04 Dec 2006 - A Review
A quick recap of the history of this legislation as a reminder of developments to date. The Minister of the Department of Environment Affairs and Tourism (DEAT) announced his intentions to deal with canned hunting in 2005 and appointed a Panel of Experts (POE) to advise him. The POE held public hearings in August 2005 with feedback late in 2005. Two draft Acts were prepared by DEAT for public comment. These were the Threatened and Protected Species Regulations and the National Norms and Standards for the Regulation of the Hunting Industry in South Africa. Comment was invited before 20 June 2006. Since then, DEAT have been actively meeting with various sectors including two separate meetings with the Wildlife Forum, a forum which DEAT, provincial government and the hunting industry meet to discuss issues. I have represented AGRED at each stage, participating fully in the meetings. In the last newsletter, I commented that “I remain optimistic about the revised regulations, but the proof of the pudding will be the actual published regulations.”
Since then, a meeting of the Wildlife Forum took place on 8 November to discuss the revised draft legislation. DEAT presented the revised draft legislation for comment. One dramatic change was that the two acts were merged into a single Act “Regulations for Threatened and Protected Species and Hunting Norms and Standards”.
In short, the revised draft Act now enjoys a very large measure of agreement between the central government, provincial government and the hunting industry. “Canned hunting” will go to the wall and rightly so, as it is damaging to the creation of a value-added ethical hunting industry in South Africa.
Specifically, the new legislation focuses on hunting of Threatened and Protected Species. With the removal of the mention of CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) from the revised draft, none of the regularly-hunted gamebirds in South Africa are now listed under this legislation. Previously, because of the inclusion of the CITES lists, species such as Egyptian Goose were included because they are listed in CITES Appendix 3. This appendix includes a plethora of species nominated by individual countries.
Although no regularly-hunted species are listed, the new draft legislation incorporates the definition of shotgun as permissible for wingshooting and the concept of use of dogs to point, flush and reprieve. Although not strictly necessary for the new legislation, it undoubtedly carries home the concept of wingshooting with more clarity.
Of interest is the removal of a major bone of contention - the listing of caracal and black-backed jackal as Protected Species. They have now been delisted. They had been classified as such because control actions aimed at these two species were perceived to be impacting other protected species. Thus the rationale behind the listing concept was that by listing these species as protected, the incidental kill of other species would not happen. This concept has now been abandoned, correctly in my view. The problem here is the practise and implementation of legislation and this is not corrected by regarding these two species as protected species. Their listing generated enormous antipathy amongst farmers and other landowners, as well as the hunting industry, and devalued the concept of Threatened and Protected Species.
Falconry is not mentioned in the legislation. This is not a cause for alarm amongst falconers, because the appropriate level of legislation is the provincial regulations, and falconry is expressly permitted by at this level. Once again, the issue is that falconers do not hunt Threatened and Protected Species (or only very rarely by accident).
The interactions with government on these issues has proved to be very constructive, and to have created a great deal of goodwill between the parties concerned. It has been a lesson in constructive engagement for the benefit of South Africa as a whole. There is room for real optimism in the development of the hunting industry in ongoing discussion in the Wildlife Forum.
And so I am now even more positive that the new legislation will not threaten gamebird shooting at all, and in fact, is the start of the process of developing a more sustainable and ethical industry all round.
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