SA's canned hunting laws – 'Pie in the sky'
CONSERVATION efforts in South Africa have been dealt a blow with the announcement that canned lion hunting will remain legal while a court case brought against the Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism by the South African Predator Breeders Association is pending.

This is the second major hurdle encountered since the draft laws were published in May last year and the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism (Deat) promised to stop “environmental thugs” in their tracks.

The first blow came when Deat delayed the launch date from June 1, 2007 until February 1, 2008 after several provincial MECs claimed there was not enough time to implement the regulations. Now the hunting laws will come into effect next month with lions, the species arguably most impacted upon, being left out of the equation.

Louise Joubert, founder of SanWild, a wildlife sanctuary, told TravelHub that this move proved that Deat was never fully committed to bringing an end to canned lion hunting at all. “Instead of stopping the industry in its tracks, Deat chose to let it carry on but make it financially unviable, with laws forcing lions to be free-roaming for two years before being hunted,” says Joubert. “There is no way the department would have been able to monitor this.”

“In the meantime, estimates have shown that about 1 000 captive-bred lions were hunted in 2007, more than double the amount hunted in 2006,” adds Joubert.

Wednesday, January 16, 2008 Story by: Sue Lewitton
suel@nowmedia.co.za