorded conversations in which Ramaphosa’s managers admitted that he shares equally in the profits from all hunts conducted through Tsala and spoke of the importance of concealing his involvement. One manager said, ‘We try to keep the president’s name actually out of the hunting thing, to spare him of bad publicity and all of that’.”

PETA Statement

The most unethical and corrupt activity on Planet earth