South Africa Shocks Conservationists By Looking To Promote Trade In Lion Body Parts
I wonder if, in a hundred years or so, people will look back on these days with horror at the barbarity of the human race? By then we will likely have wiped out all of our magnificent elephants, rhinos, lions, tigers, wolves, and thousands and thousands of other species, including sharks and other fish like tuna, both already threatened.
What makes things much, much worse is we have the power to protect our animals. We could save our elephants, rhinos, wolves and big cats, but instead of making an effort to conserve these creatures some countries, like South Africa, are looking to hasten their extinction.
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South Africa wants to promote trade in the body parts of captive-bred lions, arguing that its big cat population has increased 30 percent over the past 30 years and is not endangered.
The country reports having 6,000 captive lions, bred solely for the purpose of generating money from hunting. Government officials say there are 2,300 wild lions in several national parks and 800 managed lions in smaller reserves, numbers that they say justify promoting a “sustainable legal trade” in lions.
South Africa’s Department of Environmental Affairs has also recommended that the International Union for Conservation of Nature downgrade the country’s lions from their current status as “vulnerable to extinction” and reclassify them as a species of “least concern.”
“It’s a deeply flawed and troubling approach, rather consistent with South Africa’s approach with a number of conservation issues,” said Will Travers, president of the Born Free Foundation, an international wildlife conservation charity. “It’s similar to where they’re going with rhinos at the moment.”
With tiger populations shrinking, there’s an increased demand for lion parts to be used in traditional Asian medicine. Buyers in China, Laos, and Vietnam are also replacing tiger bones with lion bones that are marinated in wine in the belief that the drink boosts sexual potency.
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Captive lion trophies fetch around $15,000 in the United States, while wild lion trophies sell for $50,000 to $70,000.
Travers worries about how South Africa’s plans will harm lions in other countries.
“They seem almost oblivious of the consequences of widespread legal trade,” he said. “They don’t think about how other nations will be stressed by lion body part trade.”
In 2009, four lion carcasses were exported from South Africa to Laos; by 2011, exports jumped to 496 carcasses, Travers said.
Read more at TakePart.com…..
I shared an emailed to Big Cat Rescue who are good at at sharing the word on these kinds of issues and of influencing “important people/groups in government” to spread concerns.
This is despicable! In terms of pet projects and peeves, you’ve found mine!
It’s hard for me to wrap my head around this Marsha. It’s so wrong on so many, many levels.
I just can’t even with these morans anymore. Let the animals who were here before us live in peace ffs.
I just couldn’t get my hear around this. Who would do that?
I am often reminded of some of the “B” movies that often show rich people kidnapping people to turn them loose on a private estate to be hunted by them and their friends calling them the “ultimate prey”. I wonder just how far are we from those scenarios from being true. Of course, these people never truly make this a sport, per se. I believe that for this to be a true sport there needs to be equality on both sides. Humans should not be allowed to use firearms. I remember in the old Tarzan movies he had only a knife. Well, the lions are a bit bigger so let’s give the lion hunters a knife and a spear and may the best animal win. That seems fair. The Maasi people have hunted lions for hundreds of years with just a spear so I think this would be a good test of the great white hunters.