On May 6, 1997, the well-known BBC documentary television program The Cook Report broadcast sensational images of a South African hunting expedition. The footage, which depicts a lioness being shot at close range against a fence by a German tourist while her three unweaned cubs watch, generated a huge public outcry.Footnote 1 Within days, some 55,000 signatures were gathered on petitions protesting what viewers saw as a brutal and inhumane killing. A decade and a half later, the celebrity American hunter Melissa Bachman posted a smiling image of herself on a social media outlet with a lion she shot on a private game ranch in South Africa. Bachman, too, was swiftly condemned for her actions, as over 300,000 signatures were gathered on social media petitions calling for her to be banned from ever reentering South Africa on another hunting expedition (Pak-Harvey Reference Pak-Harvey2013).
Although carried out under quite different circumstances, both of these excursions were framed in public discourse in South Africa as “canned hunts.” Hugely controversial, canned hunts take place within privately fenced hunting grounds. While these enclosures can be of various sizes and descriptions, the one constant is that animals hunted within them have little or no chance of escape.Footnote 2 The hunt is thus “canned” in the sense of being contained; it is also “canned” in the sense of being packaged for easy consumption. Typically, canned hunts in South Africa target animals bred or kept explicitly for that purpose on one of the country’s estimated ten thousand game ranches. They are part of a sprawling, vertically integrated captive-breeding/canned-hunting commodity chain, which caters to thousands of foreign hunting clients annually.
This article reviews and analyzes the long-running debate surrounding the hunting of nominally wild animal species under these rather extraordinary conditions. Specifically, it tracks attempts by South Africa’s Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism to regulate the canned-hunting industry and the response to these efforts launched by such groups as the South African Predators Association (SAPA), the Professional Hunters Association of South Africa (PHASA), the Campaign Against Canned Hunting (CACH), and, ultimately, the South African Supreme Court. What emerges is a story centered on a succession of attempts to make and remake nature—through the adoption of spatial requirements for hunting grounds, deliberate manipulation of species characteristics via breeding practices, and a gradual process of domesticating erstwhile wild animals.
I have followed the canned-hunting debate for over a decade, consulting a variety of sources to monitor and, where necessary, reconstruct its progress. These sources include: government documents, including court records, policy statements, legal guidelines, and regulations; newsletters and news releases generated by representatives of the hunting and wildlife breeding associations; campaign materials distributed by anti-canned-hunting activists; print and digital media reports published by the South African domestic and international press; documentary videos produced by investigative journalists; and relevant postings to social media outlets.
My analysis of the shifting, ethically charged political terrain surrounding canned hunting proceeds as follows. In the first section below, I provide a brief profile of the South African game ranching industry, using lions as a test case. Lions carry a disproportionate symbolic weight as the paradigmatic embodiment of “the wild” in Africa. They have accordingly been the focal point of debates surrounding captive-breeding/canned-hunting practices, especially following the widely reported death of a charismatic Zimbabwean lion known as “Cecil” at the hands of an American bowhunter in 2015 (Lindsey et al. Reference Lindsey, Balme, Funston, Henschel and Hunter2016). I describe below the emergence of an extensive lion-centered hunting commodity chain and track its rapid growth over three decades. In the second section, I explain how arguments centered on notions of animal welfare, “fair chase” hunting ethics, and conservation have shaped the debate surrounding canned hunting. In the third section, I describe and analyze the regulatory steps undertaken by state agencies in South Africa in response to the canned-hunting phenomenon. This is where some of the most spectacular attempts at manipulating constructions of nature emerge. A fourth section reviews the logic behind legal maneuvers leading up to a decisive 2010 South African Supreme Court ruling that effectively paved the way for canned hunting to continue in perpetuity. The fifth section analyzes unilateral reform efforts undertaken by breeders’ and hunters’ associations in the wake of the court’s decision to address lingering public-relations concerns. A final section documents steps taken by CACH to compensate for the lack of domestic legal and political support. The CACH strategy, which attacks the problem from the demand rather than supply side, has successfully tapped into widespread anti-trophy-hunting sentiment in the wake of Cecil’s killing in Zimbabwe to draw attention to the fate of the animals at the center of the controversy.
Canned-Hunting Commodity Chains
Canned hunts occupy a position near the tail end of a rather extensive, international commodity chain. There are an estimated ten thousand game ranches in South Africa of varying sizes, shapes, and descriptions. These privately held facilities encompass some 20.5 million hectares of land, or nearly 17 percent of the national territory. They also contain over 16 million large animals, far more than are found in South Africa’s national parks and protected areas (Bothma et al. Reference Bothma, Suich, Spenceley, Suich, Child and Spenceley2009; Cousins et al. Reference Cousins, Sadler and Evans2010).
Most of the land contained in the burgeoning wildlife estate was once used for stock rearing or other agricultural pursuits. The conversion of farm and range land to game ranching is partially explained by either declining agricultural subsidies and concomitant higher economic returns to game ranching (Carruthers Reference Carruthers2010; Goodrich Reference Goodrich2015) or regulatory changes, such as the passage of the Game Theft Act of 1991, which granted landholders private property rights to wildlife (Snijders Reference Snijders2012, as cited in Josefsson Reference Josefsson2014). The massive enclosure movement that unfolded over the last three decades is also directly related to post-apartheid political insecurity in the countryside. The displacement of long-term farm laborers and tenants, who were seen as a potential source of rival land claims; the deliberate destruction of farm infrastructure, which simultaneously rendered the lands less useful to potential agricultural users and bolstered the illusion of pristine wilderness; and the stocking of dangerous wild game within high fenced perimeters, which constrained the mobility of humans not otherwise related to the game ranch enterprise—all of these steps can be read as deliberate attempts by white property owners to safeguard tenure rights threatened by post-apartheid land reforms (Brandt & Spierenburg Reference Brandt and Spierenburg2014; Josefsson Reference Josefsson2014; Kamuti Reference Kamuti2014; Mkhize Reference Mkhize2014; Spierenburg & Brooks Reference Spierenburg and Brooks2014).
