December 2021 – Blood Lions

Youth For Lions Blog: A visit to the zoo or a captive wildlife facility – education or edutainment?

Written by Youth Ambassador, Stephanie Emmy Klarmann and published with permission

There are some heated debates about the value of captive wildlife facilities and zoos. Many are firmly situated in the belief that animals in small enclosures and cages do not educate visitors or serve an important conservation purpose. There are others, however, who argue that seeing animals in captivity educates visitors and encourages them to care. I personally can’t help but wonder what the public is learning when they witness an animal standing against a fence or sleeping in an unnaturally small space. Even more importantly, does this type of education result in pro-conservation behaviour?

The welfare of South Africa’s wild animals is in the hopelessly wrong hands of the food police – this has to change urgently

This is an excerpt from an article written by Don Pinnock and published online by Daily Maverick on 09 December, 2021

The welfare of wild animals in South Africa is being thrown under a bus by dithering departments and inappropriate legislators.

Giving the job of drafting wild animal welfare legislation to the Department of Agriculture is like asking a jackal to look after your ducks. It’s the wrong department for the job. They’re the food police. They administer the Meat Safety Act, the Animal Improvement Act, chopping trees, drought relief, catching fish, pets, draft and performing animals, and exporting sheep. Their vision is sustainable agriculture and food security, for God’s sake.

If you put “animal welfare” into the search box on its website you get Animal Production, Wildlife Ranching, Aquaculture and Animal Improvement. Yet for almost two decades they’ve been tasked with drawing up an Animal Welfare Act. Doesn’t show.

Michele Pickover of the EMS Foundation got it right when she said: “We urgently need new legislative protection for wild animals, but DALRRD lack the competency to write it. Also, the department’s business is slaughter and production plus they’re in bed with the industry. They’re the wrong people to be tasked with wild animal welfare.”

Right now there’s a team of vets supposedly writing an Animal Welfare Bill. Outsiders are not welcome. When the job’s done, they say they’ll consult other stakeholders. The drafters, all Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development (DALRRD) insiders, have limited expertise in ethical conservation management, biodiversity policies, wildlife trade legislation or animal protection, economics and welfare. Even Parliament raised a red flag.

Animal welfare bill being developed in isolation

This is an excerpt from an article written by Sheree Bega and published online by Mail & Guardian on 2 December, 2021

A giraffe that was decapitated in 2014 when a transporting vehicle moving the animal to a game farm drove under a low bridge in Pretoria; captive lions found neglected and starving on a lion farm in Limpopo and a lion “abattoir” in the Free State to feed the lion bone trade.

These are some examples of legislative shortcomings where standards for domestic animals are applied across the whole range of wild animals, with “often dire results”, according to a 22 November report on animal welfare by a parliamentary research unit.

It describes how a June 2018 joint report by the Centre for Environmental Rights and the Endangered Wildlife Trust found that the existing regulatory environment is inadequate to manage proliferating commercial private wildlife facilities.

South Africa has split the animal welfare mandate between the department of forestry, fisheries and the environment (DFFE) and the department of agriculture, land reform and rural development (DALRRD).

But various reports, according to the parliamentary document, have highlighted the inability of these departments to work together to regulate norms and standards relating to the welfare of wildlife in captivity.