Cape Town - Animal welfare group Humane Society International/Africa (HSI/Africa) has shamed the Department of Environment, Forestry, Fisheries (DEFF) following its announcement of South Africa’s hunting and export quotas for elephants, black rhinos and leopards allocated for the year.
The department’s statement that 10 threatened leopards, 150 endangered elephants and 10 critically endangered black rhinos were to be hunted this year preceded World Wildlife Day today, which intended to highlight the plight of threatened and endangered wild animals.
The DEFF explained that regulated and sustainable hunting was an important conservation tool in South Africa as it incentivised the private sector and communities to conserve valuable wildlife species and to participate in wildlife-based land uses which ultimately contributed to the conservation of the country’s biodiversity.
This news followed the newly released “Trophy Hunting by the Numbers” report by the society which contradicted the DEFF’s argument and highlighted South Africa’s role as Africa’s largest exporter of hunting trophies.
HSI/Africa wildlife director Audrey Delsink said black rhino was a critically endangered species globally and trophy hunting of this species, especially when reports and census numbers indicated that black rhino numbers were significantly reduced in SANParks, gave contradictory messages about the ongoing threats to and status of black rhino.
Conservation experts and professionals have critiqued trophy hunting as it “yields low returns at household levels with only a fraction of generated income reaching local communities”.
This contradicts DEFF’s statement that income generated by trophy hunting was critical for marginalised and impoverished rural communities.
“We are terribly disappointed that the DEFF is failing in its duty to protect our threatened and endangered wildlife species. It is unacceptable that we allow people to hunt endangered and critically endangered animals for the purpose of collecting their remains as trophies,” Delsink said.
Delsink said the claim that trophy hunting contributed to conservation could not be justified in light of evidence that demonstrated one-third of South Africa’s hunting trophies were captive-bred animals, and most were non-native or species not subject to science-based population management.
She said the quota announcements were also made ahead of the completion of species-specific consultations, which engaged the commercial wildlife industry, the public and specialist conservation experts for management plans for these animals.
DEFF spokesperson Albi Modise said: “The report is based on a trade database that is available to the public and it is derived from data submitted by parties on trade in Cites (a multilateral treaty to protect endangered plants and animals) listed species.
“The department would like to caution organisations like HSI on interpretation of the data from the Cites database and we would like to clarify that the Cites database is a report on permits issued, not actual trade or actual export.”
Modise said South Africa supported the principle of sustainable use of natural resources in line with its sovereign constitution.
“Globally, wildlife populations are rapidly declining due to poaching, climate change, habitat loss and degradation, human-wildlife conflict and other human-induced activities.
“The killing of animals for fun through trophy hunting cannot be tolerated in the face of these challenges. We urge the South African public to speak up for wildlife and urge the DEFF to remove targets from our wildlife,” said Delsink.