South Africa’s hunting ranches are relatively small by regional standards, averaging only between 8.2 and 49.2 km2, as compared to more expansive concessions elsewhere, which range from 843 to 6,000 km2 depending on the country (Lindsey et al. Reference Lindsey, Roulet and Romañach2007; Lindsey et al. Reference Lindsey, Alexander, Balme, Midlane and Craig2012).Footnote 3 Hunting blocs in other countries are also much less likely to be enclosed, whereas fencing requirements are strictly enforced in South Africa. South Africa’s private hunting grounds cater to over seven thousand foreign trophy hunters and some two hundred thousand local hunters annually. Members of the latter group typically hunt antelopes, wildebeest, and other species whose meat is suitable for processing into biltong, a type of cured venison that is a prominent national dish in South Africa.Footnote 4 Other game ranches concentrate on breeding animals to stock the hunting industry, meat production facilities, and live animal auctions.
In 2013, the Department of Environmental Affairs in South Africa reported that direct revenue from foreign tourist hunters totaled roughly USD93 million. Related expenditures, including travel, food, permits, taxidermy, shipping, and side trips, were estimated to contribute an additional USD40–45 million to the South African economy. Foreign hunters engaged in 7,638 hunts in South Africa in 2013, eventually taking home 44,028 trophies. Roughly two-thirds of the direct revenue from these hunters takes the form of “species fees,” which are paid to game farm owners who either raise game on their own property or acquire it elsewhere to stock ranches for hunting clients. These fees are prorated depending upon which animals are being hunted. The remaining direct revenues take the form of “daily rates,” which are paid to hunting operators who book hunting excursions and guide foreign clients through the hunting experience (PHASA 2014b).
Just over 11 percent of direct hunting revenues were earned through lion hunts nationwide in 2013. Deeply symbolic as the embodiment of wild Africa, lions constitute the focal point of the canned-hunting industry, especially as far as foreign hunters are concerned. Some 160 ranches are exclusively engaged in lion breeding in South Africa. These facilities reportedly hold between five thousand and six thousand lions, over double the number of wild-born lions currently roaming freely in the country’s state-run protected areas (Barkham Reference Barkham2013a).
Captive-bred lions move through a series of what Collard and Dempsey call “lively commodity” forms, each affording paying clients a different type of intimate contact with live animals (Collard Reference Collard2014; Collard & Dempsey Reference Collard and Dempsey2013).Footnote 5 The first stage in this process is the petting zoo. An estimated 180 safari park destinations in South Africa feature baby lions as prime petting zoo attractions (Williams Reference Williams2013). Tourists pay for the opportunity to have their pictures taken cuddling and bottle-feeding young cubs as though they were big kittens. A second type of intimate encounter marketed by lion-holding facilities is the “lion walk.” Here tourists enjoy the thrill of interacting with nearly full-size adolescent lions, which accompany the visitors on guided walks through fenced facilities. The frisson of increased danger adds to the titillation of the experience.Footnote 6 A third form of “nonconsumptive” encounter is the conventional photographic safari conducted on a game ranch, where carefully assembled menageries offer tourist clients the opportunity to see all the major charismatic megafauna commonly associated with Africa in one place.Footnote 7
Critics allege that when lions outgrow petting zoos and “lion walk” facilities they are sold off to intermediaries, who resell them to hunting grounds. Indeed, there is a great deal of speculation on this point—clearly the thousands of lions bred in captivity must go somewhere as new stock is bred to replace them. Investigative film journalists have gathered evidence of petting-zoo proprietors admitting to having sold animal stock to canned-hunting operations in the past (Barkham Reference Barkham2013b; Williams Reference Williams2013; see also Young & Chevallier Reference Young and Chevallier2015). A comprehensive account detailing the fate of petting-zoo animals nationwide is nonetheless lacking.
A final, surprisingly lucrative, source of revenue generated by lion-breeding facilities comes from hosting thousands of international “volunteers” who are willing to pay for the opportunity to have intimate, hands-on contact with the animals while simultaneously providing free labor. Young and Chevallier (Reference Young and Chevallier2015) document two rather astounding cases in point: on just one farm, some thirty-five international volunteers were paying USD2,800 each—a total of USD98,000—per month to help tend to the captive animal population; on another, twenty-five volunteers had paid USD2,400 each—a total of USD60,000—for just two weeks’ worth of this singular experience.Footnote 8
As far as marketing the hunt itself is concerned, the opportunity to acquire trophies on game ranches appeals to clients on several grounds, as a comprehensive industry profile compiled by Lindsey et al. (Reference Lindsey, Alexander, Balme, Midlane and Craig2012) attests. First and most obvious is the virtual guarantee of success. Lindsey and colleagues estimate that 99 percent of hunters engaged in canned hunts in South Africa successfully bag a lion, whereas the prospect of a successful hunt dips as low as 52 percent in other free-range lion-hunting destinations. Second, lion hunters in South Africa are attracted by the efficiency of the hunt. Elsewhere, lion hunts are bundled into mandatory (and more costly) fourteen- or twenty-one-day hunting packages, whereas in South Africa hunts average just three days in length. Operators accordingly cater to clients on business trips who might not otherwise be able to afford the time to engage in a full hunt (Goodrich Reference Goodrich2015). Third, canned hunts are typically cheaper than open-area hunts. In South Africa, lion hunts on game ranches range in cost from USD20,000 to USD40,000, with a median of USD30,000; outside the country they run from a low of USD37,000 in Cameroon to USD76,000 in Tanzania. Fourth, canned hunts can lead to better-quality trophy options. Indeed, captive-bred lions are sometimes preferred by hunters because their manes are typically in better condition and they lack the scars often found on wild lions. Moreover, animals reserved for high-paying foreign hunters have been fed a premium diet. They are larger on average than animals subsisting off wild prey and thus more attractive to trophy hunters.Footnote 9
Selective breeding for distinctive coloration and other unusual trophy characteristics is widespread (Crowley Reference Crowley2015; Tsui Reference Tsui2006). Thus, for example, rare white lions fetched an average of USD18,691 at auction in Limpopo Province in 2009, nearly five times the average price of USD4,021 for standard trophy lions in the same year.Footnote 10 This demand for what might be called “trophy trophies” has given rise to ancillary markets for replacement breeding stock (e.g., animals sourced from state-run game reserves or other countries; Hargreaves Reference Hargreaves2010): veterinary contractors who specialize in immobilizing and relocating large animals on behalf of the industry; and taxidermists, who routinely enhance trophies with hair extensions and other cosmetic improvements (Business Day 2003).
