According to the Conservation Action Trust while government, industry and activists agree that canned lion hunting is wrong, they don’t agree on just what exactly constitutes canned lion hunting.

Minister Edna Molewa recently called a meeting with industry stakeholders to address rising concerns over the canned lion hunting industry – after the release of a new documentary titled Blood Lions highlighted the conditions lions were being raised in.

Industry stakeholders did not appear to include NGOs critical of the industry however.

The Department of Environmental Affairs reiterated that it is prohibited to hunt a lion:

• In a controlled environment (the minimum size of the hunting camp is not prescribed in the TOPS Regulations, as it will differ from area to area. However, the minimum size is prescribed in many of the provincial acts/ ordinances);
• While it is under the influence of a tranquiliser (the minimum time frame before a lion may be hunted after it has been darted, is not prescribed in the TOPS Regulations but is regulated in terms of some of the provincial acts/ ordinances);
• With certain methods, such as poison, snares, air guns, shot guns, or by luring it with scent or smell.

Here is where the big issue comes in – critics view the factory farming of lions as part of the canned lion hunting issue.

From the activists’ point of view if a lion is bred in highly unnatural and stressful conditions to be hunted, with no survival skills for in the wild, then it doesn’t really stop being canned lion hunting just because the area it was shot in was fairly big and it wasn’t under the influence of tranquilisers.

In other words, “While government appears intent on reforming and sanitising the business of breeding and hunting lions, critics want to see it dismantled altogether” according to the Conservation Action Trust.

“Government and the industry insist that hunting of captive-bred lions represents the legitimate and sustainable use of a wildlife species which they see as “a key driver of economic growth, skill development and job creation in the sector”.

Minister Edna Molewa has just met with stakeholders “to address widespread and mounting public concern” about the controversial practice of canned lion hunting.

The DEA’s official statement about the meeting reveals a fundamental disagreement over what constitutes ‘canned hunting’ in South Africa.

Only organisations supportive of lion breeding and hunting, including the Professional Hunters Association of South Africa (PHASA) and the South African Predator Association (SAPA), appear to have been invited to the meeting. No critics of the industry or conservation NGO’s mentioned in the list of stakeholders involved.

Government and the industry insist that hunting of captive-bred lions represents the legitimate and sustainable use of a wildlife species which they see as “a key driver of economic growth, skill development and job creation in the sector”. While they acknowledge that “rogue elements” and “criminality operating at the fringe of the legal” industry have to be rooted out, they believe that all that is necessary to rectify the poor public perception of the lion breeding business is to improve and clarify the regulations which govern it.

In stark contrast, opponents claim that factory farming lions in stressful, unnatural and unhealthy breeding farms for the sole purpose of supplying the lucrative trophy hunting industry (with a secondary income stream from the trade in lion bones) represents a violation of wildlife conservation principles and animal welfare standards, and has no conservation value.

Around 6000 lions are currently confined in about 150 South African breeding facilities.

While government appears intent on reforming and sanitising the business of breeding and hunting lions, critics want to see it dismantled altogether.

At the meeting of stakeholders it was decided to establish “a forum to investigate a number of issues related to the lion industry in South Africa”. Given its pro-breeding composition it is highly unlikely that this forum will be in a position to resolve these deep-seated differences.

Conservationists stress the need to address Asia’s appetite for wildlife products.

A crackdown on illegal tiger products in China has created a soaring trade in lion bones from South Africa to Asia, ecologists say.

Alleged ‘tiger’-infused wines and traditional medicines are popular in China. But when the country tightened its rules on selling parts from tigers and other Asian big cats in 2006 and 2007, it may have “inadvertently set off a chain reaction of interlinking and unexpected events” that led to the bones of African lions being exported to fill the gap in demand, according to a 16 July study¹. The report is published jointly by the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU) at the University of Oxford, UK, and the international wildlife organization TRAFFIC.

The trade in lion bones disguised as those from tigers had been recognized before, but not quantified, says ecologist Andrew Loveridge of WildCRU and a co-author of the study. The report shows that lion skeletons sold out of South Africa rose from around 50 in 2008 to 573 in 2011, most of which were destined for Asia. (Figures for more recent years are not yet available).

In a Correspondence to Nature², published on 15 July, the study’s authors note that the South African trade is a by-product of the trophy-hunting industry and that hunted lions are almost exclusively captive-bred. South Africa is unusual in that some 68% of the more than 9,000 lions in the country are kept in captivity, often for big game-hunting enterprises, so sales were allowed under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, a treaty that governs such transactions.

But Loveridge fears that the appetite for lion bones has grown so great that it may stoke trade from other African countries. Many do not have extensive captive lion populations, so wild cats might be put at risk.

Bones of contention

The existence of a legitimate means to obtain wildlife products can encourage law-breaking by providing the market with a supply that is rare and thus highly coveted, conservationists say. Many point to the legally sanctioned practice of tiger farming in China, which has the biggest market for wildlife goods, as a model that has fueled the desire for tiger products.

Farms began appearing in the 1980s to breed the critically endangered animals. But investigations have found that the cats are instead frequently bred for their pelts and to be made into tiger-bone wine — a luxury spirit said to confer virility. Environmental groups, the World Bank and UK and Indian wildlife officials have all expressed their dismay at tiger farming, which they say incentivizes poaching.

