Illegal poachers caught in the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area on 15th June 2013

[Photo by bushwalker Darren Drew in Tigersnake Canyon, Wollemi National Park, at a time when 500 runners were participating in a marathon in the area]

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<< Two men were reported to be illegally hunting in NSW’s biggest natural tourist attraction, the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area.

Blackheath bushwalker Darren Trew said he came across the hunters on a canyoning trip with friends on Saturday June 15. Over that weekend 500 runners from across the state had converged in that same region to participate in the second Glow Worm Tunnel Marathon, near Newnes.    Mr Trew, who saw the men with their weapons, reported the matter to Lithgow Police, to the Game Council and to the National Parks and Wildlife Service.

Mr Trew:

“It’s madness. It was quite a shock to discover after 20 or more years of bushwalking. It’s quite disturbing, they said they were hunting deer and I told them they were not allowed to be here with rifles, it’s illegal, I called the police and they walked away.”

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Photo by High & Wild

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Mr Trew’s group took a photo of the men and said later that day about 20 people turned up to enjoy Tigersnake Canyon.

Glow Worm Tunnel Area, Wollemi National Park

Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area

[Source:  NSW Government, ^http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/nationalparks/parkWalking.aspx?id=N0051]

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Glow Worm Tunnel Marathon race director Sean Greenhill of the Wentworth Falls based Mountain Sports said he was very concerned by the reports.

“It’s extremely disturbing to think that two men with rifles were hunting in a national park only a couple of kilometres from where 500 runners were conducting a legitimate activity in the same park — odds are small but the potential implications are horrifying. Mountain Sports doesn’t support hunting in any national park — why create such a dangerous precedent?”

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“Unfortunately, some hunters have heard “you can now hunt in national parks” and assume it’s a free-for-all. With the Game Council promoting NSW as ‘the place to hunt’, this is only going to get worse.”

~ National Parks Association of NSW spokesman, Justin McKee

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National Parks Association of NSW spokesman, Justin McKee:

“The incident highlights that Premier Barry O’Farrell’s promise that safety will be paramount does not definitely rule out the risk of illegal hunting in highly visited areas, including those where hunting is not allowed like the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area. 

Hunting in national parks is bad policy, it’s bad for tourism, public safety and the environment. It ruins the international reputation of our national parks brand that has taken 50 years to build up. Unfortunately, some hunters have heard ‘you can now hunt in national parks’ and assume it’s a free-for-all.”

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A spokesman for Environment Minister Robyn Parker said the minister didn’t normally comment on operational issues  but “obviously hunting in national parks is illegal and an investigation is ongoing”…  [Ed:  There is no public report that they caught, so it was a free-for-all that day]

[Source:  ‘Armed hunters spotted in Blue Mountains world heritage area’, 20130626, by B. C Lewis, Blue Mountains Gazette (newspaper), page 7, ^http://www.bluemountainsgazette.com.au/story/1598489/armed-hunters-spotted-in-blue-mountains-world-heritage-area/; the lead photo of the two hunters was taken near Tigersnake Canyon and posted on Facebook 20130622]

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Weekend Warriors

all camoued up and ready to hunt!

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Game Council NSW ‘Code of Practice’  (so-called)

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<< Ethical, safe and responsible hunting

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1. Awareness of relevant legislation
   It is the responsibility of the holder of a NSW Game Hunting Licence to be aware of and comply with all relevant legisation relating to hunting, animal welfare and the use of firearms.
2. Safe handling of firearms
   Where firearms are used, the rules for safe handling set out in the NSW Firearms Safety Awareness handbook, published by or under the authority of the Commissioner of Police, must be complied with at all times.
3. Permission required to enter land
   A NSW Game Hunting Licence does not automatically authorise the holder of a licence to hunt on any land. The holder of a Game Hunting Licence must not hunt on any land without the express authority of the occupier of the land.
4. Target identification and safety
   A game animal must not be fired at unless it can be clearly seen and identified, and the shot taken poses no discernible risk of injury to any person or damage to any property.
5. Obligation to avoid suffering
   An animal being hunted must not be inflicted with unnecessary pain. To achieve the aim of delivering a humane death to a hunted animal:
   • it must be targeted so that a humane kill is likely;
   • it must be shot within the reasonably accepted killing range of the firearm and ammunition or bow being used; and
   • the firearm, ammunition, or bow and arrow, must be such as can be reasonable expected to humanely kill and animal of the target species.
6. Lactating female with dependent young
   If a lactating female is killed, every reasonable effort must be made to locate and kill any dependent young.
7. Wounded animals
   If an animal is wounded, the hunter must take all reasonable steps to locate it so that it can be killed quickly and humanely.
8. Use of dogs
   Dogs and other animals may be used to assist hunters, but only if:
   • their use is not in contravention to the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1979; and
   • their use is with the permission of the occupier of the land concerned. >>

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[Source:  Game Council of NewSouth Wales, ^http://www.gamecouncil.nsw.gov.au/portal.asp?p=CodeofPractice]

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Game Council Code of Practice:

“Use of (pig) dogs:  Dogs and other animals may be used to assist hunters, but only if:

• their use is not in contravention to the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1979; and
• their use is with the permission of the occupier of the land concerned.”

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May 2012:   NSW Government allows hunting in national parks

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National Park’s chief custodian Environment Minister Robyn Parker,

with NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell and Primary Industries Minister Katrina Hodgkinson

announcing that shooting will be legal in national parks.

[Source:  Photo by Craig Greenhill, The Daily Telegraph]

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<< Hunting will be seen in 79 of the state’s national parks as part of a deal struck by the government (with the Christian Democrats and the Shooters and Fishers Party) last night in exchange for the sale of the state electricity generators.

New South Wales Premier, Barry O’Farrell:  “We promised to revitalise the state’s economy, we promised to put additional funding into infrastructure… and the decision was based on the public interest and political realites.”

Despite O’Farrell’s pre-election promise that he would not open up national parks to shooters as hunting reserves, the Premier said that he has not broken his promise.

“There is a big difference between hunting reserves and restricted shooters under the direction of the Minster of the Environment assisting National Parks and Wildlife staff with the culling of feral animals.”

O’Farrell’s famous last words:

“Shooting will be safely and professionally run by the Game Council.”

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In exchange for the hunting deal Premier O’Farrell will now be able to sell off the state’s generators as recommended by the State’s Commission of Enquiry…>>

[Source:  ‘Premier O’Farrell to allow hunting in NSW national parks’, 20120531, by Amy Taylor-Kabbaz, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, ^http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2012/05/31/3515093.htm]

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ABC radio interview by radio presenter Adam Spencer with Premier Barry O’Farrell, 20120531:

Listen to ABC radio interview

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[Ed:   So a month later on 27th June 2012, the NSW Coalition Government, the Shooters and Fishers Party and the Christian Democratic Party voted in changes to legislation that allows amateur, recreational hunting to occur in NSW National Parks.]

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Blue Mountains protest campaign against the NSW Government’s local representative, Roza Sage MP,

and her undemocratic support for hunting in national parks across New South Wales.

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Two weeks later, on Sunday 15th July 2012, about 400 people rallied in Katoomba in the Blue Mountains to protest against Barry O’Farrell’s decision and to tell local Blue Mountains MP Roza Sage that they oppose the Government’s decision to allow hunting in our National Parks.

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No Hunting in National Parks Rally at Katoomba

[Photo by Editor 20120715, photo © under  ^Creative Commons]

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Dunn’s Review into the Governance of the Game Council was commissioned by the Government after an internal investigation into allegations that a senior member of the Council had been involved in the inhumane killings of the goat in Western NSW.

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<<On Thursday 4 July 2013 the NSW Government announced it will implement the key changes to Game Council NSW recommended by the independent Governance Review of the Game Council of NSW by Steve Dunn, popularly referred to as The Dunn Report.

The changes are designed to improve the functions previously carried out by Game Council NSW and also acknowledge hunting as a legitimate recreational activity.

The report found that Game Council NSW had an ‘inherent conflict associated with its functions to both represent the interests of hunters, and to regulate their activities’.

Therefore the NSW Government said it will immediately take the following actions:

• Transfer the licensing, regulatory, enforcement, education and policy functions into the NSW Department of Primary Industries (DPI); and
• Establish an advisory Game Board that will undertake stakeholder engagement and representation, advocate hunting, advise on research priorities and commission research, and provide independent advice to Government.

The Director General of NSW Trade & Investment, Mr Mark Paterson AO, will become the Division Head of the Game Council Division in the interim to oversee the integration of functions into DPI.

The NSW Government also announced it will immediately suspend hunting in all 400 State forests, pending the transfer of functions and the outcome of a risk assessment.  This means that individuals with written permission to hunt on declared public land areas such as State forests and Crown Lands must no longer do so and must abide by the suspension until further advised.

Game Council and the Forestry Corporation of NSW will be contacting licence holders who have booked Written Permissions as soon as possible.  Advice is also being sought from the NSW Government on the status of licensing arrangements.

Game Bird Management regulatory functions will continue to be undertaken by the Office of Environment and Heritage in 2013 and will transfer to DPI in 2014.

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Game Council NSW Media Statement

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<<On Thursday 4th July 2013, the Minister for Primary Industries announced the dissolution of Game Council NSW as a result of recommendations made following the NSW Government’s governance review.

The NSW Government has suspended hunting in all NSW State forests, pending a new risk assessment. All issued Written Permissions are now invalid. Game Council and the Forestry Corporation of NSW will attempt to call all licence holders with bookings to confirm cancellation of their permits in the coming week.

Game Council is committed to working with the NSW Government as the report recommendations are implemented and will also be working closely with NSW game hunting licence holders to minimise the impact of interim arrangements. >>

[Source:  Game Council NSW website, ^http://www.gamecouncil.nsw.gov.au/]

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..Minister for Primary Industries (DPI), Katrina Hodgkinson MP said nominees for the board would be ministerially appointed based on merit and all existing 21 staff under the current Games Council would be transfered to the new structure under the DPI.

She said key in her decision to support Steve Dunn’s report recommendations was its finding that “more than a decade after it was established the Game Council has no overarching governance framework; lacks a strategic planning framework; lacks some of the skills, tools and resources to ensure effective compliance with its regulatory framework; has no internal regulatory compliance program, has no approved enterprise-wide risk management framework and has an inadequate policy framework”.

“I can’t just stand by and allow that to continue – I take full responsibility for the changes,” Ms Hodgkinson said.

She said one of her primary concerns was for staff employed in the area of compliance and their safety, but she also saw the need to restore confidence in the public in this area. >>

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COMMENT by ‘Dickytiger’  20130705:

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“Good move. The Game Council was just a Shooters Party lurk, looking after their mates.

Hunting feral animals is vital, but it doesn’t require a crony bureaucracy to do it.”

