Tag CONSERVATION

5 May

DISTRACTIONS ASIDE, CONSERVATION NEEDS RADICAL CHANGE

The realities are uncomfortable. We cannot continue to allow wildlife trade because of the potential public health risks and because it contributes to the degradation of nature. And those who will be most negatively impacted by a degraded planet are the very same impoverished communities that wildlife trade proponents seek to benefit.

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28 Nov

The Long Tentacles of Safari Club International (SCI) Undermining Conservation Efforts in Africa

It is time to put an end to the narrative that poor rural African communities unequivocally support trophy hunting. It is also time to put an end to the idea that trophy hunting can somehow be well governed in corrupt contexts. The practice is self-evidently repugnant, and the willingness of some scientists to ignore such repugnance in the name of science is deeply unscientific. There is, in the end, no dichotomy between morality and science. The fact that the SCI and its Foundation have to go to such great lengths to justify killing under the banner of ‘conservation’, and actively exclude dissenting voices through AWCF meetings, tells you everything you need to know. Trophy hunting is fundamentally extractive and clearly has colonial roots. Rationalising it now as an anti-colonial policy choice under ‘sovereignty’ is deeply disingenuous. 

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26 Nov

WAPFSA RESPONDS TO THE THE HIGH LEVEL ADVISORY COMMITTEE APPOINTED BY DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENT, FORESTRY AND FISHERIES

We are disappointed and deeply concerned with the selection of the Committee as well as the Department’s lack of transparency and clarity in respect of the selection thereof. In our Nominations Letter, we put forward extremely qualified candidates who collectively have decades of experience and extensive qualifications in their respective fields of ethical conservation management, biodiversity policies, wildlife trade, legislation, animal protection, economics and welfare species-specific expertise.

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25 Nov

THE FUTURE OF THE SANWILD WILDLIFE SANCTUARY

For 20 years the SanWild Wildlife Sanctuary, situated in Gravelotte in Limpopo, has received public donations in its capacity as a public benefit organisation in order to sustain itself. According to research carried out the Sanctuary has, in our opinion, been grossly mismanaged, as clearly indicated by the media statement referred to. Public money has allegedly been misappropriated and the animals treated as mere commodities, the very opposite of a sanctuary.

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