Finally, a market has opened up for “auxiliary” lion parts, especially bones, which are increasingly used as an ingredient in certain traditional Chinese medicines.Footnote 11 From 2000 to 2008, an average of just ten lion skeletons were exported from South Africa; by contrast, 386 skeletons were exported in 2009 and 645 in 2010 (Lindsey et al. Reference Lindsey, Alexander, Balme, Midlane and Craig2012). Barkham (Reference Barkham2013a) reports that Laos has emerged as a key destination for lion bone commodities: whereas only five lion skeletons were exported to that country in 2009, buyers purchased 496 lion skeletons there in 2011. This growing demand from Asian buyers, he notes, has pushed the value of a complete lion skeleton up to USD10,000. Lion meat has also been featured in niche market restaurants specializing in exotic game. A Florida restaurant, for example, generated an international outcry when it recently offered lion meat tacos to its patrons (Bryce Reference Bryce2013).
In sum, the commodity chain forming around canned lion hunts has created unprecedented opportunities to profit from captive breeding and canned hunting, chiefly by providing novel forms of animal commodities to new classes of consumers. With the scope and economic stakes of the captive-breeding/canned-hunting industry increasing so rapidly, scrutiny of industry practices has intensified, and the pressure to morally justify them has ratcheted up accordingly.
Competing Ethical Rubrics
Three ethical frameworks have been mobilized in the debate surrounding canned hunts. These center on concerns for animal welfare, hunting norms pertaining to the notion of fair chase, and the goal of conserving rare species and habitats. All three frameworks problematize the concept of wildness as it applies to lions and invoke humans’ affective ties to lions in different ways.
Animal Welfare
CACH coordinates the efforts of a loose coalition of animal welfare and animal rights groups operating at different political scales. These include organizations such as SanWild Wildlife Sanctuary and Encosini Trust, which operate exclusively in South Africa; predominantly regional networks such as Born Free; and entities with a broader international reach, such as the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW). The CACH network also includes groups that focus on the welfare of particular species, such as Panthera, which promotes the preservation and welfare of predator cats.
From the standpoint of activists involved in CACH, the canned-hunt commodity chain represents “a whole cycle of cruelty” (Mercer Reference Mercer2014). The most basic objection raised by CACH affiliates centers on the killing of semi-tame and defenseless animals “for sport.” Animal welfarists object to both the “put and take” nature of canned hunts—the practice of placing an animal into an enclosure and more or less immediately killing it—and the fact that such hunts afford the targeted animals little or no opportunity to flee the hunters stalking them. The relative ease of capturing animals under these conditions means that hunts can be marketed to clients who lack the requisite skill and experience to kill animals without undue pain and suffering under more challenging hunting conditions. An exposé published in The Guardian of London, for example, noted: “Some supposed hunters are so inexpert with guns that they take a dozen shots to kill a lion,” which typically means a slow and painful death (McGreal Reference McGreal2001). This argument applies to bow hunting as well, which may require several arrow strikes (or eventually a bullet) to bring down a large animal (Mercer Reference Mercer2014).
At a more basic philosophical level, animal-welfare proponents and conservationists alike have argued that the gradual domestication of noble wild species through captive-breeding efforts is inherently unnatural. To support their position, CACH activists note that many lions produced by the captive-breeding industry experience “captivity depression,” which refers to animals that grow listless, inactive, and neurotic or otherwise fail to thrive. They also note a higher incidence of genetically derived disease among captive-bred animals (Trendler n.d.).
Animal welfarists also object to the “factory farming” nature of the captive-breeding industry (Mercer Reference Mercer2014). Breeders typically remove young cubs from their mothers before they are weaned, sometimes as young as just three or four days old.Footnote 12 This practice, which has been dubbed “speed breeding” by critics, quickly forces the lioness back into estrus so that she is almost perpetually in heat. According to Barkham (Reference Barkham2013a), this can mean as many as five litters every two years rather than the norm of just one, a rate that puts a great deal of physical stress on the lioness.Footnote 13
Inbreeding is a particularly significant problem. Karen Trendler, an animal-welfare activist who works with Wildcare Africa Trust/IFAW, argues that, unlike well-run zoos and “reputable” breeding centers, the captive-breeding industry’s focus on supplying the hunting grounds means that it is generally less concerned with the genetic diversity of metapopulations (Trendler n.d.). The weakening of the genetic pool can have serious consequences for the general vitality of the captive-bred population. A study of 120 lions whose bloodlines are traced to just three animals introduced to Hluhluwe-Umfolozi Park in KwaZulu-Natal in 2002 illustrates the point. Testing of this group showed that many of the second- and third-generation offspring exhibited sperm abnormalities and increased disease susceptibility. They were also as much as 20 percent smaller than prides in other parks with a more diverse genetic base (Trivedi 2002).
Finally, the growing trade in lion bones has raised a new set of ethical concerns. When lions are bred for the hunting market, at least some minimal welfare standards must be maintained if the game farms are to produce trophies of sufficient size and aesthetic quality to appeal to trophy hunters. By contrast, when production is geared toward the bone market, welfare standards need not be met at all. In effect, the bone market’s function is to absorb surplus animals that are often in ill health or otherwise suffering the effects of poor treatment (Karen Trendler, as quoted in Young & Chevallier, Reference Young and Chevallier2015).
Hunting Norms and the Fair Chase Ethic
On principle, many, if not most, hunting outfitters operating in the South African market would locate themselves on the opposite end of the political spectrum from animal welfarists. Special scorn is reserved for those whose approach to hunting is driven by “emotion” rather than rationality (Arenstein Reference Arenstein2002; PHASA 2013b). Following historical precedent, hunters see no contradiction whatsoever between the sustainable harvesting of trophy animals and sound environmental management. To the contrary, they assert that hunting revenues are critical to the success of conservation ventures. Mutual animosity between professional hunters and animal welfarists notwithstanding, their interests have occasionally aligned to the extent that both groups condemn the worst excesses of the canned-hunting industry, even if for different reasons (PHASA 2012; Tsui Reference Tsui2006).
Historically, hunters have grappled with the question of whether practices such as baiting, spotlighting prey during night hunts, tracking or driving prey with dogs, and using certain high-powered weapons should be considered legitimate hunting techniques. At issue is whether these practices confer an unfair advantage upon hunters or, alternatively, cause prey unnecessary pain and suffering. The placement of target animals within fenced enclosures from which escape is impossible—the primary means for ensuring the success of a canned hunt—obviously flies directly in the face of this fair chase ethic. As noted above, in addition to the efficiency of the hunt, many foreign clients resort to canned hunts because they are physically incapable of participating in a full-fledged hunt involving fair chase on foot. Lindsey and colleagues gathered data on the relative “mobility” of hunters who engaged in canned hunts as compared with those who participate in free-range hunts and found significant differences in the fitness of the two groups. Assessing levels of mobility based on age, weight, and “apparent physical fitness,” they determined that only 32 percent of hunters on South Africa’s game ranches exhibited “high mobility,” whereas 46 percent of clients hunting in free-range countries displayed those characteristics—a difference in levels of obesity and general fitness of nearly 50 percent (Lindsey et al. Reference Lindsey, Alexander, Balme, Midlane and Craig2012:13).
Hunters who are less mobile or otherwise lack skill and experience are also much more likely to have their hunts “staged” for them (Goodrich Reference Goodrich2015:100–107, 176). As Goodrich explains, in order for a hunt to be successful, the hunter must effectively negate the prey animal’s (indeed, the entire herd’s) ability to sense his or her presence by “subvert[ing] the sensory array that is [the animal’s] defense” (Goodrich Reference Goodrich2015:96). Thus, the use of natural landscape features to obscure movement helps the hunter avoid being seen; stalking from downwind prevents the target animal from detecting the hunter’s scent; and the careful placement of foot treads helps ensure that the animal will not hear the hunter coming. When a hunter lacks the requisite skill or local knowledge to avoid detection, however, and cannot acquire such knowledge due to the time pressure of a two- or three-day safari, hunting operators often intervene to tilt the playing field in their clients’ favor. They typically assist their clients by constructing hunting blinds and using cover scents around water holes; putting out salt, chemical licks, and other forms of bait to “render[] the animal’s movements predictable” (Goodrich Reference Goodrich2015:105); or driving clients to, from, and around hunting grounds to help them outmaneuver prey.Footnote 14 For the hunting purist, any of these tactics might be construed as conferring an unfair advantage on the hunter, so much so that the nature of the encounter might best be described as “shooting” rather than hunting (Goodrich Reference Goodrich2015:62, 67–69).
Even more important in terms of fair chase ethics is the fact that captive-bred lions are fed, watered, and otherwise tended by humans during captivity.Footnote 15 The inadvertent habituation of animals to human presence is a particular source of concern in cases where target animals have previously spent time in petting zoos, for example. Thus, while lions targeted in “put and take” operations may be too wild to handle without taking adequate safety precautions (e.g., tranquilization), they still strongly associate humans with food, and may lack a normal flight response. Critics argue that the psychological dependence on humans fostered through habituation constitutes a barrier to escape that is as formidable in its own right as a fence or other physical structure (Chris Mercer, as quoted in Young & Chevallier Reference Young and Chevallier2015).
Regular hunting organizations, including the influential Safari Club International and PHASA, have accordingly opposed canned hunts on the grounds that they constitute “unsporting slaughter” (PHASA 2013a; Tsui Reference Tsui2006). Indeed, in the early years when the industry was first getting established, self-described legitimate hunting groups pressured the South African government to regulate and thereby ban canned hunts for fear that they would harm the international reputation of South Africa’s hunting industry. As I demonstrate below, the question of how hunting conditions might be adjusted to restore fair chase conditions—for example, by expanding the size of the hunting enclosure or allowing prey more time to acclimate themselves to their surroundings before being shot—became a central issue in provincial and national attempts to regulate the industry.
Conservation
Finally, there is considerable debate over the seemingly paradoxical claim that canned hunting benefits conservation. The embrace between hunters and conservationists has historically been an awkward one.Footnote 16 There is no denying that hunters have actively supported habitat protection efforts worldwide, and they are among the staunchest backers of aggressive anti-poaching measures throughout the African region. It is, however, difficult for preservationists to reconcile hunters’ emphasis on sustainable use with either the perceived bloodlust that they imagine lies at the heart of hunting culture, or the expanded commodification of wildlife new hunting enterprises foster.
Cousins et al. (Reference Cousins, Sadler and Evans2010) note that privately held “wildlife utilization enterprises” of all sorts now cover a substantially greater area than officially designated protected areas in South Africa—16.8 percent of national territory as compared to just 6.1 percent contained in national parks. They have also documented cases where former agricultural lands have been spontaneously colonized by a diverse range of species after being converted to hunting grounds (Cousins et al. Reference Cousins, Sadler and Evans2008). Following Carruthers (Reference Carruthers2010), they argue accordingly that private actors play a disproportionately larger role in meeting the country’s conservation objectives than the state itself does. Capitalizing on the point, PHASA pointedly noted in a March 2014 press release that the game population in South Africa had increased from five hundred thousand head nationwide fifty years ago to over sixteen million large animals in the new millennium, adding that: “this development, unmatched anywhere in the world, is almost exclusively due to the [economic] impact of trophy hunting” (PHASA 2014a; see also Bothma et al. Reference Bothma, Suich, Spenceley, Suich, Child and Spenceley2009).