Damping down demand

Chinese officials have recently touted their intent to crack down on the illicit trade in wildlife by publicly destroying contraband ivory and participating in diplomatic discussions on tightening law enforcement. But they have been less willing to discuss demand. Zhao Shucong, the head of the Chinese State Forestry Administration in Beijing, told Nature: “We have a demand for food and water in China, not ivory.”

Tackling the demand for tiger parts will be even thornier given its commercial value, says Mahendra Shrestha of the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Front Royal, Virginia. “I’m not sure whether the minister understands the level of demand in China not only for ivory, but all kinds of wildlife parts and products,” he adds.

The report authors say that better distinguishing legally sold lion parts from other illicitly traded parts would help to impede unsanctioned exports. But conservationists agree that there is a pressing need to frustrate buyers by stamping out demand. “The solution has to be on the consumer side,” Loveridge says.

The harsh truth is: when you’re cuddling a lion cub or bottle feeding one, you’re directly funding the canned lion industry, writes Carla Lewis-Balden.

The cute cub you’re cooing over will likely meet it’s end at the end of a hunting rifle or bow and arrow.

Lie #1: Volunteering at these ‘animal sanctuaries’ promotes conservation

Google ‘gap year’ and ‘big cats volunteer’ and you will get millions of results about establishments offering well-intending but ill-informed gap year students the chance to interact with lion cubs, while “contributing towards conservation and research”. Not all of these organisations are what they claim to be.

Beverly Pervan, director of the Campaign Against Canned Hunting explains that some lion farmers rent out their cubs to tourist resorts and “voluntourism projects”.

“There is an insatiable demand for cub petting by tourists.  All the tourists who indulge in cub petting are supporting the canned hunting industry,” says Pervan.

“When the cubs are too big to be handled by humans any longer, they are sent back to the lion farmer to be hunted.

“Basically lion farmers use the profits they make from cub petting to externalise the cost of rearing the cub to a huntable size. Once you understand that there is virtually no market for adult lions other than hunting and that more than a thousand lions are canned hunted every year you begin to understand the scale of the tragedy.”

Lie #2: The cubs are orphans rejected by their mother, or it killed by poachers

Most of these establishments spin sob stories to gullible tourists about the animal’s mothers abandoning them at birth, or parents being killed by poachers.

There are genuine sad stories but they are very rare,” says Fiona Miles, South Africa’s manager of the FOUR PAWS Animal Welfare Foundation. They run LIONSROCK, a sanctuary in Bethlehem for big cats that were kept in inadequate conditions in zoos, circuses or private captivity.

“The majority of cubs encountered at facilities, where interaction is provided, are the product of intensive captive breeding or farming,” says Miles.

“These cubs are removed from their mother as young as possible and hand raised. The reason this is done is twofold: The cubs raise funds through interaction, the second reason is that the mother will go into season again and will reproduce more rapidly than if she was allowed to raise her own young,” Miles explains.

READ: ‘Blood Lions’ filmmaker Ian Michler speaks out on canned hunting and trophies

Lie #3: When they are adults, the cubs will be re-introduced into the wild

As social animals lion cubs learn from their parents how to hunt and interact with other lions. A hand raised animal will not have gained this experience. There is a certain instinctual knowledge on hunting but not successful hunting.

According to Miles, it is highly improbable that a lion raised in captivity by man will be able to survive for any extensive period, once it’s placed back into a wild environment.

The best goal for lions currently in captivity would be a situation like LIONSROCK where they are provided with ample space and minimal human contact.

READ: Joburg Lion Park to can lion cub petting in 2016

Lie #4: Lion breeders are contributing towards the dwindling numbers of lions in the wild

“Firstly it is unlawful for any registered sanctuary to breed with animals other than in carefully controlled specific programs for endangered species,” say Pervan.

“Otherwise breeding is prohibited for sanctuaries,” says Pervan.

In 2010 the Lion Breeders Association won a court case in the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) against the (then) Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, Marthinus van Schalkwyk. Van Schalkwyk successfully imposed a verdict that semi-tame animals may only be hunted 24 months after being set free from their breeding cages, but the Lion Breeder’s Organisation took the case to the SCA, where they won.

The SCA proved that lion farming was “a closed circuit”, since no captive-bred lions have ever been released back to the wild, thereby showing that lion farming has nothing to do with conservation.

Accordingly, the Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism had no jurisdiction to impose any restrictions on them. Lion breeders are farmers, not conservationists,” the Campaign Against Canned Lion Hunting explains.

“Therefore, no captive-bred lions have ever been released back to the wild, nor would conservation authorities ever allow it because of genetic and veterinary reasons,” Pervan says.

Lie #5: Playing and posing with these animals teaches children the value of conservation and makes them appreciate the animals more

“Interaction with wild animals serves no positive influence on the animals. Animals that are utilised for human interaction will invariably become habituated and lose any fear of humans,” says Miles.

With habituation, the risk of the animal causing injury to another person is increased, as is the risk of disease transfer. Ethically any interaction between a human and an animal merely opens the door to risk to the animal and ultimately lowers the welfare of the animal.

“A hands-off approach would be just as beneficial towards any conservation program, while also maintaining the welfare of the animals. A direct interaction operation will claim that it aids conservation and ignore the fact that it does this at the cost of the welfare of every animal that passes through its doors.”