'Stop car boot sale of lions'
2002-11-21 21:33
Bloemfontein - An environmental group is threatening legal action to prevent an advertised auction of what it calls "canned" predators, including lions, tigers and jaguars, from taking place in Hoopstad.
This comes amid controversy about what environmental critics call the "legalisation of canned hunting" in South Africa.
Chris Mercer of the Kalahari Raptor Centre in the Northern Cape sent an open letter on Thursday to Vleissentraal, which is organising the auction, demanding the cancellation of the auction which was advertised in the prominent agricultural magazine Landbouweekblad.
Mercer called the planned auction a "car boot sale of endangered predators".
He said if Vleissentraal should fail to notify him before the end of the week that the auction had been cancelled, his group would have no alternative, but to bring an urgent application in the High Court in Bloemfontein for an interdict preventing them from holding the auction sale.
The interdict would be the precursor to a bid by the Kalahari Raptor Centre to have the captive breeding and hunting of predators in South Africa declared illegal, Mercer said in his letter to Vleissentraal.
"It is our contention that the breeding of large sentient animals like lions to be shot when they are necessarily habituated to humans, constitutes canned hunting and is so deeply offensive to ordinary members of the South African public that it violates their environmental right under the Constitution," Mercer said.
Department of environmental affairs and tourism
In an accompanying statement he said that the department of environmental affairs and tourism "would protest that it was merely regulating the industry and that the killing of tame animals in small enclosures had been prohibited".
It was clear that the ultimate fate of the lions on auction would be "the bullet", Mercer said.
He told letters demanding the banning of the captive breeding of predators and the hunting of the captive-bred animals were served recently on Minister of Environment Affairs Valli Moosa and the relevant members of provincial executive councils.
Vleissentraal
Vleissentraal executive director Wimpie du Plessis denied that the auction would be of "canned" predators.
He said it would merely constitute an exchange of genetic breeding material among registered breeders.
All buyers would also have to be registered breeders with import permits for the animals.
Du Plessis said it was the second predator auction to be held in the Free State, after an earlier successful one a few weeks ago at Winburg. Four registered Free State breeders were to supply animals for the coming auction scheduled for next Friday.
Du Plessis confirmed that 51 lions, including two white ones, five Bengal tigers and two jaguars were to be up for sale.
Free State still allows hunting of 'canned' lions
The Free State is one of four South African provinces who still permit the hunting of captive-bred lions.
Organisations like Mercer's maintain that the majority of captive bred lions are destined to be hunted because of the lucrative hunting market and the moratorium on the selling of lions to farmers who are not registered breeders.
Despite the moratorium, a move aimed at curbing the growth in lion breeding, the industry is booming among the few allowed to breed.
Free State nature conservationist Werner Boeing earlier said breeders are paid on average between US10 000 and US12 000 for a lioness to be hunted.
Males fetch between US15 000 and US18 000.
The hunters pay between R150 000 and R200 000.
There are 22 registered lion breeders in the Free State.
- SAPA