top of page
Search

In A Cage the Lion Sleeps Tonight:

How legislation enables the King of the Jungle to be captured, caged and killed in the booming canned hunting industry.



ree




By Riley Forson

Picture in your mind Disney’s “The Lion King”. Mufasa is resplendent, the mighty King of the Pride-lands, by his side his beautiful, wild, cub, Simba. Now imagine that Simba, whilst he wanders away from Pride Rock, is snatched by humans. He is taken to a farm, where there are hundreds of lions and lion cubs. He is bottle fed, raised in the company of a human who he, over time, develops a strong emotional bond with; the human became his new pride. As he gets bigger, Simba has to take photos with tourists, but in case he bites, he gets drugged. Imagine when Simba gets to be Mufasa’s size…He is too big to be kept by his human now, or to take photos or be cuddled by well-meaning volunteers, so he is returned to near Pride Rock. Feeling alone, abandoned and unused to the wild, Simba waits for his human to return. He hears the human, alongside others, coming in the truck he was dropped of in. He walks towards them, desperate for his human to take him “home”. Before Simba can even realise, he has been shot by a trophy hunter, aided by the very human he thought had come to rescue him[1]. This is a very real story for the 9000-12,000 canned lions held in more than 300 captive breeding facilities across South Africa[2]. There are now 3 times more canned lions in South Africa than in the wild[3]; the resplendent Mufasa of our story is an exception, his ill-fated son Simba represents the norm, and South Africa’s legal system only enhances this grisly anti-fairy tale.

The Canned Lion Hunting Industry: “Humanity’s hot pursuit of the commercialisation of nature is rarely more evident than in South Africa’s intensive breeding of lions”[4], where the canned lion hunting industry is most prevalent and generates about R500 million annually[5]. As the campaign group Blood Lions explains[6], the process begins with lion cubs being snatched from the wild, or from captive females, at only a few days old; a completely unnatural occurrence when you consider that female cubs will remain with their prides sometimes for the entirety of their lives. These cubs are then raised by humans, often unknowing and good-hearted volunteers. As the cubs grow, they are used to take pictures with and to do “lion walks”, all the while being completely indoctrinated and acclimatised to human contact. Once they are grown, they are taken into either the wild or to a large area within the farm site. Being unused to being without human contact, these lions will return to human voices where they are then shot on site by trophy hunters who have paid for a permit, which can be obtained for as little as $4[7], and then either shipped abroad to be used as a rug or mantelpiece decoration, or their bones are sold onto the Asian markets[8], which is legalised by Appendix II of Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species of Fauna and Flora(“CITES”). It is a cruel and cyclical industry, and reduces the King of the Jungle to nothing more than a neglected and caged shadow of its rightful status in the savannahs.

A Cage of the Law’s Making: The mixed Dutch-Roman Civil Law and English Common Law system of South Africa is not lacking in laws and regulations relating to animals, in fact there is a plethora of legislation to this effect; South Africa was one of the first Member States to ratify CITESand is also party to the Convention on Biological Diversityand member of the World Organisation of Animal Health[9]. There are laws at almost every level of South Africa’s multi-tiered legal system which relate to animals, from Constitutional level all the way down to individual laws from the 9 different provinces of the country. But, this multi-level system is where the problem for lions in the canned hunting industry is mostly apparent. For example, in May 2019 an amendment was made to the Animal Improvement Act, Act 129 of 1993, which means that lions, among 30 other wild animal species, have been added to the table of farmable animals[10]. This amendment seems to contradict and conflict with National Environmental Management: Biodiversity Act 2004, Act 10 of 2004 (NEMBA)and the Threatened or Protected Species Regulations (ToPS)which require adherence to conservational legislation and for permits to be issued for “restricted activities” in relation to endangered or threatened species, which lions are in South Africa. ToPSand NEMBAmake it clear that “importing, exporting and possessing and breeding” any threatened or endangered species is a restricted activity. Despite this, the amendment seems to suggest that the “restricted activity” is artificially restricted, leaving lions at the mercy of an uncaring legal system riddled with poor enforcement and monitoring systems between provincial permitting departments. Furthermore, NEMBAconflicts with the the requirements of the World Organisation of Animal Healthas NEMBA, despite being about conservation, completely lacks focus on animal welfare, which the World Organisation of Animal Healthfocuses on. The same can be said for the Animal Improvement Act, it only protects from “unnecessary cruelty”, an ambiguous phrase which can be interpreted in many ways in a court of law. As is explained by the authors of “Fair Game? Improving the Wellbeing of South African Wildlife” explain “the legal regulation of wild animal welfare follows the traditional, but out-dated distinction between animal welfare and biodiversity conservation…[therefore], straddling the divide between inter-departmental and concurrent national and provincial jurisdiction unsuitable for addressing the issue of wild animal welfare”[11]. This patchwork system has so many legal loopholes that it not only fails to protect lions within the canned hunting industry from further neglect and abuse, but it actually facilitates and promotes their suffering. How can laws be enforced and efficient if one can simply rely on contradictory laws elsewhere or benefit from the inefficient enforcement and monitoring of laws between provinces? The answer is they cannot be, and this results in extreme, and cyclical suffering for South Africa’s King of the Jungle. It is true, “Justice, indeed so far as [lions] are concerned, seems […] to have dispensed altogether with her scales and to have worn a permanent bandage over that eye which should have been turned to the(se) wrongs”[12].