At the most basic level, the roughly USD140 million in direct and indirect revenue generated by the hunting industry each year provides a substantial incentive to sustain the nominally protected status of the spaces enclosed in the game ranch network. Certain fees paid by hunting clients are also explicitly earmarked for conservation purposes. The generation of these revenue streams is seen as being especially significant in the historical-geographical context of post-apartheid South Africa, where long-deferred social and political priorities have taken precedence over conservation goals in recent years (Cousins et al. Reference Cousins, Sadler and Evans2010).Footnote 17 The unspoken assumption that game ranches unambiguously fulfill functions that are analogous to those attributed to conventional protected areas has been challenged, however.
In practice, there is little chance that captive-bred lions could ever be used to directly supplement wild populations through reintroduction to the wild, despite occasional speculation along these lines. Wildlife behavior studies show that lions are acutely territorial and would likely kill or force out lone, unfamiliar lions introduced into their midst. Indeed, in a 2010 court case (discussed at greater length below), expert testimony suggested that, from an animal-welfare perspective, it would actually be more humane if lions used in “put and take” hunts were hunted or harvested quickly, within days of being relocated, rather than being subjected to the additional anxiety and stress they would likely experience if introduced to spaces shared by other lions over longer periods (Supreme Court of Appeal of South Africa 2010; see also Hunter Reference Hunter2015).
As the canned-hunting industry surged forward in the 1990s, there was a great deal of speculation as to whether the hunting of captive-bred lions would take pressure off wild stocks. This became something of an article of faith among hunters. Lindsey and colleagues (2012) show that 30 percent of South African hunting operators firmly believe that canned hunts contribute to the survival of wild stocks (see also PHASA 2013a). Hargreaves (Reference Hargreaves2010) provides a detailed picture of trends in the export of lion trophies from South Africa and other regional hunting destinations from 1999 to 2008. At the beginning of this period, South Africa exported just 171 lion trophies annually, 27 of which (16 percent) were captive-bred. By contrast, in 2008, 944 lion trophies were exported from the country, 707 of which (65 percent) were captive-bred. Lindsey and colleagues (2012) suggest that the percentage of captive-bred lions among all trophy exports has since risen to 99 percent. Hargreaves’ (2010) data also show that the average number of wild lion trophies exported between 1999 and 2008 was roughly 160. With that number being effectively reduced to zero, and hunters being increasingly steered toward taking captive-bred rather than wild trophies, there would seem to be a fairly clear replacement effect in play.
This beneficial effect is potentially undercut by a number of other concerns, however. First, the gradual enclosure and conversion of rural farmland into fenced hunting grounds has “led to fragmented landscapes, causing genetic isolation of species and the disruption of migratory routes.” Second, the deliberate cross-breeding or hybridization of species to select for recessive color variations, and the inbreeding of captive populations more generally, both run the risk of causing the “genetic pollution of wild populations, extinction of subspecies, and the spread of disease and parasites.” Third, the introduction of extralimital species (animals that have been relocated to areas beyond their historic range) “can lead to hybridization, degradation of habitat, low survival rates of some introduced species, and displacement of indigenous species” (Cousins et al. Reference Cousins, Sadler and Evans2010:2–3).Footnote 18 More generally, as a recent, well-publicized government report claims, hunting does not always generate the expected economic returns to conservation agencies, especially in cases where access to hunting blocs is obtained by illegal means (House Committee on Natural Resources 2016). Under such circumstances, hunters may instead harvest trophy animals at unsustainable rates, directly undermining the conservation cause in the process.
Finally, the rapid expansion of the lion bone (and to a lesser extent, meat) trade poses important new concerns for conservationists (Parker Reference Parker2012). The sheer size of the South African lion-hunting market means that it can effectively shape global demand for lion commodities. As CACH representative Chris Mercer puts it, if the South African canned-hunting industry continues to supply the Asian trade in lion bone, “more and more factories become invested in the product, [and] more and more product is required” (Mercer Reference Mercer2014). The willingness of South African lion breeders to supply lion body parts could thus have the effect of increasing pressure on wild stocks elsewhere in the region, which may not yet have been drawn into this emerging market.
In sum, the arguments regarding the costs and benefits of the captive-breeding/canned-hunting industry appear to cut both ways when conservation objectives are considered. An unintended consequence of industry representatives laying claim to the conservation mantle, however, is that this has opened up canned hunts to the regulatory oversight of government agencies charged with protecting biodiversity in South Africa.
State Regulation
With canned hunting stirring up controversy repeatedly over the past two decades, it was perhaps only a matter of time before the South African government would invoke its regulatory authority over the industry. As Hall (Reference Hall2010) carefully documents, the period between 2000 and 2009 saw several key policies developed at first provincial and then national levels. These gradually tightened the constraints on canned hunting, and by extension, the captive-breeding industry that supplies it.
The Nature Conservation Authority in Limpopo Province, for example, was among the first to propose a set of draft provincial regulations for canned hunting in 2002. According to these guidelines, provincial authorities suggested that the ethical problems associated with canned lion hunts could be alleviated by requiring that hunting grounds be at least one thousand hectares in size (10 km2 or roughly four square miles), and by ensuring that trophy lions be given at least twenty-one days in a designated enclosure before being hunted (Arenstein Reference Arenstein2002). The suggestion that lions could acquire something like “local knowledge” of unfamiliar terrain in just three weeks, and thus have at least some chance of survival in a contest with a hunter in a fair chase, was tremendously alarming to the animal-welfare community. The seeming audacity of this claim notwithstanding, the greater threat, arguably, rested in the way this early proposal and others like it shaped the contours of the debate surrounding hunting practices in the country. By focusing attention on technical questions such as the size of the hunting enclosure and the length of the release period an animal should be allowed before being killed, the basic facts of “put and take” hunting were somewhat obscured.
In 2004, the South African parliament passed the national Biodiversity Act (Republic of South Africa 2004). This key piece of legislation provided the framework for the conservation of biological diversity and sustainable use of resources at the national scale. Specifically, it created a mandate for the listing of Threatened or Protected Species (TOPS) and placed restrictions on possessing, killing, gathering, breeding, selling, or translocating such species, as live animals or animal parts, without a permit (Cousins et al. Reference Cousins, Sadler and Evans2010; Hall, Reference Hall2010). Its practical effect, as Hall (Reference Hall2010) notes, was to supersede provincial authority and grant the Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism at the time, Martinus van Shalkwyk, the power to regulate hunting nationally.
