South African Govt approves export of 800 lion skeletons to Asia
The South African government through
the environmental affairs department has approved the legal exportation
of 800 skeletons of captive-bred lions to Asia this year, the
government said Wednesday, meeting demand for the bones in parts of Asia while critics believe the policy threatens Africa's wild lions.
According to the department in a
statement, the lion bone quota meets international guidelines on
wildlife trade and that its impact on wild lions is being assessed. It
says it worries that a ban on the legal lion bone trade could lead to
the illegal killing of wild lions for their bones.
"South Africa reiterates its concern that if the trade in bones originating from captive-bred lions is prohibited, lion bones may be sourced illegally from wild lion populations," the department said.
Although some conservationists are
not happy with the deal as they believe the legal trade may be fueling
demand for bones, whether from captive-bred or wild lions. They also
note that many of the captive-bred lions are killed by paying clients in
a practice described by critics as "canned hunting."
Before the deal, Panthera, a global
conservation group in March, said that the South African government's
plans for a lion bone quota this year were "arbitrary and potentially
devastating for wild lion and critically endangered tiger populations."
The South African trade feeds "a
growing market among upwardly mobile Asians for luxury products such as
lion bone wine" and "has grown exponentially since 2007, as lion bones
have begun to fill the demand for increasingly scarce tiger bones,"
Panthera said.
However, critics are expecting the
lion bone industry, which supplies a traditional medicine market to
explore measures on how to protect the continent's wild lions, which are
under pressure from human encroachment and poaching.
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