[Source:  ‘Game over as hunting suspended’, 20130704, by Andrew Norris, The Land (rural newspaper), ^http://www.theland.com.au/news/agriculture/general/news/game-over-as-hunting-suspended/2663149.aspx?storypage=0]

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Game Council NSW to be abolished

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<< Amateur hunting in NSW forests will be suspended until at least October following the damning findings of a review into the Game Council of NSW.

As a result of the review, by retired public servant Steve Dunn, the Game Council of NSW will be abolished and responsibility for licensing of amateur hunters transferred to the Department of Primary Industries, the state government announced on Thursday.

The concerns raised in the review have led the government to announce the suspension of all amateur hunting in state forests until governance issues identified within the council are resolved.

In a simultaneous announcement, Environment Minister Robyn Parker revealed the introduction of amateur hunting to national parks will proceed in October, but on a trial basis in 12 parks.  Pending the results, hunting may be rolled out in up to 75 parks and reserves as previously announced by the government under a deal with the Shooters and Fishers Party.

Ms Parker said the rules for shooting in national parks would be significantly different to those in place for state forests.  Shooters would be closely supervised by National Parks and Wildlife staff in all areas where shooting takes place, which will be closed to visitors for the duration. Shooting will not take place during school holidays.

Additionally, no one under 18 would be allowed to participate, and use of bows or black powder muskets would be prohibited.

The Dunn report, released on Thursday, slams governance the Game Council, which it says is ‘‘deeply embedded in politics’’.

In a scathing assessment, Mr Dunn says public safety ‘‘does not receive a high level of attention’’ in planning documents prepared by the organisation, which is responsible for overseeing licensing of amateur shooters in NSW.

He says the council has been unable to resolve the ‘‘inherent conflict of interest’’ between representing the interests of hunters and regulating their activities in NSW.

The report says the council has ‘‘achieved significant results’’ since its establishment in 2002. But they have been achieved ‘‘at the taking of governance risks not normally associated with government bodies.’’

It concludes: ‘‘Allowing the Game Council to continue on its current path is not an option.’’

The review was ordered by Mr O’Farrell in March after an investigation found alleged illegal hunting by two Game Council senior employees on a property in outback NSW.

.. The IAB report also identified ‘‘possible breaches of Game Council policies and procedures, information which raises questions about governance procedures within the Game Council’’.

Sensitivity over the allegations were heightened by the decision by Mr O’Farrell to open NSW national parks to amateur hunting.

The decision was part of a deal between the government and the Shooters and Fishers Party, which holds the balance of power in the upper house, over passage of electricity privatisation legislation.

Mr Dunn’s report notes that the Game Council was established in 2002 because of the ‘‘influence and power’’ of the Shooter and Fishers Party. He says this power has resulted in the creation of an organisation lacking in accountability.

Shooters and Fishers Party MP Robert Brown is a former Game Council chairman.

More than a decade after the Game Council was established, a strategic plan has yet to be finalised and made public, Mr Dunn notes.  His report recommends the 18-member Game Council be replaced by a NSW Game Board of not more than eight members.

It would be subject to control of the department and be responsible for representing the interests of hunters, promoting feral animal control and providing policy advice to government.

However, licensing, education and law enforcement functions – currently the chief role of the Game Council – would be handed to a government department, along with policy and legislation functions.  Reaction is being sought from Game Council chief executive Brian Boyle and the Shooters and Fishers Party. >>

[Source:  ‘Game Council to be abolished’, 20130704, by Sean Nicholls, Sydney Morning Herald State Political Editor, ^http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/game-council-to-be-abolished-20130704-2pdte.html]

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Hunting on NSW public land will be banned for at least the next two months and the Game Council will be disbanded.   Yet the NSW Government is going ahead with its plan to allow volunteer hunters in national parks as part of a pest control program.

It’s a bold decision, which the Shooters and Hunters Party says even it had no idea was coming.  This decision stems from the results of the Government commissioned Dunn Review into the governance of the Game Council. >>

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Dunn’s Scathing Review

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Dunn’s Review into the Governance of the Game Council was commissioned by the Government after an internal investigation into allegations that a senior member of the Council had been involved in the inhumane killings of a goat in Western NSW.

The final report acknowledged the Council had achieved many things in its years of operation but for the most part the report was undeniably shocking leaving the Government no choice but to take action.

Its author Steve Dunn questions how things got so bad.  He found the Council has no overarching governance framework, lacks the skills and resources to ensure effective compliance and found breaches of record keeping and privacy legislation.  The Game Council is a statutory body established under the Game and Feral Animal Control Act – and it should be subject to the control and direction of the Minister for Primaries Industries.

But Premier of NSW, Barry O’Farrell, says the Council strayed.

“Essentially it made the point that the Game Council was both the promoter and the operator in relation to hunting activities across NSW as well as the regulator,” he said.  “That posed an unacceptable risk to the Government.”

The review found the Game Council has its fingers deep in the political pie, with the slices getting bigger thanks to the influence and power of the Shooters and Fishers Party in the NSW Legislative Council.

Steve Dunn wrote, “the Game Council has no parent and no siblings, no one wants to adopt it and no one really wants a close relationship with it, because of the politics.”

Shooters Party MP, Robert Brown, says he hasn’t yet had time to fully consider the O’Farrell Government’s announcement.  But he says he’s personally disappointed the Game Council has been abolished and will be seeking a meeting with the Premier before he forms the Party’s response.

The Game Council will be replaced by an advisory board of no more than eight members, which will each be selected on merit, rather than being appointed by various organisations. The board will be in charge of advocacy.   The regulatory aspect of the Council will now go to Department of Primary Industries.

Minister Katrina Hodgkinson says no Games Council jobs will be lost in the transition and, until that situation is fixed, shooting in state forests has been put on hold.

“It’s a hard thing to have to go through and accept a report which is so critical of an organisation.   But we’ve got an opportunity now to make things right and make things good.  We’ll be transferring the operations of the Game Council over into the Department of Primary Industries, which does have excellent governance.”

The temporary shooting stoppage will affect 400 state forests and 2 crown lands. However the Government is going ahead with its pest control program National Parks.

A trial in 12 parks will commence in October. The Environment Minister Robyn Parker says it will be regulated and managed by the National Parks and Wildlife Service, and there will be strict controls and supervision.

The Minister acknowledged the 20,000 hunters in NSW that assist the Government with pest animal control in NSW.

“These hunters have played an important role in pest eradication.”

The Game Council and the Shooters and Fishers Party have been contacted for comment.

A one time candidate of the Shooters and Fishers Party says he’s always had concerns about the way the Game Council has been run.  Jim Pirie is from Mudgee in New South Wales and has over 60 years of hunting experience under his belt, he was also a one-time candidate of the Shooters and Fishers Party.  These days he’s the owner of a gun shop in town and he’s also the Treasurer of the Cudgegong Valley Hunters Club.

He spoke with the ABC’s Angela Owens frankly about his concerns over opening National Parks up to hunters and the growing power base of the Game Council.

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“Unfortunately the architects of all this are very egotistical, arrogant men and they won’t take advice from anybody,” he said.  “It’s either their way or the highway.”

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“(Someone) stood up at a hunting organisation meeting one day and said there was no nepotism, no cronyism in the Game Council, well that was a joke.

“They appointed the people that they wanted and this at the end of the day was to the determent of the organisation.”  >>

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[Source:  ‘NSW Government abolishes Game Council’, 20130705, by Skye Manson, Lisa Herbert and Angela Owens, ABC Rural, ^http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-07-05/nrn-game-council-gone/4800282]

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July 2013:   Cowboy shooters are finished in NSW

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 Daniel Boone was a big man

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“DANIEL BOONE”

lyrics by Vera Matson, music by Lionel Newman

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<< Daniel Boone was a man,
Yes, a big man!
With an eye like an eagle
And as tall as a mountain was he!

Daniel Boone was a man,
Yes, a big man!
He was brave, he was fearless
And as tough as a mighty oak tree!

From the coonskin cap on the top of ol’ Dan
To the heel of his rawhide shoe;
The rippin’est, roarin’est, fightin’est man
The frontier ever knew!

Daniel Boone was a man,
Yes, a big man!
And he fought for America
To make all Americans free!

What a Boone! What a doer!
What a dream come-er-true-er was he!

Daniel Boone was a man!
Yes, a big man!
With a whoop and a holler
he c’d mow down a forest of trees!

Daniel Boone was a man!
Yes, a big man!
If he frowned at a river
In July all the water would freeze!

But a peaceable, pioneer fella was Dan
When he smiled all the ice would thaw!
The singin’est, laughin’est, happiest man
The frontier ever saw!

Daniel Boone was a man!
Yes, a big man!
With a dream of a country that’d
Always forever be free!

What a Boone! What a do-er!
What a dream-come-er-true-er was he!  >>

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[Source: ‘DANIEL BOONE’, lyrics by Vera Matson, music by Lionel Newman, Twentieth Century Music Corporation, 1964, New York, NY, USA, ^http://www.danielboonetv.com/themesong.html]

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The Game Council’s Cowboy Days Are Over

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<< The cowboy days are over for the recreational shooting of feral animals in NSW. A damning exposé of what the hunting regulator, the Game Council of NSW, has been up to over the past decade- written by a senior public servant who grew up in rural England, familiar with gun safety – makes astonishing reading.

Steve Dunn describes a politically untouchable posse of gun wielding vigilantes, who enthusiastically set themselves the goal of stopping illegal hunting – despite this actually being the job of police. Dunn says the Game Council was acting beyond its statutory role, and with an inherent conflict of interest. Ultimately they posed an unacceptable risk to the government. The Game Council has now been disbanded by the O’Farrell government.

Boring paper pushing, policy making, analytical or investigations skills weren’t seen as important to this bunch of Wild West public servants. The top job prerequisite to become a game council officer was to be a hunter, and to promote hunting.

Left to their own devices by successive ministers, the game council roamed forest frontiers from its head office in Orange, apparently unconcerned about issues of public safety, promoting their own novel concept of ”conservation hunting”, and cloaked from government oversight.

The Game Council’s website last week boasted of a surge of dead animals last financial year: a ”staggering” 1.23 million animals killed on private land by its hunters, and 21,000 shot on public land. And that these figures meant a 70 per cent increase in its key performance indicator.

But Dunn says the council was confused about its role under the Act. It wasn’t supposed to be tallying carcasses, but instead developing plans for hunter safety, public land access, licensing, education, compliance of licensed hunters and research.

The council considered themselves to be outsiders to other government agencies, who reported the renegades to be combative, assertive, and too aligned with the interests of the hunters they were supposed to be regulating.

The review described a pariah that no other government department could love. If agencies are generally organised into clusters, with small agencies needing both a parent and siblings to survive, the game council was an orphan.

”The Game Gouncil has no parent and no siblings, no one wants to adopt it, and no one really wants a close relationship with it – because of politics,” Dunn wrote.

Established in 2002 under the Labor government, the council had its roots ”deeply embedded in politics”, and arose because of the importance of the Shooters & Fishers Party to the government of the day in the upper house when governments needed to get legislation passed.

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The council complained it had an image problem in the wider community. But Dunn’s report considers it was a problem of the council’s own making.

