Squazzin Canned Lions Financial Post June 12 2009 Lions must roam free South Africa court orders

Lions must roam free, South Africa court orders
Antony Sguazzin, Bloomberg News Published: Friday, June 12, 2009
http://www.financialpost.com/n...tory.html?id=1689658
Lion farmers in South Africa lost an appeal against a law that will force them to let the animals roam free on ranches for two years before being hunted, putting in jeopardy 3,000 of the big cats that could now be euthanized.
South Africa's environment ministry has been trying to ban the "canned hunting" industry for two years because it says the practice of releasing lions raised in captivity that are then shot by hunters for a fee harms the country's reputation.
"It is not disputed that the hunting of lions bred in captivity has damaged the reputation of the Republic of South Africa immensely," Judge Ian van der Merwe said in an e-mailed copy of the ruling in the Bloemfontein High Court.
The decision may shut an industry that employs 5,000 people and generates revenue of 1-billion rand (US$125-million) a year because farmers can't afford to keep lions on their hunting estates due to the costs of food they would eat over two years, the South African Predator Breeders Association said.
"It will close down our business," Carel van Heerden, the head of the association, said on Friday in an interview from Vryburg in northern South Africa following Thursday's ruling. "We don't understand why we have been picked on."
The court decision is "a fantastic ruling," Jason Bell- Leask, director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare for the Southern African region, said in an interview from Cape Town. "It's the end of canned hunting."
The government has not said whether it will compensate farmers or what will happen to the lions, van Heerden added, saying if they can't be hunted they may be euthanized.
Appeal to Higher Court?
The farmers will meet in Bloemfontein on June 19 to decide whether to appeal the ruling to a higher court.
"The Environment Department has welcomed the decision" and will proceed with the legislation, it said on Friday in a statement. "The reprehensible practice of canned lion hunting will indeed end."
Farmers breed lions and then have them hunted, mostly by foreign tourists, on their own large estates or they sell the lions to ranches that charge hunters a fee to kill the cats.
The average trophy fee per lion paid by a tourist is about US$22,000 and a further US$18,000 is generated in the form of safari costs and the price of having a lion stuffed for shipment back to the hunter's home, according to the ruling.
Lions are often shot after just a few days in the wild. While they are mostly fed on donkey meat, bought from rural communities, while in captivity they catch and eat game that the farmers have acquired for their estates.
Six Tons of Meat
An adult male lion would eat about six tons of meat during a two-year period and the cheapest game that can be supplied is blue wildebeest, an application brought by 123 lion farmers said, according to the ruling. Live blue wildebeests sell for the equivalent of 14 rand a kilo, or 85,000 rand for six tons.
The lions need to be kept in captivity for four years before they are an optimal size to be hunted, the application said.
More than 300 lions are hunted and shot in South Africa every year, with trophy hunters coming from countries including the U.S., Russia and Spain. That makes South Africa the second- biggest destination for lion hunting after Tanzania. About 1,000 lions are shot each year in Africa.
During a typical hunt, the customer is driven through a private estate in a four-wheel drive with two professional hunters. A photographer or cameraman hired by the client may also join them. The team searches for lion tracks and then follows the cat through the bush on foot.
If the client shoots and misses, one of the professional hunters must kill the lion, which can weigh more than 400 pounds, if it charges the group.
The ruling comes more than a decade after a British Broadcasting Corp. documentary showed a lioness being shot in a small enclosure in South Africa in front of her cubs, leading to international criticism.
Bloomberg News