The government says it has banned canned hunting, but wildlife organisations claim it has not.
All the government has done with its new hunting legislation, say wildlife organisations, is to rule that no large captive-bred predators, like lions, may be hunted within six months of their being released onto a property.
After six months, there is nothing in the legislation to say they cannot be hunted, nor is there any stipulation of the size of the property on which the hunt can take place.
When the legislation was released in Gauteng on Tuesday, media were told by Fundisile Mketeni, a deputy director at the department of environment affairs and tourism, that Environment Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk had been threatened with major lawsuits by lion breeders and hunters if he banned canned hunting.
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But on Wednesday Environment Affairs' director-general Pam Yako issued a statement which contradicted this, and said "canned hunting will continue to be prohibited in terms of yet-to-be-promulgated regulations".
Yako added: "While we endorse the notion of sustainable use, the department shall never condone unacceptable hunting practices, including the so-called canned hunting, or purely economic activities disguised as industry contributions to wildlife management strategies."
But Jason Bell-Leask, of the International Fund for Animal Welfare, says the regulations do allow canned hunting. He says the government has clamped down on the practice, by outlawing the hunting of drugged animals and other measures, but it has not banned it.
"Breeding of lions is still allowed, and the captive-bred lions are still allowed to be hunted. What is different is that they cannot be hunted immediately, but you will have to wait six months to do so.
"And the legislation makes no stipulation of the size of the property on which these captive lions can be hunted. One of the issues about canned lion hunting was the small size of the enclosures that they were hunted on. So we still have captive-bred lions being hunted on small properties, some of them smaller than rugby fields.
"If that is not canned hunting, what is? Where is the principle of fair chase?" Bell-Leask said.
He said the business interests of the hunting industry had prevailed over the welfare of the animals.
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This article was originally published on page 6 of Cape Times on December 14, 2006
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