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Carrying private firearms in agency vehicles and hunting on the job are not a good look for public servants. Was it appropriate for the hunting regulator to be handing out promotional stress balls that say ”Stressed? Go conservation hunting”?

In the fallout from the Dunn Review, the Game Council’s regulatory, enforcement, licensing and policy roles have now been transferred to the department of primary industries. A separate advisory Game Board will be formed to represent hunters and advocate hunting.

As the government prepares to allow licensed volunteer shooters to be involved in supervised National Parks and Wildlife Service culls of feral animals in 12 national parks in October, the cowboys that once reigned are out.   Strict guidelines for the culls, which will only be held when parks are closed to the public, stipulate: no night shooting, no dogs, no bows and arrows – and no shooting from horses.  >>

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[Source:  ‘Cowboy shooters are finished in NSW’, 20130707, by Kirtsy Needham, Illawarra Mercury newspaper, ^http://www.illawarramercury.com.au/story/1621471/cowboy-shooters-are-finished-in-nsw/]

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Shooters Party, Robert Borsak with his Big Game kill

~ an African Bull elephant shot on safari in Zimbabwe in June 2008.

[Source:  ABC Four Corners, ^http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-06-11/nsw-mp-robert-borsak-with-an-elephant-shot-on/4745476]

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<< New South Wales Shooters MP Robert Borsak says there has been a culture war over gun control in Australia since the Port Arthur massacre, but he believes people are starting to “get over it.”   Mr Borsak believes semi automatic weapons, which were banned in the wake of the 1996 massacre, should be put back in the hands of hunters and recreational shooters.  >>

[Source:  ‘NSW Shooters MP Robert Borsak says people are ‘getting over’ the Port Arthur massacre’, ^http://www.byronevents.net/nohunting/index.html]

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---

 

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Further Reading:

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[1]  The Dunn Report  (The Governance Review of the Game Council of NSW by Steve Dunn of Independent Consulting, 14th June 2013)

>Download Report  (59 pages,1.1MB, PDF)

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[2]  Interview with Robert Borsak, NSW Shooters and Fishers Party – ABC News

ABC Four Corners, ^http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-06-11/interview-with-robert-borsak-nsw-shooters-and/4745720

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[3]  NSW MP Robert Borsak with an elephant shot on safari in Zimbabwe – ABC News

^http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-06-11/nsw-mp-robert-borsak-with-an-elephant-shot-on/4745476

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[4]  NSW Shooters MP Robert Borsak says people are ‘getting over’ the Port Arthur massacre – ABC News

^http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-06-11/shooters-mp-says-people-27getting-over27-port-arthur/4745472

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[5]  PM – Shooters and Fishers Party says agreement with NSW Govt over 15/07/2013

^ABC, 20130715, ^http://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2013/s3803487.htm

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[6]  Mixed reaction to shooters in state’s national parks – (none) Country Hour – ABC Rural Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

ABC, 20130720, ^http://www.abc.net.au/site-archive/rural/sa/content/2013/02/s3693724.htm

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[7]  The Hunting Party – Four Corners

‘The Hunting Party’, 20130610, ABC,^http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2013/06/10/3776198.htm

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[8]  Shooting in Paroo-Darling NP on hold – ABC Broken Hill – Australian Broadcasting Corporation

A controversial plan to allow hunting in 79 national parks including the Paroo-Darling National Park in far west NSW near White Cliffs has been delayed indefinitely, 20130220, ABC, ^http://www.abc.net.au/local/audio/2013/02/20/3694440.htm

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An emaciated Tiger in a Vietnamese farm cage awaits slaughter for TCM Tiger Parts

A mascot of an evil, barbaric and low-life society

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Vietnam is the most backward country for the illegal wildlife trade according to the latest wildlife report by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

Despite the growing middle class of Vietnam, the cultural practice of wildlife witchcraft quackery persists.  It is this new wealth that is enabling more Vietnamese to drive the slaughter of wlidlife such as Rhinos, Elephants and Tigers for their body parts.  The worse ‘demand countries’ for wildlife parts according to the WWF are Vietnam, China and Thailand.

The demand in wildlife parts is mainly driven from Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), which is an ancient backward cult in witchcraft quackery.  The TCM witchdoctors prey on superstitious simpletons who think drinking tiger bone wine will cure chronic ailments.  The TCM Barbaric Cult is a global chronic ailment in superstitious barbarism that is driving sadistic persecution of precious endangered wildlife.  TCM is no different to the Khmer Rouge, except the TCM Barbaric Cult targets wildlife instead of people.

They evangelise TCM cures anything from fatigue, stroke, cancer, back pain, migraine and low libido, which is all misleading lies.  It has its own quack terms such as ‘Yin Deficiency’,  ‘Yang Deficiency’, ‘Qi Stagnation’.  TCM dimwits certainly have ‘deficiency’ alright in the intelligence department.  Whatever the hocus-pocus names, TCM is backward, barbaric, sadistic, cruel, illegal, and doesn’t bloody well work anyway.  Only sad simpletons would spend a cent on quackery.  Those who traffick in wildlife parts deserve the same fate as the wildlife.

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TCM relies on the illegal black market in wildlife parts trafficking.  It is overdue for the backward practices of TCM to be outlawed globally.

 

A TCM practitioner plying her trade in Yin/Yang Bollocks

 

The following articles highlight the problem of the increasing illegal trade in wildlife parts for Traditional Chinese Medicine.  When one visits the cities of these countries and see the every inctreasing shining skyline, one can be mistaken for believing one is entering a modern civilisation.

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‘Vietnam tops wildlife crimes table’

[Source:  ‘Vietnam tops wildlife crimes table’,  by Kevin Heath, 20120723, ^http://wildlifenews.co.uk/2012/vietnam-tops-wildlife-crimes-table/]

Cache of wildlife parts in Vietnam – the entrails of a barbaric cult

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One the eve of the opening of the latest CITES session the wildlife group WWF has released a report that shows Vietnam is the worse country for the illegal wildlife trade. In the traffic light system used by the WWF to rank countries Vietnam scored a red in trade in rhino and tigers with a yellow card for elephants.

The new report called Wildlife Crime Scorecard looked at 23 range nations as well as transit countries and the final consumer countries of parts for three species – elephant, rhino and tiger.   Read Report:   ^http://awsassets.panda.org/downloads/wwf_wildlife_crime_scorecard_report.pdf   [>Read Report (3MB, pdf)]

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“It is time for Vietnam to face the fact that its illegal consumption of rhino horn is driving the widespread poaching of endangered Rhinos in Africa, and that it must crack down on the illegal rhino horn trade. Viet Nam should review its penalties and immediately curtail retail markets, including Internet advertising for horn,” said Elisabeth McLellan, Global Species Programme manager at WWF.

A number of Vietnamese people have been arrested over recent years in South Africa for being involved in rhino smuggling. Even some Vietnamese diplomats have been caught involved in the trade.

China is given a yellow card for its involvement in the elephant ivory trade. The country has been highlighted as having inadequate management of its legal ivory market and this offers a conduit for illegally poached ivory to find a legitimate market.

Tusks of Elephants savagedly butchered for TCM, their tusks chainsawed off while still alive.  

This is a TCM stockpile of tusks intercepted in a shipping container in Malaysia

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Skulls of Cambodians savagedly butchered by the Khmer Rouge 

This is a stockpile of human skulls in the Tuolsleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh

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The WWF reports calls on the Chinese government to dramatically improve its enforcement of the ivory market.  It also calls on the government to remind its workers involved in major projects in Africa that anyone caught importing illegal wildlife products into China would be prosecuted, and if convicted, severely penalized.

While China got a yellow card for the ivory trade Thailand scored a red due to a legal loop-hole that makes it easy for illegally poached ivory to enter the luxury goods market.

“In Thailand, illegal African ivory is being openly sold in up-scale boutiques that cater to unsuspecting tourists. Governments will be taking up this troubling issue this week. So far Thailand has not responded adequately to concerns and, with the amount of ivory of uncertain origin in circulation, the only credible option at this stage is a ban on ivory trade,” McLellan said.

There is good news in the report as well. The WWF commends the countries from central Africa who recently signed a multinational agreement to tackle poaching.

“Although most Central African countries receive yellow or red scores for elephants, there are some encouraging signals. Last month Gabon burned its entire ivory stockpile, to ensure that no tusks would leak into illegal trade, and President Ali Bongo committed to both increasing protections in the country’s parks and to ensuring that those committing wildlife crimes are prosecuted and sent to prison.”    said WWF Global Species Programme manager Wendy Elliott.

The brightest spot of the report though goes to Nepal which last year, 2011, saw no losses to its rhino population due to improvements to anti-poaching and other law enforcement efforts.

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‘Vietnam gets failing grade in WWF’s illegal wildlife trade report card‘

[Source: ‘Vietnam gets failing grade in WWF’s illegal wildlife trade report card’, by Wynne Parry, LiveScienceSun, 20120722, ^http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/stories/vietnam-gets-failing-grade-in-wwfs-illegal-wildlife-trade-report-card]

.Sumatran Rhino  (Dicerorhinus sumatrensis)

Members of the species once inhabited rainforests, swamps and cloud forests in India, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and China.

In historical times they lived in southwest China, particularly in Sichuan.

But with TCM barbarism they have become persecuted and are now critically endangered,

with only six substantial populations in the wild: four on Sumatra, one on Borneo, and one in the Malay Peninsula.

(Photo: Bill Konstant/International Rhino Foundation)

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Rhinoceroses are poached for their horns that are then sold on the global black market to collectors and for medicinal purposes.

A conservation group, the World Wildlife Fund, has put together a report card ranking 23 nations’ compliance with an international treaty regulating the trade in wild animals.  The report card focuses on three species sought after on the international black market: elephants, tigers and rhinoceroses, and evaluates how well certain countries have held up their commitments as part of the treaty.

“These are just three species, and they are probably the three most talked about, so they are a kind of bellwether for wider problems,” said Colman O Criodain, wildlife trade specialist with the WWF.

The report looks at countries where these animals originate and must travel through, as well as the countries where they arrive for sale. There were some bright spots: India and Nepal received green marks for all three species, showing they had made progress toward complying with the treaty and enforcing policies to prevent the illegal trade.

Many countries, however, received red marks indicating they are failing to uphold their commitments under the treaty.

There have already been consequences for animals. In the last decade, the western black rhino went extinct and the Indochinese Javan rhinoceros was eradicated from Vietnam. Poaching played a crucial role, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Other subspecies of these large, plant-eating creatures are driven by demand for their horns. In Vietnam, demand for rhino horn has boomed thanks to rumors it has healing and aphrodisiac properties, O Criodain said.

For Asians seeking aphrodisiacs?

Viagra is proven to work, but TCM is bollocks

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The report calls out Vietnam, which WWF says is the top destination for South African rhino horn, saying Vietnam’s penalties for participating in the illegal trade are weak and legal measures are insufficient to curtail illegal trade on the Internet. “Despite numerous seizures elsewhere implicating (Viet Nam), there has been no recorded seizure of rhino horn in the country since 2008,” reads a statement issued by WWF.

