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Given the importance of wildlife in South Africa’s tourism industry and its international reputation, it may come as a surprise that the legal protection of wild animals in South Africa is in a state of neglect.
According to a report soon to be released by the Centre for Environmental Rights and the Endangered Wildlife Trust, the maze and minefield of national, provincial and local wildlife laws and regulations is complex, outdated and – for administering officials – often baffling.
In key wildlife legislation, wild animals simply don’t exist. But possibly the biggest problem is that the welfare of wild animals has fallen through the cracks. The report finds that captive wild animals under human control straddle the divide between inter-departmental, national and provincial jurisdiction. This is because of a statutory regime the report says is “unintended and unsuited to addressing the issue of their welfare”. The result is minimal protection.
The Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries is mandated to regulate animal welfare. But wild animals fall under the jurisdiction of the Department of Environmental Affairs and the different provincial conservation agencies which have no firm mandate in relation to welfare and operate in terms of their own varying pieces of legislation.
According to DEA spokesman Albi Modise, his department could not comment on masskilling of captive-bred lions which took place in the Free State because, he said, their welfare fell under the mandate of the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF) and was therefore not the DEA’s concern.
Despite frequent – and often fatal – attacks by captive predators in facilities across South Africa, no action has been taken to prevent such occurrences. In 2017 a child was mauled by a lion in Laphelale, Limpopo, a man was killed by a lion in Mpumalanga, two people were attacked by a cheetah at Emdoneni in KwaZulu-Natal and a guide was killed by a crocodile at Le Bonheur Crocodile Farm.
The welfare of wild animals has been a slow starter. For thousands of years they were merely a resource to be exploited. It was only in 2008 that a definition of animal welfare was adopted by the World Organisation for Animal Health.
A draft declaration presented to the United Nations in 2000 calling for animals to be recognised as sentient beings with capacity for feelings and conscious awareness has yet to be adopted. In South Africa, there’s no shortage of laws concerning animals.
The report lists 18 pieces of national legislation, eight biodiversity management plans, 19 norms and standards notices and procedures, 10 pieces of provincial legislation and two international conventions/treaties which inform the protection of wild animals.
The underlying perception is that they are an agricultural issue concerning commercial exploitation. For this reason, welfare is generally seen to be uneconomical, expensive and time-consuming.
Possibly the clearest indicator of the low priority given to animal welfare in South Africa is that its main guardian in the country, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (NSPCA), is not even funded by the state and is forced to rely on charity.
After an extensive review of the jurisdictional divisions, outdated and inadequate laws, the treatment of animal cruelty cases and the focus on economic progress, the report’s conclusion is extremely worrying: the welfare of wild animals in South Africa is not a priority.
In terms of the Game Theft Act, in fact, wild animals simply don’t exist. This is because it deems any animal adequately fenced in, on private or public property, to be owned and therefore no longer wild.
Enforcement tends to take place only in well-publicised cases of cruelty to wildlife and then by the NSPCA, rather than by environmental management inspectors, who do not have a mandate in this regard. There are, however, some good stories.
Unfortunately, these rules have had little impact on the lives of the elephants used for tourism in the many captive elephant facilities. Second hopeful moves are the norms and standards requirements of the Limpopo Department of Economic Development, Environment and Tourism (LEDET).
Its captivity permits have a welfare compliance and breeding is prohibited unless specifically authorised. The tragedy is that wild animals in South Africa have been reduced to profit-making machines. This can be seen in the type of arguments the Department of Environmental Affairs makes in defence of trophy hunting and the sale of rhino horn and lion bones.
According to the report, for wild animal welfare to improve, outmoded thinking about the protection of wild animals needs to fall in line with scientific development in the understanding of animals and biodiversity requirements.
The aim of the report is to start a debate about the welfare of wild animals among all those people – government or private – under whose protection they fall.
The system should be electronic and run by welltrained officials.