Your opinion please. Especially Jaco Human's who never condones the sloppy way hunting could be run in RSA.

Government finalizes new laws on big-game hunting

The Associated Press

CAPE TOWN, South Africa: The environment minister announced a clampdown on big-game hunting in South Africa, saying Tuesday he was sickened by wealthy tourists shooting tame lions from the back of a truck and felling rhinos with a bow and arrow.

Shrugging off threats of legal action by the hunting industry, Marthinus Van Schalkwyk said the new law would ban "canned" hunting of big predators and rhinos in small enclosures from which animals have no means of escape.

Lions bred in captivity would have to be released into the open for at least two years — rather than the six months proposed in draft regulations — before they could be hunted to allow them to develop self-defense instincts, he said.

"Hunting should be about a fair chase ... testing the wits of a hunter against that of the animal," he told a news conference on Table Mountain. "Over the years that got eroded, and now we are trying to re-establish that principle."

South Africa is famous as home to the Big Five — lion, leopard, rhinoceros, elephant and buffalo. Its flagship Kruger National Park attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors every year. Some 9,000 privately owned game farms and other government-run reserves also offer visitors a taste of the wild.

But it also has become a choice destination for gun-toting tourists willing to pay more than US$20,000 (€15,200) to take home a prized "trophy" in the form of a lion or rhino's head.

The new law, which comes into force June 1, bans the hunting of animals that have been tranquilized. It outlaws bows and arrows for big predators and thick skinned animals, such as rhinos. And it bans the use of vehicles to chase animals until they are too tired and terrified to flee.

"To see people who are half drunk on the back of a bakkie (truck) hunting lions which are in fact tame animals is quite abhorrent," Van Schalkwyk — himself an avid hunter — told The Associated Press.

But conservationists said the law would be difficult to enforce and did not go far enough, as it stopped short of an outright ban on the intensive breeding of lions, leopards and other predators for use later in hunting.

"The big thing for South Africa would be to stand up and say 'we are conservation leaders and this industry is immoral and unethical and we are not going to allow it,'" said Louise Joubert of the San Wildlife Trust.

She said it made little difference whether a lion was freed for six months or two years before being hunted because once it had been reared and fed by humans, it was hard to break that trust.

Joubert said there should be an outright ban on intensive breeding projects, which often remove cubs from the mother at birth so the lioness mates more quickly, and often cull female cubs as male lions fetch a higher trophy price.

"We have asked for an outright ban," she said, even if it meant having to euthanize thousands of lions bred for hunting.

The South African Predator Breeders' Association, which was set up last year to lobby against the regulations, has warned that breeders may be forced to put down the estimated 3,000-5,000 lions they have reared if they are unable to offer them to foreign hunters and can no longer afford to feed them.

Earlier this year, it threatened legal action against the government to claim compensation. Association chairman Carel van Heerden said the regulations would shut down the industry, according to the South African Press Association.

Lion farmers from the North West province — which has a population of 1,700 lions in captivity, and a labor force of less than 1,000 people — met with local government authorities Tuesday to voice their fears that the new law "would almost certainly kill their industry," SAPA quoted provincial government and conservation minister Mandlenkosi Mayisela as saying.

The regulations would affect the local economy, he said, including poor rural communities that made a living by supplying donkeys to lion farmers.

The Professional Hunters' Association of South Africa said, however, that it welcomed the new regulations as a chance to clean up the image of the South African hunting industry by clamping down on lion breeders, who account for only about 3 percent of game farms.

"A small sector has given the whole industry a bad name," said Stewart Dorrington, the hunting body's president.

About 6,000-7,000 foreign tourists visit South Africa each year on hunting safaris, each spending roughly US$18,000 (€13,700), Dorrington said. About 55 percent of hunters are from North America, with most of the rest from European countries.

Van Schalkwyk said the regulations marked the start of a "cleanup of the hunting industry" and would in due course be extended to other animals, such as antelope species.

Hunting is an integral part of South African life because of its cultural traditions and importance to the economy. The environment minister said, however, that the plan to limit hunting was announced two years ago.

"Many of the lion breeders thought they were empty threats," Van Schalkwyk said, but "this is a practice that cannot be defended in any way."