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, a treaty signed by 175 nations, makes nearly all commercial trade in rhino horns, elephant ivory, tiger parts and other species threatened with extinction illegal. In addition, signatories committed to regulating trade within their borders.

WWF ranked nations’ compliance with the treaty — evaluating whether or not the nation had adopted policies that supported the treaty — and the nations’ enforcement of those policies.

A nation could have good laws on the books but fail to enforce them. For instance, China has laws tightly controlling the sale of elephant ivory. However, it does not have a strong record of enforcing them, O Criodain said.

The report card is not comprehensive; rather it is a snapshot that focuses on certain countries that face the highest levels of illegal trade in these three species. Countries from which a particular species has been eradicated, such as Central Africa which has lost all of its rhinos, escaped an evaluation, O’Criodain noted.

The evaluation is based on government announcements reported in media, CITES documentation and information collected by Traffic, a wildlife trade monitoring network that is a joint program of the WWF and IUCN.

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Bile being extracted from a bear’s gall bladder – while it is conscious

(ENV photo)

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In Vietnam, Ha Long Bear Bile Farms continue to flout the law by selling bile to Korean tourists @ $30 per cc.

Vietnam’s bears are being pushed to the edge of extinction according to ENV, primarily due to the illegal hunting and trade to support the demand for bear bile used as a traditional form of medicine (TCM). Hundreds of Asian tourists including many Koreans, visit per week, watch the extraction process, drink bear gall wine and pay $30 per CC for take-away bile. The plight of these bears is truly pitiful.

Most of the approximately 3,500 bears in Vietnamese farms are thought to have been caught as cubs in the wild and then raised for the painful extraction of bile from their gall bladders.

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ENV produced this powerful public service announcement to persuade people not to drink bear bile wine.

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[Source: ‘Spotlight on conservation: Education for Nature-Vietnam’, by Wild Open Eye, 20120301,  ^http://wildopeneye.wordpress.com/2012/03/01/spotlight-on-conservation-education-for-nature-vietnam/]

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‘Vietnam, Laos and Mozambique do least to halt trade in animal parts: WWF’

[Source: ‘Vietnam, Laos and Mozambique do least to halt trade in animal parts: WWF’, by Reuters, 20120723, ^http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-07-23/flora-fauna/32803700_1_elephant-ivory-animal-parts-tiger-parts]

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‘Vietnam, Laos and Mozambique are the countries that do the least to crack down on an illegal trade in animal parts that is threatening the survival of elephants, rhinos and tigers, the WWF conservation group said on Monday.

In its ‘Wildlife Crime Scorecard’ report, it said 23 countries surveyed mostly in Africa and Asia, the main sources and destinations of animal parts, could all do more to enforce laws banning a trade that WWF said was increasingly run by international crime syndicates.’

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‘Vietnam proposes legalizing use of tiger parts in traditional medicines’

[Source:  ‘Vietnam proposes legalizing use of tiger parts in traditional medicines’, by Occupy For Animals, ^http://www.occupyforanimals.org/vietnam-proposes-legalising-use-of-tiger-parts-in-traditional-medicines-2012.html]

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‘Vietnam has proposed a move that activists allege would boost tiger poaching across the world. The country has proposed legalising the use of parts of captive bred tigers that die of natural causes in traditional medicines. If approved, this is likely to spur demand for body parts of the big cat in the international market and hit tiger conservation efforts currently underway. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) of Vietnam sent the proposal to the prime minister of the country in March this year.

The disclosure has taken the international community, which is currently discussing a coordinated strategy for recovering global tiger population in New Delhi, by shock. The proposal was brought to the notice of the tiger range countries by non-profits when they were discussing the measures to eliminate the demand for tiger parts during the 1st Stocktaking Meeting of the Global Tiger Recovery Programme (GTRP) between May 15 and May 17. The conference was organised by National Tiger Conservation Authority of India along with the Global Tiger Forum, Global Tiger Initiative and the World Bank to take stock of the GTRP, which was adopted in 2010 and aims at doubling the global wild tiger population by 2022. Currently, around 3,200 wild tigers thrive in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Russia, Thailand and Vietnam.

Vietnam, however, did not mention the MARD proposal in its draft GTRP implementation report, a document each of the tiger range countries submitted to explain the actions taken by their governments for tiger conservation. The proposal is part of an investigation report prepared by the MARD on the wild and captive-bred tigers in Vietnam. Around 112 tigers are kept in breeding farms in Vietnam. “According to Vietnam’s law and International Convention, any activity of trading or using tigers and tiger products is prohibited. Tiger breeding facilities therefore can gain no profit. Moreover, because of the regulations against tiger trading, these facilities don’t have specific breeding purposes,” says the report. It further states that “dead tigers (from captive facilities) can be used to make specimens and traditional medicine on a pilot basis.”

But conservationists are not pleased. “This is in contradiction of the spirit of UN Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) and GTRP. We want to give a clear message to Vietnam that if it goes ahead with the plan, we might have to take action against it in whatever capacity we can,” says Keshav Varma, programme director of the Global Tiger Initiative of the World Bank. The tiger range countries, including Vietnam, are signatories to CITES that prohibits the trade in tiger parts and derivatives, including domestic trade.

When asked, the representative of Vietnam’s ministry of natural resource and environment said the proposal came from a different ministry and he could not say much about it. He, however, hoped that the proposal would not be approved by their prime minister. “We are appalled that a few countries promise something else on international platforms while their domestic policies imply something else. If they allow trade of dead tigers kept in captivity, many tigers will be killed in the wild and their parts will be sold under the wrap of this scheme,” says Debbie Banks of UK-based non-profit, Environmental Investigation Agency.

So when you visit your Ying Yang Traditional Chinese Medicine Quack,

remember this tiger suffered for your healing cult.

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Is China above board?

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In the meeting apprehensions were also expressed regarding China’s domestic policies on captive tiger breeding and trade. For long tiger bones have been used in traditional medicines and wines in China. This had made the country principal destination for tiger parts from all over the world. In 1993, China prohibited the use, manufacture, sale, import and export of tiger bone products and products labelled as containing tiger bones.

However, in 2007, the State Forestry Administration (SFA), of China issued guidelines for the registration, labelling and sale of tiger and leopard skins of “legal origin.” “This seems to contradict China’s claim that trade in tiger parts is banned in the country. We have consistently requested clarification from China over just how many skins have been registered, how many have been sold under this policy, how many have come from captive bred sources, how many are reportedly from the wild and how legality has been verified. They have never responded,” says Banks.

China has also failed to meet the CITES resolution that it would take “measures to restrict the captive population to a level supportive only to conserving wild tigers.” The captive tigers in China have reportedly increased from 6,000 in 2010 to 9,000 now. There are allegations that the captive farms stockpiles the tiger bones and other parts of dead tigers. There is no transparency from China on where these stockpiles end up. “The issue of whether stockpiling of tiger bones in the captive farms in China is for research or for commercial use needs further clarification and is a serious cause of concern. We urge that China should follow the CITES resolution of keeping the captive bred tiger population restricted to support wild population in letter and spirit,” says Rajesh Gopal, member secretary of National Tiger Conservation Authority.

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‘Thirst is building for tiger bone wine’

[Source:  Thirst is building for tiger bone wine’, by Yang Wanli (China Daily), 20100301, ^http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/metro/2010-03/01/content_9516414.htm]

Roaring demand for tiger bone tonic wine during the Year of the Tiger has delighted those taking part in the underground industry but sent chills through conservationists.

Despite a national prohibition on dealing in tiger body parts, online trade and tiger farms are flourishing, leading opponents to call for additional protection of the endangered species.

“In Western countries, people believe in Western medicine but there has seldom been as much enthusiasm for traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) as there is now, especially those made from animals,” said Ge Rui, Asian Regional Director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

She said tiger farms are now a major threat to the species. While the farms are tolerated, the State Forest Ministry issued a notice at the end of last year stating that tiger bodies from the farms should be sealed for safekeeping.

“The government has made a great deal of effort to curb the illegal trade in rare and endangered species in recent years,” Ge said. “But their work is mainly focused on cross-border trade. The government allows the operation of tiger farms.”

According to statistics from the International Fund for Animal Welfare, there are now about 3,200 wild tigers worldwide.

In China, only about 20 tigers are thought to be left in the wild.

“The existence of tiger farms and increasing illegal trade in tiger products is seriously threatening this precious species,” she said. “In the Year of the Tiger, we should be doing more.”

Chinese animal rights groups recently launched an online campaign pushing for more protection of wild animals.

Despite the concern, consumers are still eager to get their hands on the illegal tonic wine.

“Tiger bone tonic wine will surely be popular this year,” said a seller from the Beijing Xinghuo Company.

“Nothing could be better than sending it to your relatives or leaders during the Year of the Tiger, both for good wishes and to keep them healthy.”

The company sells a wide range of wines, including a tiger bone tonic wine.

A 500 ml bottle of tiger bone wine, made in Heilongjiang province, sells for 1,380 yuan.

Tiger Wine – extracted from Tigers

It may as well be the cerebral fluid of Cambodians butchered at the hand of the Khmer Rouge

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Human Cerebrospinal fluid

Not as marketable in test tubes, but then TCM Cultists haven’t got around to bottling and branding this yet

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However, a bottle of tiger bone wine, said to be from Tongrentang, the place that supplied medicine to the royal pharmacy during the Qing Dynasty for 188 years, is even more expensive. Such wine, made in 1990s, sells for around 25,000 yuan.

The wine, which is believed to have medicinal properties, should improve with age, so the older the bottle, the higher the price. Those produced in the 1980s can sell for 60,000 yuan for 323 ml.

“Real tiger bone tonic wine is very popular in the market now,” said Sjkexiao, a 20-year old man who was looking to sell two bottles online that he claimed was tiger bone wine made in Tongrentang in 1984.

He said tiger bone tonic wine had been increasing in price in recent years.

Tigers have been used in traditional Chinese medicine for centuries. Tiger bone tonic wine is used in the treatment of arthritis and rheumatism.

China joined the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in 1981. It imposed a ban on the harvesting of tiger bones and outlawed all trade in tiger body parts in 1993.

As a result, tiger bone remedies were removed from TCM dictionaries.

“Medicines with parts from rare animals are not allowed to be sold now,” said a staff member, surnamed Zhang, at a Cachet pharmacy.

She suggested another medicinal wine, named Hongmao Medical Wine, that was priced at 250 yuan and which claimed to contain leopard bones.

“Money cannot buy a genuine bottle of tiger bone wine because of its scarcity,” she said. “You can never find such medicine in the stores now. Wine containing real tiger bones is really more effective than others.”

However, doctors were quick to question the medicinal value of tiger bone tonic.