Just because the lion did not roar, does not mean it was sleeping: Despite the bleak state of the legislation, small but significant rumblings of change can be seen in South Africa’s judiciary. In National Council for the Society for Prevention Cruelty to Animals v Minister of Environmental Affairs and Others (86515/2017) [2019], ZAGPPHC 337 (6 August 2019):the court cited the case of The Constitutional Court in the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals v Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development and Another (2017) (4) BCLR S17 (CC) at [56], where the court reasoned: “…animals are worthy of protection not only because of the reflection that this has on human values, but because animals are “sentient beings that are capable of suffering and of experiencing pain””. Furthermore, a unanimous judiciary found canned lion hunting to be “abhorrent” due to the suffering the lions are subjected to[13]. The Supreme Court in the Chumlong Lemthongthaicase[14](a case against a notorious rhino poacher) stated that: “Constitutional values dictate a more caring attitude towards fellow humans, animals and the environment in general.[15]” As Amy Wilson in her thesis on this subject rightly states: “looking forward, there is a vast opportunity to utilise the judicial system to get better protection for animals, particularly… given the recent statements by the court”. Therefore, there are clearly those within the ineffectual South African judicial and legislative systems that are supportive of a change that would protect lions from the horrendous suffering they endure from canned hunting, however as Amy Wilson makes clear from her adaptation of the African proverb, “until lions have lawyers, the law will favour the hunter”[16]. But change is in the air, and the silent lion in the judiciary is starting to find its mighty roar, a roar that should bring positive change for the thousands of lions suffering behind the bars of their prisons.

In the next blog, we will be discussing the charities which are helping to spur this positive judicial sentiment to save our lions from canned hunting, including insightful comments from Blood Lions’ Pippa Hankinson and from the Board of The Wildlife Sanctuary run by the Lion Whisperer, Kevin Richardson, as well as a profile on the Lion Guardians of Amboseli.


[1]To see this story played out, watch the cartoon “The Great Betrayal” by Born Free here: https://youtu.be/oV8aV3ZY7SM

[5]National Council of the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals v Minister of Environmental Affairs and Others (86515/2017) [2019] ZAGPPHC 337 (6 August 2019), paragraphs [5]-[8].

[8]I would advise watching the documentary “Blood Lions”, trailer found here: https://youtu.be/-T86GCjCpus

[9]Wilson, A.P., Animal Law in South Africa: Until lions have their own lawyers, the law will continue to protect the hunter, d.A Derecho Animal (Forum of Animal Law Studies) 10/1 (2019). DOI https://doi.org.10.5565/rev/da.399

[10]Ibid

[11]Fair Game? Improving the Wellbeing of South African Wildlife: Review of the Legal and Practical Regulation of the Welfare of Animal in South Africa (2018), Endangered Wildlife Trust, The Lewis Foundation and Centre for Environmental Rights.

[12]E.Fairholme, A Century of Work For Animals, 1924, London, John Murray Publishing, cited in S.Brooman & D.Legge, p31

[13]Wilson, A.P., Animal Law in South Africa: Until lions have their own lawyers, the law will continue to protect the hunter, d.A Derecho Animal (Forum of Animal Law Studies) 10/1 (2019). DOI https://doi.org.10.5565/rev/da.399

[14]Lemthongthai v S (849/2013) [2014] ZASCA 131 (25 September 2014)

[15]Wilson, A.P., Animal Law in South Africa: Until lions have their own lawyers, the law will continue to protect the hunter, d.A Derecho Animal (Forum of Animal Law Studies) 10/1 (2019). DOI https://doi.org.10.5565/rev/da.399

[16]Ibid

 
 
 

Comments

  • Instagram
bottom of page