Van Shalkwyk made it his personal mission to put an end to what he called the “despicable practice” of canned hunting (Hall Reference Hall2010:2). In January 2005, he published the “Draft National Norms and Standards for the Sustainable Use of Large Predators in South Africa” (hereafter: “Draft Norms and Standards”), which called for the banning of canned lion hunting outright (Republic of South Africa 2005a). This document defined canned hunting as “any form of hunting where: a large predator is tranquilised, artificially lured by sound, scent, visual stimuli, feeding, bait, other animals of its own species, or another species” or where “captive large predators are hunted” (Republic of South Africa 2005a:6). Hunting wild lions with the use of dogs or at night, and shooting of animals either from a vehicle or within two hundred meters of a vehicle were also outlawed, except in the case of disabled hunters.
The “Draft Norms and Standards” contained a major concession to the captive-breeding/canned-hunting industry, however. While its provisions outlawed the hunting of captive and “human-imprinted” predators outright, they included a notable exception for “wild” and “managed wild” animals. “Wild” predators are defined as those animals that live in their natural habitat (within their historical range), are free ranging, and feed on wild prey with no supplements provided by humans. “Managed wild” predators, by contrast, are free ranging, but may have their diet supplemented by humans. Critically, the “Draft Norms and Standards” recognized that captive-bred predators could be “acceptably re-established” and reclassified as “managed wild” within just six months of being introduced to an area, provided the area contained sufficient habitat “to accommodate a viable group” and enough prey to sustain the reintroduced animals “through natural hunting.” Strikingly, the authority to determine whether a given animal had, indeed, been “rehabilitated” to a suitably “wild” status was allocated to designated provincial officials under the proposed standards (Republic of South Africa 2005a:6).
In 2005, with the mandated review period regarding the proposed regulations still in force, Minister van Shalkwyk commissioned a panel of hunting experts to comment formally on the proposal. The panel’s report (Republic of South Africa 2005b) introduced a further distinction between “extensive” and “intensive” wildlife production systems. Extensive systems, which were defined as being centered on a “largely self sustaining indigenous wildlife population on natural habitats with minimum human intervention,” corresponded to the conditions used by “wild” predators as stipulated in the “Draft Norms and Standards”; intensive systems, which were defined as containing animals that are “reliant on human intervention,” were the equivalent of the enclaves used by “managed wild” and “captive” populations, as identified in the “Draft Norms and Standards” (Republic of South Africa 2005b:i). Significantly, “intensive” systems were explicitly equated with “agricultural production,” and the panel concluded that their impact on conservation was either negligible or negative in light of the risk of introducing inbred or hybridized animals into the wild, as noted above (Republic of South Africa 2005b:ii). The panel’s report recommended a ban on hunting in intensive systems altogether and suggested that “put and take” systems be regulated under the Meat Safety Act and other guidelines pertaining to domesticated livestock. It supported the transfer of animals from intensive to extensive facilities, however, and acknowledged the potential for eventual rehabilitation of captive-bred animals under carefully controlled conditions (see further discussion in Hall Reference Hall2010).
Several versions of the “Draft Norms and Standards” were circulated over the following year, and in 2007 the basic provisions contained in the 2004 draft, including the listing of lions as a TOPS species, were passed as formal regulations. One significant shift in the final version of the regulations was to extend the time limit from six to twenty-four months before a captive-bred predator could be hunted. Thus, while the formal regulations adopted at the end of the lengthy national review stopped short of banning the hunting of captive-bred specimens altogether, the effect of requiring two years of rehabilitation was to signal a death knell for the canned-hunting industry.
Legal Challenges
These developments spurred industry proponents to form the South African Predators Association (SAPA), which has since advocated aggressively for their collective interests. The newly formed organization promptly took the government to court, claiming that the listing of lions under TOPS regulations and the twenty-four-month “self-sustaining” clause were both based on “irrational” grounds (Free State Province, South Africa, 2009; see discussion in Hall Reference Hall2010). Their 2007 suit was initially adjudicated in the Bloemfontein High Court in 2009, and then again upon appeal by the South African Supreme Court of Appeal in 2010. In the original suit, SAPA representatives made two important claims: first, they argued that it was irrational to expect that lions reared in captivity would be able to fend for themselves for up to two years without human assistance, and that it was therefore unfair to require the industry to comply with that standard. Moreover, they maintained that “there was no rational basis for requiring a lion to be self-sustaining for a specific period of time if the intention is to hunt the lion anyway” (Hall Reference Hall2010:6). Neither of these arguments was accepted by the judge in the case, however, who concluded instead that both the general public and the professional hunting industry were strongly opposed to canned hunting, and that such sentiments provided the rational basis for upholding the twenty-four-month quarantine period.
SAPA immediately appealed to the country’s highest court, which overturned the lower court ruling in dramatic fashion. While the high court hinted at a number of procedural missteps, which might have been used as grounds for overturning the earlier verdict, the judges based their ruling on two more substantive arguments. First, the court referenced a section of the 2005 report prepared by the government-commissioned panel of hunting experts, which maintained that game ranching should be seen as a form of agriculture. As such, the court reasoned, the breeding of lions in captivity bore no connection to the legislative mandate of the Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism under the 2004 Biodiversity Protection Act. It concluded accordingly that van Schalwyk had overstepped the bounds of his jurisdiction in attempting to regulate game ranching in the name of conservation.
The second and perhaps more damning conclusion was that there was indeed no rational basis for the argument that a captive-bred lion could be “rehabilitated” within a twenty-four-month period when released into an extensive holding facility. Taking up this line of argument, the court argued forcefully that: “It is by no means clear . . . how either ethical hunting (whatever its limits may be) and fair chase fit into a legislative structure which is designed to promote and conserve biodiversity in the wild”; and, moreover, that “the line drawn by the Minister at twenty four months appears to be an arbitrary attempt to cut the Gordian knot which linked the two irreconcilable protagonists, without a justifiable basis in fact or expert opinion for choosing that cut off point. It was both misguided . . . and irrational” (Supreme Court of Appeal of South Africa, 2010:16–17). With that, the Supreme Court vacated the lower court’s ruling and effectively granted captive breeders and canned-hunt operators the right to carry on with their controversial business practices in perpetuity.