“It is the same as other medicinal wines,” said Yue Debo, a doctor with more than 20 years’ experience in the department of orthopedics at the China-Japan Friendship Hospital. “It doesn’t have any miraculous effect.”

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Comment:  by Willson    20111230:

“This is why I will never allow any of my companies or affiliates to do business with the Chinese. The Chinese are unworthy of respect and therefore unworthy of becoming a trade partner. The trade in tiger bone wine is not an underground industry. It is a mainstream industry condoned by the Chinese government. My companies will never sell technology to the Chinese so long as this and other wildlife is threatened with government sanctioning.”

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Comment:  by  Dan    2011-12-30 06:37

“China is shameful!“

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‘India lucrative target for illegal wildlife trade’

[Source:  ‘India lucrative target for illegal wildlife trade’, 20120628, Zee News,^http://zeenews.india.com/news/eco-news/india-lucrative-target-for-illegal-wildlife-trade_784409.html]

Abject Fear for Reason

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India remains a “lucrative target” in the USD 20 billion illegal trade of wildlife articles per year, an official document says.

“The most serious and immediate risk to many species is poaching for wildlife trade. …South Asian countries account for 13 to 15 per cent of the world’s biodiversity and so remain a lucrative target of the trade,” says the report prepared by the Environment Ministry.

Wild animals are killed for the flourishing illegal international trade in their skins, bones, flesh, fur, used for decoration, clothing, medicine, and unconventional exotic food, says the Environmental and Social Framework Document for “Strengthening Regional Cooperation in Wildlife Protection in Asia”.

Victims of the trade include the iconic tiger and elephant, the snow leopard, the common leopard, the one-horn rhino, pangolin, brown bear, several species of deer and reptiles, seahorses, star tortoises, butterflies, peacocks, hornbills, parrots, parakeets and birds of prey, and corals, it says.

Pangolines poached for TCM

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“The primary market for many of these products is outside South Asia, often in East Asia for items of presumed pharmacological utility,” says the document is prepared for financial assistance from the World Bank under regional International Development Association (IDA) window.

Noting that the wildlife trade is “big business”, it said due to the clandestine nature of the enterprise, reliable estimates of the composition, volume and value of the trade remain elusive.

“The International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) suggests that the global value of the illegal wildlife related trade exceeds USD 20 billion per year and probably ranks third after narcotics and the illegal weapons trade,” it said.

The report says that poaching techniques are “extremely gruesome”.

“The more egregious methods include skinning or dehorning live animals, and transportation of live creatures in inhuman conditions,” it says.

Particularly damaging is the banned trade in tiger parts much of which is used for its presumed pharmaceutical benefits.

“The World Chinese Medicine Society has declared that tiger parts are not necessary in traditional medicines and that alternatives are available and effective. Yet the illegal trade still flourishes.

Poaching has become so intense that tigers have disappeared from many parks throughout Asia.

“Nowhere has the impact been greater than in India and Nepal which remain the bastions of tiger conservation,” says the document and added that Nepal has emerged as the transit hub for the trade in illegal wildlife commodities destined for consumption in East China.

“Laos is recognized as both a source and transit country while Viet Nam is a transit hub for illegal wildlife trade,” it says.

The economic value of the illegal wildlife trade is determined primarily by cross-border factors. Wildlife are poached in one country, stockpiled in another, and then traded beyond the South Asia region.

“Lack of uniformity in enforcement can result in migration of the trade to other countries with less stringent enforcement. The trade is controlled by criminal organizations which have considerable power over the market and the prices paid to poachers and carriers, making control of the trade even more challenging,” it says.

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‘SA breeders embrace growing Asian demand for lion bones’

[Source:  ‘SA breeders embrace growing Asian demand for lion bones’, by Faranaaz Parker, Mail and Guardian, South Africa, 20120705, ^http://mg.co.za/article/2012-07-04-sa-breeders-embrace-growing-asian-demand-for-lion-bones] .

Desktop activists have joined conservationists to raise awareness about the growing demand for lion bones from users of traditional Chinese medicine, but breeders have defended the right to hunt lions born in captivity.

Last week, the online activist organisation Avaaz.com launched a petition imploring President Jacob Zuma to ban the trade of lion bones. “As citizens from around the world with great respect for South Africa and its magnificent natural heritage, we appeal to you to ban the cruel and senseless trade in lion bones and organs, which is encouraging an industry that could drive lions to the brink of extinction,” says the petition, which garnered over 630 000 signatures in a week.

Lion bones are a sought-after ingredient used to make lion bone wine, a substitute for the traditional Asian cure-all, tiger bone wine, which fetches up to R250 000 a case at illicit auctions.

Conservationists have warned that captive breeding and canned hunting programmes in South Africa are providing a source for the lion bone trade. Canned lion hunting is legal in South Africa, as is the exporting of lion carcasses. Lion populations across Africa have been reduced by 90% over the past 50 years, but lion breeders say their operations have nothing to do with the continent’s wild populations.

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The price of trophies
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Breeders can benefit financially a number of times from the same lion. Cubs are often rented as tourist attractions and visitors pay to pet and interact with them. The fee paid by visitors is then fed back into captive breeding programmes. As adults, the lions are sold to hunters in canned hunting arrangements.

Farmers and hunting operators charge in the region of about $20 000 (R160 000) as a “trophy price” and hunters can expect to pay around $18 000 (R145 000) for other services, excluding taxidermy.

Bob Parsons – Elephant Killer

But the hunters are only interested in the head and skin of the lion, and often leave the bones with the breeder, who can then sell the bones, with a government permit, to Asian buyers for use in making lion bone wine.

It’s estimated that a complete lion skeleton can sell for as much as R80 000. Last year it emerged that over 1 400 lion and leopard trophies were exported from the country in 2009 and 2010.

.Robert Borsak – elephant trophyist

New South Wales Shooters and Fishers MP Robert Borsak with an elephant shot on safari in Zimbabwe, June 2008.

[Source: ABC, ^http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-04-13/nsw-mp-robert-borsak-with-an-elephant-shot-on/2619226]

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According to the environmental affairs minister, in 2010, 153 live lions were exported as well as 46 lion skins, 235 carcasses, 592 trophies, 43 bodies and 41 skulls. It was noted that these figures were incomplete as the provinces had not yet captured all their data. Yet there was a 150% growth in exports of lion products from 2009 and 2010.

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‘Amplifying an illegal industry

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Chris Mercer, director of the Campaign Against Canned Hunting, said hunting captive-bred lions was “hideously damaging” to conservation. “It’s farming with alternative livestock. They’re only doing it because they make more money farming lions than they do sheep or cattle. But they don’t realise they’re harming the wild populations by creating and amplifying an illegal industry and allowing it to prosper,” he said.

Mercer said he believes the export of lion bones and in fact the entire canned hunting industry should be banned. He pointed out that there was a huge overlap between the rhino horn and lion bone trade. “Many of the Asiatic groups dealing with lion bones are the same people dealing with rhino horn,” he said.

He criticised government for taking a simplistic view of the matter and overlooking the dangers the lion bone trade poses. “The very people who are doing our rhino horn [poaching] are making money out of this. You can just imagine how the illegal trade is going to piggy-back itself onto this legal trade,” he warned.

Banning the entire trade will be difficult. There are almost 200 lion breeders in the country, many of whom are part of the powerful Predator Breeders’ lobby group. The breeding of lions for trophy hunting is a lucrative business. In 2009, the economic value of trophy hunting was estimated to be between R153-million and R832-million.

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Rapidly going extinct

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But Pieter Kat, director of the UK-based conservation organisation LionAid, said a lot could be achieved simply by placing a ban on the export of lion bones. Lions are listed on appendix two of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, which means that a government permit is needed to export any lion products. “It will take a position of responsibility by South Africa to say, ‘No more, we will not allow this,'” he said.

“South Africa is within its rights [to] say no more export permits,” said Kat.

Kat said that while one could argue about the ethics of breeding lions just to be shot, it was important to bear in mind that whatever South Africa did in terms of its legal trade in lion bones would affect wild lion populations all over the continent.

Kat pointed out that there are only about 20 000 lions left on the entire continent – down from about 200 000 in the 1970s. In the past few years Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and the Republic of Congo-Brazzaville have lost all their lions, while countries like Nigeria, Malawi and Senegal have only a few dozen lions left.

“We’re dealing with a species that is rapidly going extinct but because we are not really focused on lions – we’re talking about elephants and rhinos – it’s a silent extinction,” he said.

He warned that allowing the trade in lion bones to proliferate would stimulate a demand for the product. “Soon someone will [realise] it’s cheaper for to poach than to pay the owner of a captive animal to get the bones,” he said.

But Professor Pieter Potgieter, chairperson of the South African Predator Breeders’ Association, defended the industry saying there is little difference between breeding lions and any other mammal. “Chickens are killed by humans. How are lions different from them?” he asked.

“In principle a lion is not more or less than a crocodile, an ostrich or a butterfly. It’s a form of life. Breeding animals for human exploitation is a natural human process,” he said.

Potgieter said that breeding and hunting lions was only deplorable in the eyes of the public because a “sympathetic myth has been created about the lion as the king of the animals”.

He justified the practice, saying the export of lion bones is a legal trade authorised by the department of environmental affairs and denied that South Africa’s approach to captive breeding and canned lion hunting was feeding into the Asian demand for lion bones. “I don’t think that market is being created by the South African situation. That would happen anyhow and the more the Asian tiger gets extinct, the more people will try to get hold of lion bones as a substitute,” he said.

In 2007 former environmental affairs minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk attempted to put the brakes on canned lion hunting. It was widely reported that the activity had been banned in the country but this is not the case.

Some changes to legislation were made but the Supreme Court of Appeal ruled in favour of the Predator Breeders’ Association and overturned an attempt to enforce a two-year waiting period during which a captive-bred lion would be allowed to roam freely in an extensive wildlife system before being hunted, which conservationists had labeled an attempt to “pretend that the lion is wild”.

The environmental affairs department did not respond to questions by the time of going to print.’

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‘Bodies of 14 rare Sumatran tigers seized’

[Source:  ‘Bodies of 14 rare Sumatran tigers seized’, by AFP, 20120719, ^http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-07-19/flora-fauna/32746788_1_sumatran-tigers-tiger-body-parts-illegal-wildlife-trade]

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‘Indonesian police seized 14 preserved bodies of critically-endangered Sumatran tigers in a raid on a house near Jakarta, a spokesman said Thursday.  A man identified as F.R. was arrested Tuesday in a suburban area of Depok suspected of his involvement in the illegal wildlife trade, national police spokesman Boy Rafli Amar told AFP.

“We confiscated whole preserved bodies of 14 tigers, a lion, three leopards, a clouded leopard, three bears and a tapir and a tiger head,” he said, adding that investigations were ongoing.

The Clouded Leopard  (Neofelis nebulosa)

Is a felid found from the Himalayan foothills through mainland Southeast Asia into China, and has been classified as vulnerable in 2008 by IUCN.

Poached for barbaric TCM.

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‘The factory farm tigers being turned into wine’

[Source:  ‘The factory farm tigers being turned into wine’, by Danny Penman, 20070312, UK Daily Mail, ^http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-441632/The-factory-farm-tigers-turned-wine.html]

Doomed: One of the tigers at Xiongsen animal park being turned into wine

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Cruel almost beyond belief, this Chinese farm breeds hundreds of tigers in rows of battery cages … so they can be killed and turned into wine…

King, the Siberian tiger, stares at me through the bars of his cage. His two beautiful, graceful companions pace back and forth across their tiny compound. They look crushingly bored. The most exciting thing they can do is paw mournfully at the dirty pools of rainwater on the floor of their cage.

Although the Xiongsen tiger park, near Guilin in south-east China, appears to be a depressingly typical Third World zoo, with a theme park restaurant and open areas where tigers roam, it actually hides a far more sinister secret: it’s a factory farm breeding tigers to be eaten and to be made into wine.

In row upon row of sheds, hundreds of tigers are incarcerated in battery-like cages which they never leave until they are slaughtered.

Visitors to the park can dine on strips of stir-fried tiger with ginger and Chinese vegetables. Also on the menu are tiger soup and a spicy red curry made with tenderised strips of the big cat. Visitors can wash it all down with a glass or two of wine made from Siberian tiger bones.

A waitress at the farm’s restaurant tells me proudly: ‘The tiger meat is produced here. It’s our business. When Government officials come here, we kill a tiger for them so they have fresh meat. Other visitors are given meat from tigers killed in fights. We now have 140 tigers in the freezer.

“We also sell lion meat, bear’s paw, crocodile and snake. The bear’s paw has to be ordered in advance as it takes a long time to cook.”

Hundreds of tigers are incarcerated in battery-like cages by the Chinese TCM Cultists

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The waitress clearly does not care that she is selling meat and wine from endangered species. She is not worried that selling them is against Chinese and international law, and helps to fuel the poaching that is driving tigers to extinction.

Tigers and other endangered species are being reared on an industrial scale throughout China, despite international treaties forbidding this. The Mail discovered three factory farms breeding tigers in China. The Guilin farm alone has 1,300 tigers, including the incredibly rare and elusive Siberian sub-species.

It rears and slaughters Bengal, South China and White tigers. More than 300 African lions and 400 Asiatic black bears are also reared here for food and traditional Chinese medicines.

The Chinese authorities claim that farms like the one at Guilin are a vital part of the country’s conservation efforts, and that they will one day release these endangered creatures back into the wild.

But my visit to the Xiongsen Bear and Tiger Mountain Village shows their real intention could not be more different. For the fact is that these animals could never survive in the wild.

Having spent their lives in tiny, battery-style units, they cannot hunt and would be dead within days of being released. Each shed at the tiger farm – and I saw at least 100 – houses between three and five tigers in a space no larger than a typical family living room. In relative terms, they have about as much space as a battery hen.

The animals have all been bred on the farm. The cubs are taken from their mothers at three months and put in a kindergarten. I saw around 30 tiger cubs in this creche, where they stay until they are old enough to be transferred to the battery units.

Many of the youngsters kept leaping at the fencing. The younger ones simply wanted to play like kittens. The older cubs were already showing signs of stress.

Tigers are naturally solitary creatures that roam over dozens of square miles, so it’s hardly surprising that life in the cages drives them insane. I saw numerous examples of stress-related repetitive behaviour.

The mature animals paced back and forth across their cages for hours on end – three steps forward, three steps back. Some hurled themselves at the bars of their prison cells, while others simply stared into space.

Over-crowding drives the creatures to attack each other, often resulting in death. Officially it is only the tigers killed in such fights that can be eaten or turned into wine. But it is clear that many of them die as a result of a bullet to the head.

They are not the only animals killed. For entertainment, visitors to the animal park can watch the ‘live killing exhibition’, a sick spectacle in which animals are ‘hunted’ and torn to pieces by tigers while onlookers cheer.

I watched in horror as a young cow was stalked and caught by a tiger. Its screams filled the air as it struggled.

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So Visit China – see its wildlife, taste its wildlife, souvenir its wildlife!

Not sure what TCM says how Panda Parts heal you or give you a hard on?

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A wild tiger would dispatch its prey within moments, but these tigers’ natural killing skills have been blunted by years of captivity. The tiger tried to kill – tearing, biting at the cow’s body in a pathetic-looking frenzy – but it simply didn’t know how. Eventually, the keepers stepped in and put the cow out of its misery.

Virtually all the tigers from the Guilin farm end up at a winery 100 miles to the north, their carcasses dumped in huge vats of rice wine and left to rot for up to nine years.

The Chinese believe that the tiger’s strength passes into the wine as its body decomposes. They also believe that it is a powerful medicine that wards off arthritis, strengthens bones and acts as a general tonic.

Smelling like a mixture of methylated spirits, antiseptic and congealed meat, it is difficult to believe that anyone would willingly drink it, and yet people pay up to £100 a pint for it.

The Guilin farm also has its own small winery and acts as a distribution centre across China. The distribution manager showed me around with a Chinese tourist.

A small dingy office acts as the nerve centre of the warehouse. On the wall were charts showing that day’s deliveries of tiger wine across China. Six crates were sent to Wuhan and another to Tianjing. Six crates of ‘powdered bear’ were sent to Shanghai. Numerous other cities and countless deliveries were also listed.

We were led into the warehouse, where I was hit with the disgusting and potent aroma of tiger wine. I was led past countless crates containing the foul-smelling brew. In the corner of the warehouse was a huge brown earthenware vat. It must have held at least 50 gallons, and its contents were probably worth around £12,000.

“We have three ages of wine,” said the manager. “Three, six or nine-years old. It helps with arthritis and strengthens old people’s bones.”

She slid aside the lid of the earthenware vat to reveal a reddish-brown liquid with an overpowering smell of meths. A piece of string was pulled out of the vat. Attached to the end was a tiger’s rib cage. Small slivers of dark red flesh could still be seen clinging to the bone, even though it had probably been in the vat for at least three years.

The manager then filled up an old plastic water bottle with a pint of wine and handed it to my fellow tourist. He paid £30 for it.

Whatever westerners think of tiger wine, the Chinese regard it as a potent drink with almost magical qualities. In the past, a Chinese doctor may have prescribed small quantities of wine for a short period of time.

But in recent years, big companies have moved into the market and industrialised all parts of the industry. Now the wine is becoming an essential drink for China’s corrupt bureaucrats and the nation’s nouveaux riches.

Conservationists say tiger farming is not only barbaric, it could lead to the animal’s extinction in the wild.

“It is stimulating demand for meat and wine, and this will inevitably lead to more poaching,” says Grace Gabriel, of the International Fund for Animal Welfare.

“It costs £5,000 to raise a tiger from a cub to maturity in one of these farms, while it costs no more than £20 in India to poach one. On the market, a dead tiger can fetch £20,000.

“With such a huge margin, it is inevitable that more people will poach wild tigers if demand increases,” she adds. “There are only a few thousand tigers left in the wild, and the last thing they need is increased demand for their body parts.”

If present trends continue, tigers could be extinct in the wild within a decade. Three subspecies have already vanished. Chinese tigers are down to a pitiful 20 animals in the wild and are “functionally extinct”.

There are only about 450 Siberian tigers left in Russia’s Far East. The remaining 3-4,000 are sparsely scattered across India, Nepal and South-East Asia.

The trouble is that, as tigers become rarer in the wild, their ‘street value’ increases, which in turn encourages even more poaching.

Tigers have already become extinct in India’s most famous reserve at Sariska. Numbers have plunged in several other reserves, too.

Most of these tigers will have been sold to traders in China. The Chinese authorities do virtually nothing to clamp down on this illegal trade, and many corrupt bureaucrats and police earn substantial sums from it.

And demand is continuing to increase as ever more bizarre uses for tigers are promoted. Tiger whiskers are used to ‘cure’ laziness and protect against bullets. Their brains, when mixed with oil and rubbed on the skin, are promoted as a cure for acne. Penises are used as aphrodisiacs, while hearts apparently impart courage, cunning and strength.

Tiger farmers also have their eyes on the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. They hope that a huge influx of tourists will lead to increased demand for tiger wine.

Although it is illegal to trade internationally in such tiger products as wine, the Chinese are lobbying hard to get the law relaxed. This June, the Chinese Government is expected to press the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) to allow the trade in ‘medicines’ such as wine produced from farmed tigers.

If agreed, it will lead to a massive increase in tiger farming and tens of thousands of these noble beasts will spend their lives in battery cages.

If the Chinese get their way, then it will almost certainly drive the tigers over the cliff into extinction.

It is almost too late to save this magnificent creature – but not quite.

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Further Reading:

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[1]   ‘Tiger Bone Rhino Horn – The Destruction of Wildlife for Traditional Medicine’, by Richard Ellis, published by Shearwater, USA, 2005, ^http://www.scribd.com/doc/45308802/Tiger-Bone-Rhino-Horn-The-Destruction-of-Wildlife-for-Traditional-Medicine

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The Tiger – an animal far more intelligent that any TCM dimwit

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It’s 2011 and east asians are ramping up the extermination of elephants for backward TCM medicine

(TCM is Traditional Chinese Medicine)

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Kenya’s President Mwai Kibaki sets on fire an illegal ivory stockpile on July 20, 2011 at the Tsavo National Park, approximately 350 kilometres southeast from Nairobi. Kenya’s President Mwai Kibaki ignited nearly five tonnes of ivory stockpiled in the country since being seized in Singapore nearly a decade ago destroying some 335 tusks and 42,553 pieces of ivory carvings at the Manyani wildlife rangers training institution in eastern Kenya. 

(©Photo: Tony Karumba/AFP/Getty Images)

 

2011 has truly been a horrible year for elephants

~Tom Milliken, Elephant and Rhinoceros expert for the wildlife trade monitoring network ‘TRAFFIC’

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Large seizures of elephant tusks make this year the worst on record since ivory sales were banned in 1989, with estimates suggesting as many as 3000 elephants were killed by poachers as Asian syndicates move into the continent.

Tom Milliken, elephant and rhino expert for the wildlife trade monitoring network Traffic, said:  “2011 has truly been a horrible year for elephants.”

In one case earlier this month, Malaysian authorities seized hundreds of African elephant tusks worth $1.3 million that were being shipped to Cambodia. The ivory was concealed in containers of Kenyan handicrafts.

 

 

‘Around 23,000 elephants live in Kenya but populations can be devastated by poaching within a couple of years.

A recent survey in Chad showed its elephant population had declined from 3,800 to just over 600 in the past three years.’ 

^http://www.thestar.com/article/692972

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“In 23 years of compiling ivory seizure data . . . this is the worst year ever for large ivory seizures,” said Milliken.

Most cases involve ivory being smuggled from Africa into Asia, where growing wealth has fed the desire for ivory ornaments and for rhino horn that is used in traditional medicine, though scientists have proved it has no medicinal value. Traffic said Asian crime syndicates were increasingly involved in poaching and the illegal ivory trade across Africa, a trend that coincides with growing Asian investment on the continent.

