On August 21-22, the South African parliament will hold a colloquium titled “Captive Lion Breeding for Hunting in South Africa: Harming or Promoting the Conservation Image of the Country.” The stated purpose of the colloquium is to discuss not only the ethics and conservation impact of the captive lion breeding and hunting industries, but also their impact on South Africa’s image and “brand.”
Campaign Against Canned Hunting (CACH) UK has prepared a 50-page review for the colloquium’s Portfolio Committee, detailing instances of bad publicity for South Africa resulting from the captive lion breeding and hunting industries.
Toni Brockhoven of Beauty Without Cruelty in Cape Town has kindly offered to hand deliver this seminal review to the Parliamentary Secretary for the Portfolio Committee, along with the following cover letter:
Letter to South Africa Minister of Tourism
cc: Members of Portfolio Committee of Parliament for the EnvironmentDear Honorable Minister:
How the DEA is sabotaging the SA Department of Tourism: see the annexed Nash report from Campaign Against Canned Hunting (CACH).
Everyone knows that lion breeding and canned lion hunting in South Africa has attracted significant international criticism, and that this has increasingly damaged South Africa’s image abroad. Yet your Department spends millions every year trying to promote tourism here.
What you, and in particular your colleagues in other departments, may be less well aware of is the sheer scale of the overseas reaction. When you see the extent of the damage to SA’s brand image, you will be shocked.
To demonstrate this, retired lawyer David Nash of CACH UK has prepared the attached review. It lists the huge range of import bans, airline trophy bans, negative press coverage, anti-canned hunting campaigns, protest marches, tourist industry views and social media criticism.
Once you read this important research, you will clearly see how Minister Edna Molewa’s Department of Environmental Affairs is undermining your efforts.
Further, the damage to South Africa’s brand image adversely impacts Responsible Tourism, the fastest growing sector of the global tourism industry.
Hunting industry PR, accepted by the DEA and other South African conservation structures, claims that canned hunting is essential to the South African economy. CACH strongly disagrees. Rather than benefiting the South African economy, captive lion breeding and canned hunting is a wasteful use of land and significantly limits employment and up-skilling opportunities when compared with other forms of farming and ethical wildlife tourism.
This review demonstrates a clear economic case for banning lion farming (through a managed phasing out process) and canned lion hunting.
You can view and download the whole 50-page report here.
Featured Image: Lion and lioness, Kenya. Image credit: Kim Bartlett – Animal People, Inc.