Industry Reforms
This sweeping decision had immediate and extensive fallout. First, provincial authorities weighed in to reinstate earlier provisions governing the hunting of captive-bred lions. Free State Province, for example, reverted to guidelines stipulating that the minimum size of hunting grounds should be set at one thousand hectares, that a maximum of ten lions should be released at any one time, and that a period of thirty days should be allowed from the time of release to the time of the hunt.Footnote 19 Second, SAPA petitioned the Director of the Department of Environmental Affairs to recognize the distinction between captive-bred and wild, free-ranging lions. SAPA agreed that wild lions should be listed as threatened species under the TOPS regulations, but argued that captive-bred animals should be exempt from the regulations given that they “have nothing to do with the survival of lions in the wild. They were not and are not responsible for the decline of the free roaming lion populations and they cannot contribute to the survival of the lion as a species in the wild” (Potgeiter Reference Potgeiter2013).
Seizing the opening provided by the regulatory vacuum, SAPA also sought to inoculate itself against rising negative public opinion by developing self-regulating standards for the hunting of what it now euphemistically began calling “ranch lions” (SAPA 2013). According to SAPA’s new guidelines, the minimum size of breeding pens is now set at 40 m2 per animal and the maximum number of animals is set at ten per unit. The minimum size of hunting grounds is one thousand hectares, and the release window is set at a minimum of seven days, so that the lion has “the opportunity to familiarize itself with its environment to the extent that he can fend for itself [sic].” Hunts are to be conducted on a “walk-and-stalk” basis. The enclosure’s habitat should be undisturbed and diverse, with adequate prey species, and the hunting area should be a least a kilometer from any breeding camps or holding facilities. No breeding animals are to be sourced from wild populations, and none should be hand-reared (raised at petting zoos). There is to be no catalog marketing, online or in print, and no personification (such as naming) of the lions. Clients are to be informed when targeted animals are ranch lions. Finally, the sale of “derivative” lion products—meat and bones—is to be allowed, provided the hunt itself is legitimate and not a “staged hunt” intended solely as a means to harvest such products for the secondary market (SAPA 2013:10–12).
With the new SAPA guidelines in hand, the Professional Hunters Association of South Africa (PHASA) weighed in with its own regulations (PHASA 2013a). Reluctant to abandon the fair chase principle, PHASA’s statement begins by drawing a new distinction between canned hunting and captive-bred hunting, noting that the former practice, which it defines as hunting “in an enclosure small enough to prohibit [an animal] from evading the hunter, or when the animal is hunted while tranquilised,” remains illegal, whereas the latter is to be allowed under PHASA’s guidelines, once the targeted animal has undergone a suitable period of release and rehabilitation. After arguing that the hunting of captive-bred lions is sustainable and represents no threat to biodiversity, the PHASA statement opines that “it cannot at this time be excluded that captive-bred lions may in the future play a role in lion conservation elsewhere.” Seeking to occupy the moral high ground, it goes on to stress that the hunting of captive-bred prey “MUST result in direct funding for conservation and research programmes in respect of wild lions”; and that it “MUST contribute to social upliftment projects, especially in our poorer rural communities” (PHASA 2013a:2–4; emphasis in original).
Political Maneuvers by the Campaign Against Canned Hunting
Faced with the setback of the 2010 Supreme Court decision, opponents of canned hunting were also forced to reconsider their tactics. Rather than continue to challenge the well-heeled and legally protected breeding/hunting alliance domestically, activists working on CACH have effectively jumped scales (Smith Reference Smith1992), turning their attention to the international market in search of pressure points that might reduce the demand for the goods and services generated by the canned-hunting industry.
According to Chris Mercer, 55 percent of all international clients engaged in canned lion hunts in South Africa come from the United States, with an additional 40 percent being drawn from Europe (Mercer Reference Mercer2014). The first part of CACH’s new policy was accordingly to convince the US Fish and Wildlife Service to declare African lions an endangered species and simultaneously garner enough support in Europe for an EU-wide ban on the importation of lion trophies. A “Global March for Lions” was subsequently organized on March 15, 2014, to call attention to the canned-hunt industry in over sixty cities and two dozen countries (Tully Reference Tully2014). Similar demonstrations have been held each year since then with an eye toward pressuring foreign governments to ban trophy imports.
A second CACH strategy involved efforts to shut down the lucrative auxiliary market niches that have formed around the canned-hunt trade, including petting zoos, paid “voluntourism” stints, and the trade in lion bones and body parts. Activists have successfully enlisted the help of investigative journalists to make their case. Documentary videos produced in the US, UK, and Australia, for example, have uncovered evidence linking petting zoos to wildlife auctions and canned-hunting operations. Volunteers are also shown regretfully recounting how they were “duped” into thinking they were contributing to the “rehabilitation” of captive animals, when their efforts may have only served to further habituate the animals to human presence so they could never effectively be returned to the wild. CACH activists have also fed information to print journalists and online portals such as Avaaz.com to help draw attention to the lion bone trade (Parker Reference Parker2012; Solon Reference Solon2013).
Initially at least, these gambits seemed destined to fall short of their goals. In November 2014, for example, the US Fish and Wildlife Service declared that the lion did not qualify for listing as an endangered species, but should be listed as “threatened” instead, which meant that hunters would still be allowed to bring trophies into the country provided they obtained proper permits (Kauffman Reference Kauffman2014). Results from the EU were similar. While the EU parliament did ban lion trophies imported from West Africa, where lion numbers have dipped precipitously to just a few hundred animals, the right to import trophies obtained elsewhere in the region was upheld (Levy-Abegnoli Reference Levy-Abegnoli2015). Australia provided the one notable bright spot when it acted in March 2015 to ban lion imports altogether. The announcement of its new policy, which was made during a Global March for Lions demonstration, explicitly implicated South Africa’s canned-hunting industry in the decision (Milman Reference Milman2015). France subsequently followed suit.