“The escalation in ivory trade and elephant and rhino killing is being driven by the Asian syndicates that are now firmly enmeshed within African societies,” Milliken said. “There are more Asians than ever in the history of the continent, and this is one of the repercussions.”

Reports from Central Africa were particularly alarming and if current levels of poaching were sustained, some countries, such as Chad, could potentially lose their elephant populations in the very near future, said Jason Bell, director of the International Fund for Elephant Welfare.

In Tanzania’s Selous Game Reserve alone, some 50 elephants a month are being killed, according to the Washington-based Environmental Investigation Agency.  It has been a disastrous year for elephants, perhaps the worst since ivory sales were banned in 1989 to save the world’s largest land animals from extinction.

According to the wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC, a record number of seizures of elephant tusks from at least 2,500 dead animals shows that organised crime networks, in particular Asian syndicates, are increasingly involved in the illegal ivory trade and the poaching that feeds it.

Endangered elephant butchered for TCM

(Photo by Michael Nichols)

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Some of the seized tusks came from old stockpiles, the elephants having been killed years ago. It is not clear how many elephants were recently killed in Africa for their tusks, but experts are alarmed.

TRAFFIC’s elephant and rhino expert Tom Milliken thinks criminals may have the upper hand in the war to save rare and endangered animals: “The escalation in ivory trade and elephant and rhino killing is being driven by the Asian syndicates that are now firmly enmeshed within African societies.”

Miliken said: “There are more Asians than ever before in the history of the continent, and this is one of the repercussions.”

Most cases involve ivory being smuggled from Africa into Asia, where growing wealth has fed the desire for ivory ornaments and for rhino horn that is used in traditional medicine, though scientists have proved it has no medicinal value.

All statistics are not yet in, and no one can say how much ivory is getting through undetected, but “what is clear is the dramatic increase in the number of large-scale seizures, over 800kg in weight, that have taken place in 2011,” TRAFFIC said in a statement.

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Asian Elephant Parts Trade:

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In the most recent case, Malaysian authorities seized hundreds of African elephant tusks on December 21 worth $1.3m that were being shipped to Cambodia, hidden in containers of handicrafts from Kenya.  Most large seizures have originated from Kenyan or Tanzanian ports, TRAFFIC said.

Fifty elephants a month are being killed, their tusks hacked off, in Tanzania’s Selous Game Reserve, according to the Washington-based Environmental Investigation Agency.

With shipments so large, criminals have taken to shipping them by sea instead of by air, and falsifying documents with the help of corrupt officials, monitors said.

Milliken said some of the seized ivory has been identified as coming from government-owned stockpiles, made up of confiscated tusks and those of dead elephants, in another sign of corruption.

“In 23 years of compiling ivory seizure data … this is the worst year ever for large ivory seizures,” said Milliken.

Africa’s elephant population was estimated at between 5 million and 10 million before the European colonisation era. Massive poaching for the ivory trade in the 1980s halved the remaining number of African elephants to about 600,000.

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 Tusk seizures double in last year as syndicates continue to undermine 1989 ban on sale of ivory.

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It’s a big business year for illegal African ivory. A record number of ivory seizures were made globally this year, produced by an enormous surge in elephant poaching.

Central Africa is most brutally affected, with most of the illegal African ivory collected for China or Thailand where most of the tusks are made into jewelry and art carvings. Tom Milliken in Zimbabwe manages Traffic, which operates an Elephant Trade Information System. He says

“A conservative estimate of the weight of ivory seized in the 13 largest seizures in 2011 puts the figure at more than 23 tonnes, a figure that probably represents some 2,500 elephants, possibly more.”

The Guardian reports that Millliken also says that the 13 large-scale seizures of over 800kg of ivory recorded in 2011, compares with just six seized in 2010. He notes that’s the largest amount of seizures in the more than two decades since he’s been operating his database.

The increased poaching and illegal trade are the result of China’s decision to make an investment drive into Africa to obtain the mineral and energy resources it needs to fuel its economic growth.

Milliken comments:

“We’ve reached a point in Africa’s history where there are more Asian nationals on the continent than ever before. They have contacts with the end-use market and now they are at the source in Africa. This is all adding up to an unprecedented assault on elephants and other wildlife”

Such a heinous crime invokes capital punishment – eye for and eye beheading

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He concedes it is possible that some of the ivory getting into illegal markets could be coming from African government stockpiles from old seizures. But Milliken points out that trade figures and wildlife monitors show a rise in elephant killings. Most of the kilings he notes are occurring in the Congo, but poaching is also going on in Zimbabwe, Zambia, northern Mozambique, Tanzania and Kenya.

In 1989, a global ban placed on the ivory trade was credited with stemming the unstoppable slaughter of African elephants in Africa’s central region. Since then, African governments have sanctioned occasional auctions from its stockpiles.

It’s believed Africa’s elephant population varies widely from 400,000 to 700,000. Some southern African states like Botswana have large and growing populations and in South Africa burgeoning elephant populations are raising concerns that they are damaging the environment.

[Sources:  ‘Asian gangs fuelling spike in tusk trade’, The Associated Press, 20111231, ^http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/asian-gangs-fuelling-spike-in-tusk-trade/story-e6frg6so-1226233555088, ‘Thousands of Africa’s elephants killed for record ivory stash’ by Joan Firstenberg, 20111229, ^http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/316904, ‘Worst year in decades for endangered elephant‘, 20111229, ^http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2011/12/2011122918518597763.html]

 

 

About TRAFFIC

TRAFFIC, the wildlife trade monitoring network, works to ensure that trade in wild plants and animals is not a threat to the conservation of nature.

Check website:  ^http://www.traffic.org/

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‘There is a war taking place on our planet for which there are no headlines, no demonstrations, and no voice. It is a war against some of the most endangered species on our planet and it takes place in some of the most majestic and unexplored biospheres of the world. Unseen and untouched by the Western world, these places are well-suited to commit atrocious acts in hiding.’

~ Bush Warriors (‘A global voice for wildlife’)
^http://bushwarriors.wordpress.com/about-bush-warriors/

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Traditional Chinese Medicine – a backward asian cult that must be eradicated!

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TCM is 5000 years old.  Its quacks profit from promising cures for headaches, skin disorders, irritable bowel syndrome, constipation and diarrhoea, stress, allergies, and impotence.  Of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) that relies on slaughtering endangered wildlife for their body parts for potions, it promotes a sick barbaric trade. It is a witchdoctor cult.

In the West, when something happens we ask what we can do about it.  In the East when something happens they ask what has caused it. Traditional Chinese Medicine looks for the underlying causes of imbalances and patterns of disharmony within the body, blabs on about Yin and Yang, then goes out and slaughters endangered wildlife for their body parts to make a dodgy quack potion.

Boycott Traditional Chinese Medicine.  It is illegal by driving the illegal trade in endangered species.  It is more barbaric than the child sex trade.

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Boycott Sydney Acupuncture
^http://www.sydneytcm.com/herbal_medicine.html
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Boycott Australian Natural Medicine Centre
^http://www.traditionalchinesemedicine.com.au/services-chinese-herbal-medicine-sydney.php

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Boycott all Traditional Chinese Medicine quacks.

Australian model Elle Macpherson does.  Since 2010 she says she regrets any distress she may caused by jokingly advocating the use of powdered rhino horn, a traditional Chinese medicine that is banned worldwide, during an interview with The Sunday Times Magazine, the Australian model said that she had tasted rhino horn and that it had “done the job“.   The model told news.com.au today that she had “never knowingly consumed or encouraged the use or consumption of any products which contain material derived from endangered species”.

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Elephants in defensive huddle

©Photo by Charles Foley

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This article was initially published by Tigerquoll 20090622 onCanDoBetter.net under the article title ‘Rees’ ‘red hot go’ hunting in our National Parks‘.  It has been modified somewhat.

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New South Wales Premier Rees is set to pass into law a ‘Game and Feral Animal Control Amendment Bill 2009‘ to permit recreational hunters shooting everything and anything in protected National Parks across NSW, including native wildlife.

Controlling feral animals is a science, not a sport. Rees’ passion for sport is compromised by influential cronies and naivety. Problem is: Rees has no knowledge, experience in or aptitude for science. His inaugural “red hot go” says it all and threatens to be his legacy.

Australian Wood Duck (Chenonetta jubata)

(a native species not protected)

©Photo by Ákos Lumnitzer (with permission), ^http://www.amatteroflight.com/

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Be clear, the Game and Feral Animal Control Amendment Bill 2009, Schedule 3, Part 2 lists the following Australian native fauna as free ‘game‘, including:

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Native Ducks:

Australian Shelduck (or Mountain Duck) (Tadorna tadornoides)
Australian Wood Duck (or Maned Duck) (Chenonetta jubata)
Black Duck (or Pacific Black Duck) (Anas superciliosa)
Blue-winged Shoveler (or Australasian Shoveler) (Anas rhynchotis)
Chestnut Teal (Anas castanea)
Grass Duck (or Plumed Whistling Duck) (Dendrocygna eytoni)
Grey Teal (Anas gibberifrons)
Hardhead Duck (or White-eyed Duck) (Aythya australia)
Pink-eared Duck (Malacorhynchus membranaceus)
Water Whistling Duck (or Wandering Whistling Duck, Whistling or Wandering Tree Duck) (Dendrocygna arcuata)

Native Quails:

Brown Quail (Coturnix ypsilophora)
Stubble Quail (Coturnix pectoralis)

Native Birds:

Australian White Ibis (Threskiornis molucca)
Black Swan (Cygnus atratus)
Common Bronzewing Pigeon (Phaps chalcoptera)
Galah (Eolophus roseicapilla)
Little Corella (Cacatua sanguinea)
Long-billed Corella (Cacatua tenuirostris)
Purple Swamphen (Porphyrio porphyrio)
Straw Necked Ibis (Threskiornis spinicollis)
Sulphur Crested Cockatoo (Cacatua galerita)
Topknot Pigeon (Lopholaimus antarcticus)

Kangaroos:

Eastern Grey Kangaroo (Macropus giganteus)
Euro (Macropus robustus)
Red Kangaroo (Macropus rufus)
Western Grey Kangaroo (Macropus fuliginosus)

Bennetts Wallaby (Red-Necked Wallaby) (Macropus rufogriseus)

is native to Tasmania, but is not protected

(© Photo Burrard-Lucas)  ^http://www.burrard-lucas.com/

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If the proposed legislation is genuinely and solely to control feral animals, the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) as delegated custodian of National Parks in New South Wales, must first answer these questions:

1. Why are native animals included amongst the ferals?
2. What action in fact has the NPWS undertaken over the last 20 years to control ferals in National Parks across NSW?
3. Which measures have been successful at dealing with the target species and which have not?
4. Which measures have caused a detrimental impact on non-target species?
5. What interstate or overseas model/case study does NPWS rely upon to justify why shooting is the preferred method of control?
6. What standard of identification test is imposed on would be feral shooters?
7. What standard of marksmanship is required and what NPWS-approval system would be in place?
8. What monitoring is to be conducted of these shooters and by whom?
9. What happens to the carcasses to prevent disease?

