CAPTIVE LION INDUSTRY PHASE-OUT: MORE TIME FOR TASK TEAM TO MAKE RECOMMENDATIONS

CAPTIVE LION INDUSTRY PHASE-OUT: MORE TIME FOR TASK TEAM TO MAKE RECOMMENDATIONS

• 05 February 2024
• Environmental Law
• SA Legal Academy

The task team established in December 2022 to ‘identify and recommend voluntary exit options and pathways for the captive lion industry’ has been granted another three months to complete its work. This is according to a notice gazetted on 5 February 2023 by the Department of Forestry, Fisheries & the Environment. The extension announced in June 2023 has already expired.

In September 2023, input was sought on draft regulations proposing a ban on establishing and registering new facilities involving the capture and containment of live African lions in various forms of controlled environment. At the time, it was envisaged that this would apply to establishing and registering new facilities for:

• captive lion breeding
• the commercial exhibition of live lions
• their rehabilitation
• providing lion sanctuaries, and
• possessing or exercising control over a live African lion in any other circumstances.

As SA Legal Academy has already reported, the ban on new facilities is proposed in the context of:

• plans for phasing out the captive lion industry, in keeping with national policy articulated in the White Paper on the conservation and ‘sustainable use’ of South Africa’s biodiversity, and
• 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.

Registration for the department’s captive lion industry voluntary exit programme closed in July 2023. 

• latest Government Gazette notice
• media statement 
• September 2023 SA Legal Academy report
• May 2023 SA Legal Academy report on voluntary exit programme registration 

Published by SA Legal Academy Policy Watch

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