Mohamed Ameen Dabhelia – 2018/10/09

Columnist and author of Extreme Environment, Ivo Vegter told Radio Islam that ’emotional calls to ban trophy hunting, or ban hunting altogether, are ignorant and naïve’ which could lead to an increase of poaching in South Africa.

Vegter says that since private ownership of game established itself in 1991, game populations have thrived in South Africa.

“The country’s National Parks cover 4.1 million hectares, which is about 3.4% of the country’s total surface area of 122 million hectares.”

Vegter adds that in contrast, South Africa’s private game industry consists of 11,600 farms, making up close to 22 million hectares.

“This now accounts for 18% of the country’s total land area, which is nearly four times the total state-protected land, and more than five times the area comprising National Parks.”

Vegter says that there is a lot more to the hunting story than people are aware of.

“Many big game species that were extremely rare made a dramatic recovery in numbers. National Parks support less than 500 sable antelope, 380 roan antelope and 1,000 bontebok, in contrast private reserves or farms have about 15,000 sable antelope, 4,500 roan antelope and 7,000 bontebok.”

He adds that there are currently eight thousand lions in private game reserves.

“If you ban the sale of lion bones, those lions won’t have a reason to exist, they will just be an expense, which means they are not going to exist, nobody is going to keep lions if they can’t make money out of them, and very few lions are actually are on places where eco-tourism is a viable option, so people who are going to want lion bones are going to start poaching the three thousand lions in national parks.

Vegter says this will destroy eight thousand lions and put the remaining three thousand wild lions under immediate threat of poaching.

Listen To The Full Interview Below: