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BY A CORRESPONDENT
March 8, 2007
The government of South Africa, after banning the
so-called, notorious ‘canned’ lion hunting, is now posed
to check sightseeing on elephant-back. According to the animal rights organisation
International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) tourism,
the South African government, in its draft
recommendations on elephant management, has recommended
stricter controls on capturing young elephants for use
in tourism.
Another recommendation is culling as an option for
controlling rising herd numbers,
In South Africa, elephant calves are captured from the
wild and tamed and trained for elephant-back safaris and
walks.
The new owners of the calves often claim that they are
coming to the rescue of orphaned animals.
The recommendations presented by Environmental Affairs
and Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk include
stricter controls to ensure that the elephants taken are
genuine orphans.
In February 2006, Van Schalkwyk had put an end to the
controversial practice of ‘canned’ lion hunting by
banning hunting of large lions bred in captivity within
two years of their release onto a property for hunting.
The draft rules, formulated a few days ago, propose
stopping the capture from the wild of anything other
than genuine orphan elephant calves.
The taking of juvenile elephants from live wild herds is
the favoured source of new stock for taming and training
by the elephant tourism industry. The proposed
restrictions would prevent any growth of this form of
tourism.
Jason Bell-Leask, Southern Africa director of
International Fund for Animal Welfare, describes
elephant-back tourism as a “business that is out of
control, callous and greedy” and the training of the
elephants as “wrong, cruel and exploitative.”
“Young elephants are now forcibly removed from their
wild herds and subjected to training that is wrong,
cruel and exploitative,” he says. “The International
Fund for Animal Welfare has long been calling for better
legislation to manage the elephant-safari industry, and
it seems that the government is finally going to get
tough on this awful blight on the South Africa’s tourism
landscape.”
“Ideally, we would like them to ban the industry
altogether in the interests of elephant welfare, but
also from a human safety point of view,” Jason Bell-Leask
adds.
A report prepared by the International Fund for Animal
Welfare in 2005 found that 72 elephants were being used
in South Africa for elephant-back safaris and walks. The
organisation estimates that 120 elephants are at present
being used in the tourism industry.
Jason Bell-Leask has welcomed the draft regulations,
which put the responsibility on elephant-back tourism
operators to prove that the animals are orphaned.
South Africa’s Environmental Affairs and Tourism
Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk Van Schalkwyk had last
week listed culling as one of four options, along with
translocation, range manipulation and contraception, to
restrict the runaway growth of elephant herds.
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