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Proposed “Voluntary Exit Strategy” will lead to the death of thousands of endangered lions.
On 12 August 2022, Minister Barbara Creecy of the Department of Forestry, Fisheries, and the Environment issued a notice to establish a task team to identify a voluntary exit strategy from the captive lion industry. This appointment follows from the recommendations made by the High-Level Panel (HLP) in 2020 to “halt and reverse the domestication of our iconic lions” by euthanizing all captive bred lions.
The Minister’s approach is a bit more toned down than the HLP, calling for “voluntary exit options and pathways” from the captive lion industry. The appointed task team needs to oversee the implementation of this exit strategy once a complete audit of the lion industry has been completed to ascertain how many lions and stockpiled “derivatives” will be affected.
The voluntary exit strategy is meant to offer captive lion breeders a path to leave the business, with the task team being responsible for finding potential funders to support the exits from the industry. Although Minister Creecy is looking for a “win-win outcome” this may be just where the situation takes a turn for the worst.
This radical shift away from South Africa’s successful conservation model – successful, that is, at least up to now and just at the time that many African countries have begun championing the concept of sustainable use – may lead to a drastic decrease in the “actual” disease free lion populations in South Africa as the financial reality of private conservation may tempt many to take this path out of the business.
The weight of activist-driven policy changes, potentiated by modern media publishing controversial topics wrapped in sensational propaganda rather than the truth, is bearing down on a vulnerable industry protecting an endangered species that may not be able to withstand the impact. The truth, as it turns out, is very inconvenient to the narrative.
Fact check
The African lion is endangered. There is no denying this fact. It is estimated that only 39,000 wild lion are left in the world, a shocking decline from just 50 years ago when the lion population was estimated to be over 450,000.
However, and contrary to sensational reporting, the loss of lion habitat due to agricultural expansion is the underlying factor that gives rise to all major threats to lions.
This is primarily caused by habitat loss and degradation, competition with livestock (including indiscriminate killing in defense of livestock), illegal or uncontrolled poaching for meat and trade in animal products (which directly affects the lion through prey depletion) and retribution killing for human-wildlife conflict.
Most of these major threats are linked and are a direct result of Africa’s ever-increasing human population. Animal Rights advocates will studiously present figures insinuating that, during the Twentieth Century, the cause of the alarming decrease in the wild lion populations in Africa was hunting. However, they stay within the safe harbour of “politically correct” by remaining silent on the fact that during this same period, Africa’s human population increased by more than 600 percent.
As this habitat loss continues, large mammal species, such as lion, will increasingly be restricted to fenced areas – thus meeting the definition of a “controlled environment.” A controlled environment means “an enclosure that is of insufficient size for the management of self-sustaining populations of listed threatened or protected species, and designed to hold the specimens in such population in a manner that prevents them from escaping, facilitates intensive human intervention or manipulation in the form of the provision of food and/or water, artificial housing, health care, and may facilitate the intensive breeding or propagation of specimens of a listed threatened or protected species.”
In other words, a captive environment.
The cold, hard reality
By combining the required management budgets of the 8 small conservation reserves with IUCN Red Data list lion populations (1993 – 2014), it can be estimated that the cost of managing the habitat in which the lions are conserved averages out to over R600,000 per lion per year.
Once the lion is properly housed and sheltered according to all regulations, the next step is providing adequate food and water to maintain a healthy life for the lion. Using a very conservative value calculated on an average feed per lion of less expensive prey meat, it is estimated that a small pride of just three lions (one male and two female) for a year amount to a staggering R500,000 per year.
It becomes clear at this point why the Minister’s proposed “voluntary exit strategy” from the captive lion industry poses such a dire threat to the sustainability of the species.
The financial burden on private game owners and reserves to maintain lions to the same standards as national parks (protected areas) is enormous. They fall under exactly the same regulations as national parks even though they do not enjoy the same status and receive no support or grant income from government and are reliant solely on their own business revenue.
This move to end the captive lion industry is supported by lobbies to end all income-generating possibilities from private lion owners. And here enters the cold hard reality in Africa, which is: if it pays, it stays.
Faced with the untenable choice between maintaining a pride of captive lions from which no income can be generated to sustain the operation and taking a “voluntary strategy” to a smoothed out, sponsored exit, doubtless many will have no choice but to turn to alternatives such as livestock or crop farming with the consequent deterioration of biodiversity in the area.
Plot Twist
We have within the borders of South Africa an estimated 2,074 wild, managed and importantly, recognized, lions. That last descriptor is important because, according to the rule’s, captive bred lions are not recognized, or counted, towards the total lion population in the country, or indeed in Africa.
The unrecognized, captive lion populations in South Africa are estimated at between 8,000 and 10,000 animals – conservatively 4 times as many lions as in protected areas and represents just under 80% of the total South African population, meaning the vast majority of lions in the country are kept and managed on private land and game ranches.
This becomes significant because, according to studies done in 2016 by Stellenbosch University’s (SU) Animal TB Research group, 54% of lions in the southern parts of the Kruger National Park (South Africa’s largest protected area) was infected with bovine tuberculosis (bTB). The primary source of the infection is through the ingestion of infected buffalo, and since lion hunt and feed in prides the entire group may become infected. The disease-progression of bTB is slow and the estimated time between infection and death is between 2 and 5 years.
If we follow the established protocol that a lion population only counts if they are not captive bred lions, the Kruger National Park’s estimated 1,600 lions equate to 80% of South Africa’s roughly 2,000 wild lion population. If the spread of bTB cannot be contained, most of South Africa’s recognized lion population may be lost to conservation efforts with serious repercussions to the global lion population.
Through aggressive strategies the current disease outbreak could possibly be curtailed, the trouble is that such aggressive strategies are not being implemented and even if they were, they are not directed at the lion population, but rather the disease reservoir species, in this case the buffalo. With the current disease outbreak not under control, it would be senseless to attempt to introduce lions from healthy populations as they too will most likely be infected.
This situation underscores in startling clarity the absurdity of the idealized, utopian wildlife conservation. All wildlife species must be conserved and protected while no contribution to their care and conservation may be generated from them to off-set the enormous costs to do so. Whereas sustainable use has made a massive difference in repopulating near-extinct species and rewilding formerly marginal agricultural lands into wildlife havens, as can be seen with the lion situation, those perfectly healthy animals are not even counted as members of the protected species.
The fatal flaw
With the sketched worst-case scenario above, it could mean that South Africa’s lion population could be cut to only 400 recognized lions, despite the more than 8,000 currently thriving lions facing an uncertain future, probably euthanasia.
The fatal flaw here is that there will be no incentive for private enterprise to remain in lion conservation, and in combination with the push to end the captive lion industry in South Africa or face even stricter regulations with more implied costs and no income generating possibilities, the sustainability of the industry will collapse spelling the end of private lion conservation.
The words of Scottish poet Robert Burns feels disturbingly apt when applied to this scenario: “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” Despite the stated intentions of the Minister to seek a “win-win outcome” to end the captive lion industry, the inevitable cascading fall-out will cause untold damage to the wildlife economy, biodiversity, conservation, tourism, job losses and in the end, the lives of thousands of lions, pushing them to the brink of extinction.
PS. There is one additional absurd caveat to this story, what will happen to the lions currently being cared for at sanctuary centers after being rescued from desperate circumstances at zoos and circuses? Are they now also captive lions, and therefore doomed to the same fate as captive lions?
Author: Miquette Caalsen
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