An even more dramatic outcome came from a wholly unexpected direction. While not explicitly targeted as a pressure point in the CACH outreach effort, several airlines have recently announced that they will no longer accept lion trophies as cargo in flights to and from South Africa (Bloch Reference Bloch2015; Crown Reference Crown2015; News24 2015; Ruddin Reference Ruddin2015). The hunting world was particularly shocked when South African Airways, the continent’s largest air carrier, became the first airline to publicly embrace this new policy. When Emirates Airline imposed its own embargo, British Airways/Iberia Airways (IAG Cargo), Qatar, Brussels, Qantas, Etihad, Singapore, and Lufthansa airlines quickly announced similar policies. Initially refusing to join the effort, Delta Airlines (which operates one of the only direct flights between South Africa and the US) was eventually forced to join the embargo following the sensational coverage of Cecil’s death in Zimbabwe in 2015, and American, United, and Air Canada quickly publicized their own bans on the shipping of such cargo (UPS remains an outlier; see Larimer Reference Larimer2015). Meanwhile, legislators in the state of New Jersey recently passed legislation that would ban trophies of either endangered or threatened species from being transported to the US via Port Authority airports in the greater New York area (Gajanan Reference Gajanan2015).
Faced with a growing public-relations debacle, PHASA and its international allies in the hunting community have launched a furious lobbying effort and legal challenges seeking to quell the moral backlash against trophy hunting (PHASA 2015a, 2015b; Hunting Report 2016). Relenting to this pressure, South African Airways resumed its shipments of trophy cargo, but other airlines, sensitive to shifting public opinion, have maintained their embargoes.
Conclusion
We’re at a tipping point: we had better decide what we want to do. Up until a few years ago, we referred to lions as lions. This country, this industry, has ensured now that we have to differentiate. We have to talk about wild lions. Five, six, seven years ago, all lions were wild. What kind of legacy is that?
—Ian Michler, as quoted in Young and Chevallier, Reference Young and Chevallier2015.
The controversy surrounding captive breeding and canned hunting of lions represents something of a moving target as far as the political protagonists engaged in related policy debates are concerned. In political-economic terms, the development of a complex, USD140-million-a-year commodity chain underpins industry actors’ aggressive defense of their prerogatives under South African law. The rapid enclosure of twenty million hectares of land for the purpose of establishing breeding and hunting facilities on game farms has had a similarly profound impact by inserting a new and increasingly dominant set of priorities into contests over rural land use. Numerous conflicts have played out against this backdrop, pitting hunters against antihunting activists; conservationists supporting sustained-use models against strict preservationists; and those who profit from petting zoos and lion bone sales against those who condemn the marketing of such commodities from an animal welfare or conservation perspective. The attendant controversy has also occasionally produced strange political bedfellows, as was the case when PHASA effectively sided with animal welfarists in condemning the most egregious practices undertaken by canned-hunting operators.
For professional hunters, the controversy surrounding canned hunting can be read as the latest episode in a lengthy historical quest to gain moral legitimacy in the eyes of the general public. In the early days, foreign clients were as likely, it seems, to be oblivious to the “canned” nature of their hunting expeditions as not. Swayed by the cut-rate opportunity to capture prized trophies of exotic species, they swarmed to South Africa in ever greater numbers to live out the fantasy of participating in an “African safari.” Captive breeders and some hunting operators eagerly catered to this clientele, profiting handsomely from making canned hunts the basis of their business operations. Self-described “legitimate” hunters, by contrast, saw canned hunts as a direct threat to the integrity of their livelihoods. In their eyes, canned hunts were inherently inauthentic, an elaborate ruse involving inexperienced, unskilled hunters; small, enclosed, extralimital hunting grounds; and semi-tame prey that lack a normal flight response. Under the guise of PHASA, their professional association, they condemned such practices and partnered with state authorities to help reform them. Indeed, it was only after SAPA had revised its operating principles to clamp down on many of the practices that were deemed most objectionable by critics that PHASA was able to cautiously endorse the hunting of captive-bred “ranch lions.”
Conservation groups, whose memberships overlap with both the hunting and animal-welfare communities, have been similarly conflicted by the moral and practical challenges posed by canned hunts. The hunting of captive-bred trophies seems to have taken pressure off of wild populations, especially in the case of predator cats. The massive enclosure of rural land undertaken by the game ranching industry has, however, broken up the free-range environment, and the deliberate genetic manipulation of animals in captivity may now threaten wild stocks to some degree. South Africa thus presents a vivid example of the trade-offs inherent in conservation approaches premised on the commodification and enclosure of nature. Captive breeders and hunting operators have created new revenue streams by producing new forms of wildlife commodities geared toward whole new classes of wildlife consumers. It remains an open question whether the increased demand for these goods and services can be met by the captive-bred wildlife industry, or whether such demand will generate unintended and unwanted downstream impacts on wild stocks elsewhere in the region.
For animal welfarists, the recent court ruling favoring the captive-breeding/canned-hunting industry represented a major setback but also provided new sources of political leverage, which CACH has sought to exploit. The basic fact that captive breeders and canned hunters are now legally protected in South Africa is anathema to this group. On a more philosophical level, the legal sanctioning of canned hunts also erases an increasingly fraught material and discursive boundary between wild and domesticated species and spaces. This wild/non-wild binary does important work for animal welfarists and conservationists alike, for it is their joint mandate to protect “the wild” from human disturbance. When putatively wild species, such as lions, are domesticated, that binary disappears, and the boundary marking off a distinct, external, nonhuman nature must be redrawn. Faced with this fundamental, existential challenge, CACH activists have been forced to redouble their efforts to call attention to canned hunts on an international scale. It is in this context that some of the most surprising results have emerged in the ongoing dispute. The hunting lobby in South Africa is quick to disparage the “emotional” basis of the anti-canned-hunting campaign, but it is precisely the fact that the western public finds the plight of captive-bred lions and other animals killed in canned hunts so moving that has led to the success CACH activists have achieved in the public-relations battle currently underway.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Danelle van Zyl-Hermann for her translation of key court documents, and to Jenny Isaacs for her assistance in readying the manuscript for publication.
