South Africa’s next poaching epidemic could emanate out of the trade in lion body parts. Lion bones are being used as a replacement for tiger bones to concoct traditional Asian medicines like tiger brew wine because of the demise of the region’s tiger populations. Lion are already being poached in the northern section of the Kruger National Park.

Dr Herman Els, the manager of hunting and conservation at the SA Hunters and Game Conservation Association, is of the opinion that South Africa should investigate the “decent” and “responsible” trade in lion bones to feed the swelling demand in Asia:

There is a market, a need, for lion body parts and this will grow in exactly the same manner as the market for ivory and rhino horn has grown. To continue denying the fact that there’s a market for rhino horn and lion bone continues to let prices be sky high, because these commodities become scarcer.

World famous conservationist, John Varty, said a lion carcass would easily fetch $15 000, and with the scarcity of tigers – now estimated at 1 000 wild tigers and 45 000 in zoos across the world – it’s little wonder an alternative is being sought by the growing middle class in Asia.

Els continued:

The Chinese believe there’s a medicinal value attached to these animal parts and will continue to use them. It doesn’t help to fight the Chinese. They’re part of a cultural system that is older than 3 000 years. To say they must change their ways, well, that’s imperialism. All lion hunting is not canned hunting, which happens in small instance.

There has been a big drive in the industry to clean up these types of things. That it’s a big industry, that’s true, it is growing and is financially very intensive. In terms of hunting ranched lion, there’s always a massive advantage to have that hunting rather than the hunting of a wild lion.

We already have poaching of lion in the northern section of the Kruger National Park. If you don’t do a decent responsible trade in a similar vein as De Beers did to get blood diamonds out the system, we will not achieve the situation we want to where massive prices for these commodities come down. Let’s not forget these animals are commodities just like gold, eggs, chicken.

He is of the opinion that commercially farming lion specifically for trade to Asia would help eradicate canned lion hunting, because it’s simply illegal under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) to hunt tigers.

Another conservationist, Karen Trendler, who is the co-ordinator of the Rhino Response Strategy, said this was frightening because we still know so little about the trade:

Now it is being discussed in the same vein as rhino horn and the debate on whether and how to supply the market. It is becoming more mainstream and unacceptable.

We don’t know what this market is, it’s going into a bottomless pit. In spite of the fact many of us don’t like canned hunting, those lions, even if they are captive bred in welfare conditions we don’t like to see, still have to be in a decent condition for the hunt, whereas once you start farming lion for bone, as is happening with Chinese tiger farming, the conditions are appalling.

They just want the bones.

An experienced hunter and conservationist in Mpumalanga, who didn’t want to be named, said there was disagreement within the hunting sector:

There is a contentious element that is completely against canned hunting, legalising rhino horn and any form of [farming] lion bone. There’s a bunch of us still so devoted to true, fair chase hunting. That hunting has a place in society.

What they are now turning our hunting into is form of farming, intensive breeding and it’s becoming a business. We are opposed to turning our rhino into cows and our lion into bones.

It’s estimated that there are roughly 20 000 lions left in the wild, and some 1 600 in the Kruger National Park. These Kruger lions aren’t just facing an increase in poaching: they’re also facing the continued threat of bovine tuberculosis that is spread through buffalo.

Either way, the trade in lion parts is a problem we have very few answers for, let alone solutions to.

[Source: IOL]