CAPTIVE LION INDUSTRY EXIT PROGRAMME: INFORMATION UPDATE

CAPTIVE LION INDUSTRY EXIT PROGRAMME: INFORMATION UPDATE

• 21 June 2023
• Environmental Law
• SA Legal Academy

The Department of Forestry, Fisheries & the Environment has issued a media statement providing more insight into its voluntary exit programme for captive lion breeders.

As SA Legal Academy has already reported, industry stakeholders wishing to participate in the programme now have until 21 July 2023 to register. This is noting that doing so does not impose any obligation to exit the industry.

According to the statement, registration simply enables the task team to identify captive lion owners willing to have ‘an open and frank discussion’ on:

• ‘the future of their captive lions’
• the ‘potential impact’ of exiting the industry on any ‘vulnerable workers’, and
• the ‘positive economic outcomes’ of each available exit option and pathway.

Keeping lions in captivity and using them or their derivatives commercially may eventually be banned in South Africa. This is noting that the entire sector’s closure was one recommendation in the 2021 report of a high-level panel appointed in 2018 to look into matters relating to the trade in and management, breeding, hunting and handling of elephant, lion, leopard and rhino.

Against that backdrop, the task team established in December 2022 to identify lion breading industry exit options was recently given another six months to complete its work.

• media statement
• high-level panel report

Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch

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