On 8 November 2018, South Africa’s Portfolio Committee on Environmental Affairs adopted the Committee’s Report on Captive Lion Breeding for Hunting and Lion Bone Trade in South Africa. The report was the product of a two-day colloquium in August to review and debate whether to put an end to captive lion breeding for hunting and its trade.
One of the committee resolutions was that the Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA) should ‘initiate a policy and legislative review of captive breeding of lions for hunting and lion bone trade with a view of putting an end to the practice’. In its briefing to the Portfolio Committee on Environmental Affairs on 12 March 2019, the DEA noted that it was in the process of initiating the policy and legislative review by establishing a High-Level Panel.
A 2017 report by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) notes that the legal lion bone trade has fuelled poaching of other big cat species. In parts of Asia, lion bones are passed off as tiger bones due to high demand for the latter, which in turn intensifies the demand for lion bones in South Africa.
And despite regulation of the lion bone trade in South Africa, it has not prevented criminal syndicates from exploiting legal channels to traffic in illegal lion and tiger bones. Criminal markets operate parallel to the legal one, making use of opportunities for illegal bones to be laundered with those that were obtained by legal means.
Conservationists were therefore stunned when, in July 2018, the (DEA) increased the annual lion bone export quota from 800 to 1 500 skeletons. According to the department the decision was based on scientific research, which found there was a growing stockpile of lion bones in the country due to quota restrictions and there had been ‘no discernible increase in poaching of wild lion in South Africa’. For proponents of captive-bred lion hunting, the findings strengthened their argument that an increase in the lion bone quota would eliminate the ‘the necessity to shoot wild [lions] … and [that it] thereby reduces the pressure on wild populations.’
At about the same time as the DEA announced the quota increase, the EMS Foundation and Ban Animal Trading released a report criticising the South African government’s support for the captive-bred lion industry.
The report highlighted that the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) permit process contained loopholes that enabled illegal wildlife trafficking. A 2018 CITES report noted that since 2009, there had been an increase in the export of lion bone items to Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Vietnam and Thailand, which also happened to be the primary repository of illegal wildlife products.
The debate on the captive-bred lion and bone trade has thus far concentrated on conservation and ethical concerns, which are no doubt crucial in promoting South Africa’s conservation image. Yet, there has been little reference to the practice’s link to fuelling transnational organised criminal networks.
Evidence has shown that transnational wildlife criminals who started in the lion bone trade eventually ‘graduated’ to rhino horn trafficking – as shown by the case of convicted rhino poaching ringleader, Chumlong Lemtongthai.
Given the above, it becomes important that the High-Level panel takes into consideration ways to address the illegal trade in lion bones in its review of policies and legislations. For instance, closing up loopholes in the CITES permitting process, as noted above, would be an essential first step in the right direction. Addressing the illegal trade in lion bones is crucial if South Africa is serious about promoting its conversation image and the tourism industry.
Richard Chelin, Researcher, ENACT project, ISS
