Cape Town – At a recent game auction, Jacques Kriek smiled in delight as one of his exotic royal oryx bulls – 16 cows pregnant with his progeny and the guarantee of a calf boasting the distinctive bronze red colour variation – sold for a whopping R30 million.
These days, rare wildlife breeders like Kriek are smiling all the way to the bank.
He knows that as far as records go, few animals fetch the kind of prices that colour variant game and unusually large-horned animals do.
Kriek’s father darted the first black impala for commercial use back in 1992.
Kriek believes that in a few years, foreign hunters will flock to South Africa to hunt the “grand slam” of colour variants.
“They will come for the trophies of the golden oryx, king oryx and the black oryx, or for the black saddleback impala and white flanked impala, to mount on their walls.
“Hunters will be interested in these colour variations, as long as the perception is nullified that they are being artificially created,” said Kriek, who will present a talk on colour variants at the Trophy Breeders Game seminar in Midrand next week.
But conservationists – and some in professional hunting circles – are perturbed by the explosion of colour variants in the wildlife sector, dubbing these unusual animals “Frankensteins” and “freaks”.
They worry that intensive breeding is breaking up natural habitats and compromising the genetic integrity of indigenous wildlife populations.
Dr Gerhard Verdoorn, the president of the SA Hunters and Game Conservation Association, said game breeders are “producing a growing assortment of unnatural colour variations” among indigenous game.
“These practices of deliberately selecting and breeding animals for specific traits, similar to stock farming to produce unusual coat colours or very large horn-lengths are not compatible with conservation principles.”
Local hunters complain that they are battling price increases in common species and stud animals of scarce species because of the explosion of the colour variants and big horn intensive breeding industry.
The Professional Hunters Association of SA, too, is concerned by the significant increase in the variety of colour variants “some of which are largely unknown or have been uncommon in the past”.
Kriek conceded that colour variants probably don’t do much for the conservation cause. “But the money you make you can use to further conserve other species.
“Is it economical to breed with rare-coloured birds, koi fish or different coloured roses? Yes. The market wants different colours.
“If there’s a demand for black impala, we breed it, make money and create jobs… These are naturally occurring variants. We’re now breeding these colours to meet demand.”
Last year Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa sold three of his exotic white-flanked impala for R28m at a game auction while buyers at others have coughed up nearly R8m for saddle blesbok and R4m for coffee springbok.
Gert Dry, the president of Wildlife Ranching SA, said colour variants occur naturally and make up about 1 percent of the 3.5 million head of game in the country.
“It’s a normal act of God. These colour mutations happen in the king cheetah and the white lion.
“We know the first golden gnu was hunted in the Tuli Block in 1933 while black impala occurred naturally in Limpopo.
“These colour variants are not the result of genetic manipulation or interference by humans… The species is not changed, the animal’s behaviour has not changed, it’s just a colour difference. They’re as freaky as someone with green eyes.”
In 2010, Professor John Donaldson, the chief director of biodiversity research at the SA National Biodiversity Institute (Sanbi), deemed colour variants a “low risk to the species likely to be affected”. He did note, however, that selective breeding of genetically inferior recessive colour morphs did not further the conservation of wild biodiversity.
The Department of Environmental Affairs now plans to run national dialogues on the issue while Sanbi is conducting further studies.
Kriek was sure about one thing: “Maintain the biodiversity in our national parks. Don’t enforce legislation meant to advance conservation in these parks on to commercial game breeders or commercial farmers.”
Graham Kerley, a professor who heads the Centre for African Conservation Ecology at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, said the only real robust example of colour variants is the white springbok, of which exceedingly few records exist.
“Records of white buffalo have been found in the Kruger, but they died soon after birth. They can’t survive in nature. Why do we want to force their survival in captivity?”
Colour is a strong adaptive feature in wild animals and does “not just make animals pretty”.
White springbok, for example, struggle to survive in winter.
“Their colour deals with their ability to maintain body temperature and to deal with predation.
“In addition, we know from a variety of species, colour patterns of animals are important for mate recognition.
But, he said, “domestication is undoing the adaptive value found in these species”.
The list of artificially maintained colour forms like the midnight and saddled impala and curly haired blesbok “can only grow as wildlife breeders learn to generate aberrant forms more effectively through inbreeding”, he said.
“The genetic integrity of the species is being undermined in a rash frenzy of colour manipulation… owing to man’s fascination with the bizarre.”
Kriek believes colour variations have contributed tremendously to the survival of blue wildebeest, for example. “In the past, they were shot, hunted and killed because they had no value.
“Now because you can breed a golden gnu from normal foundation cows, they suddenly have an economic value and that goes for oryx, impala, springbok and all the animals you can breed rare colour variants from.”
Weekend Argus