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If NPWS was serious about controlling feral animals in National Parks, it would have a permanent programme to specifically deal with the key threatening processes that involve ferals, namely to target:

• Competition and grazing by the feral European rabbit
• Competition and habitat degradation by feral goats
• Environmental degradation caused by feral deer
• Predation by feral cats
• Predation by the European Red Fox
• Predation, habitat degradation, competition and disease transmission by feral pigs.

SOURCE: DEC, ^http://www.threatenedspecies.environment.nsw.gov.au/tsprofile/pas_ktp.aspx

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These feral species need to be the primary target of eradication. Professional contract shooting may be an option, but it is not for ‘weekend warrriors‘.  The solution must be science-based not sport-based.

According to the Australian Wildlife Conservancy:

“Australia has the worst mammal extinction record in the world – 27 mammals have become extinct in the last 200 years. No other country or continent has such a tragic record of mammal extinctions.”

 

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In June 2009 the Game and Feral Animal Control Amendment Bill was introduced into the NSW Upper House by Shooters Party MP Robert Brown, that would pave the way for hunting in national parks, private game reserves, the hunting of native species and the growth of recreational shooting on public and private lands (Sydney Morning Herald, page 6, 12 June 2009). Lee called on the Environment Minister Carmel Tebbutt to reject outright a new bill from the Shooters Party.

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The NSW Government has withdrawn its support for the bill, but it is still before the NSW Parliament!

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[Source:  Australian Greens Party Senator Lee Rhiannon, ^http://archive.leerhiannon.org.au/portfolios/firearms/firearms/atct_topic_view?b_start:int=10&-C=]

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Overview of the Game and Feral Animal Control Amendment Bill 2009:

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The object of this Bill is to amend the Game and Feral Animal Control Act 2002 (the Act) as follows:

• To enable the Minister responsible for national park estate land to make that land available for the hunting of game animals by licensed game hunters
• To expand the list of game animals that may be hunted in accordance with the Act and, in the case of any native game animals that are listed, to impose special requirements in relation to the hunting of those animals by licensed game hunters
• To provide for the operation of private game reserves under the authority of a licence granted by the (NSW) Game Council
• To make it an offence to approach persons who are lawfully hunting on declared public hunting land or to interfere with persons lawfully hunting game animals
• To make a number of other amendments of an administrative, minor or consequential nature..

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[Source:  ^http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/prod/parlment/nswbills.nsf/1d4800a7a88cc2abca256e9800121f01/6dce0470707e4f4bca2575b4001bd3f1/$FILE/b2009-031-d10-House.pdf]

 

Support from the Coalition of Law Abiding Sporting Shooters Inc (CLASS):

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‘For too long large areas of bushland has been locked away (aka protected from exploitation) as National Parks, State Forests etc. In many of those parks and forests invasive plants, such as blackberries, bracken, lantana, etc have grown unchecked, resulting in a great unbalance among local flora leading to reduced biodiversity among fauna. Permitting conservation hunting in those areas will help restore the balance, while permitting controlled harvesting of native and introduced species for food, trophies or fur/leather….the Game and Feral Animal Control Amendment Bill 2009 will go a long way to utilising the inherent value of sustainable resources which would otherwise be wasted.’

[Source:  ^http://www.c-l-a-s-s.net/game-bill.htm]

According to CLASS, wildlife in National Parks are wasted resources

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Selected background articles at the time:

‘Government deal to open national parks to shooters’

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[Source: Erik Jensen, 20091021, Sydney Morning Herald ^http://www.smh.com.au/environment/conservation/government-deal-to-open-national-parks-to-shooters-20091020-h6yt.html]

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Hunters will be allowed to shoot animals in national parks for the first time under a deal offered to the Shooters’ Party by the NSW Government.  The Herald understands the deal would modify a private member’s bill introduced by a member of the Shooters’ Party, Robert Brown, to allow hunting in 13 national parks if the Shooters’ Party removed demands for enclosed game reserves or safari parks from its draft legislation.

”We have had discussions with senior Labor people,” Mr Brown said. ”I’m not going to confirm or deny that we’re any closer to a resolution … My bottom line is the whole bill must be passed or we continue to withdraw our support for the Government.”

The Shooters’ Party has been holding the Government to ransom since introducing the bill in June and yesterday voted against the Government on all legislation in the upper house.  Negotiations on the bill had broken down with the Premier’s chief of staff, Graeme Wedderburn – who Mr Brown described as ”tits on a bull” – but resumed in September, less than a week after John Robertson took over the environment portfolio. The Treasurer, Eric Roozendaal, one of Mr Robertson’s factional allies, took part in negotiations.

According to Mr Brown, the pair offered a memorandum of understanding that would allow hunting in national parks along the Queensland and South Australian borders. But he said the proposed parks were too far away.

”The closest one to Sydney was 10 hours’ drive,” he said. ”That [offer] was there to f— us, as far as I’m concerned.”

The Greens’ spokeswoman on animal welfare, Lee Rhiannon, said the deal was intended to allow free passage of Government legislation through the upper house but may cost Labor seats at the next election – including that of the former environment minister Carmel Tebbutt.

”We’re about to come into the busiest legislation time of the year. They’re going to have to pass 30 bills in a week,” she said. ”If they don’t have the Shooters’ on side, they’ll actually have to talk to other people. [But] as well as being ethically wrong and environmentally damaging, they will be inflicting enormous pain and damage to their own party … For Tebbutt and [Verity] Firth, they could well be putting an expiry date on their political careers.”

The acting executive officer of the National Parks Association of NSW, Bev Smiles, said her office had received an overwhelming amount of correspondence criticising the bill.

”We were hoping the Shooters were having some other face-saving deals with 12-year-olds and airguns,” Ms Smiles said, with reference to another bill the party is introducing.

”[But] with a new Minister for the Environment having an upper house position rather than an electorate, it’s all political. This particular deal has probably created more response from a broader cross-section of the community than any other issue I’ve been involved in.”

Neither Mr Robertson nor Ms Tebbutt would comment on the deal. Mr Brown said he would continue to frustrate government policy until his bill was passed in its entirety.

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‘Greens oppose recreational hunting in national parks’

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[Source: Marian Wilkinson, Environment Editor, Sydney Morning Herald, 20090612, ^http://www.smh.com.au/environment/conservation/greens-oppose-recreational-hunting-in-national-parks-20090611-c508.html]

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A new bill that would open the state’s national parks and reserves to recreational hunters who could be licensed to shoot native animals and birds has been condemned by the NSW Greens, the Liberal Party and environmental groups.

The NSW Shooters Party has introduced the private members bill to Parliament. It allows for private game reserves to be set up for professional safari hunters, overturning NSW laws that prevent the enclosing of animals on land solely for hunting purposes.  A Shooters Party MP, Robert Brown, said the bill would not allow the hunting of threatened species and, in the case of native waterfowl, licensed game hunters would be required to pass an official identification test of the ducks.

But the Opposition’s environment spokeswoman, Catherine Cusack, attacked the bill, saying key elements were unacceptable. “We totally reject the idea of shooting in national parks and the concept of shooting native animals in national parks is repugnant to almost anyone.”

Among the birds and animals that could be hunted are the Australian wood duck, the chestnut teal and grey teal ducks, galahs, corellas and eastern grey, western grey and red kangaroos.  The Shooters Party hopes to gain the Government’s support for the bill but the Environment Minister, Carmel Tebbutt, is already signalling she will oppose key provisions in it, including allowing recreational hunters into national parks and the hunting of native animals.  Her spokeswoman said the Government would consider the bill’s merits but it did not support “the hunting of native animals or hunting in national parks“.

Mr Brown said the bill drew on many of the recommendations of a government-backed review of existing laws undertaken with staff from the NSW Department of Primary Industries and the Game Council.

He said that under his bill, the environment minister would be responsible for declaring any national park or reserve open to hunters.  He told the Herald that opening national parks to recreational hunters to shoot feral animals would save the Government significant amounts of money and the hunting of native animals and birds in parks would require ministerial approval.

The Greens leader, Lee Rhiannon, called on Ms Tebbutt to reject the entire bill, not only the provisions concerning national parks. “Opposing shooting in national parks may well be a tactic Labor is using to divert attention from the fact it will support other equally regressive changes being pushed by the Shooters Party,” Ms Rhiannon said.

The Greens are also concerned about provisions in the bill that would make it an offence to approach anyone or interfere with anyone “lawfully hunting game animals” on any land that had been declared public hunting land.

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‘Shooting in national parks dead: Macdonald’

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[Source: AAP, 20090729, ^http://www.smh.com.au/environment/conservation/shooting-in-national-parks-dead-macdonald-20090729-e1an.html]

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A deal with the Shooters’ Party that would allow hunting in national parks is unlikely, the NSW Government says.  The Government withdrew its support for the proposal last month, prompting the Shooters to retract their support for legislation to privatise NSW Lotteries management.  Primary Industries Minister Ian Macdonald said today the national parks proposal was all but dead in the water.

“The Government has been considering these issues for some time and has taken a policy position that they don’t want that type of shooting activity in national parks,” Mr Macdonald told reporters in Sydney.

“I wouldn’t say it is likely to change, but there again, there’s nothing in life that’s immutable.”

Kangaroos illegally shot through SE Forests National Park

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Game and Feral Animal Control Repeal Bill 2010 – lapsed

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On 23rd June 2010, then NSW Greens MP Lee Rhiannon introduced a private members bill to the NSW Parliament,  ‘Game and Feral Animal Control Repeal Bill 2010’, designed to repeal the Game and Feral Animal Control Act 2002 and its regulations, to abolish the Game Council and to prohibit hunting for sporting or recreational purposes on national park estate land, Crown land and State forests.  However although the Repeal Bill reached a second reading stage, the then Labor Premier Kristine Keneally suspended (proroged (suspended) the sitting of the NSW Parliament ahead of an election, and the Bill lapsed on 2nd September 201o.

It needs to be reinstated forthwith!

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Overview of Bill

The objects of this Bill are as follows:

• To repeal the Game and Feral Animal Control Act 2002 and the regulations made under that Act
• To expressly abolish the Game Council and provide for the transfer of its assets, rights and liabilities to the Crown
• To prohibit hunting for sporting or recreational purposes on national park estate land, Crown land and State forests

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‘Greens’ Bill abolishes Game Council, ends hunting in State Forests, NP‘

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[Source:  The Australian Greens, 20100624, ^http://greens.org.au/content/greens-bill-abolishes-game-council-ends-hunting-state-forests-np]

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Greens MP Lee Rhiannon was last night given urgent leave by the NSW Upper House to introduce her private members bill to abolish the NSW Game Council and prohibit recreational hunting in national parks, state forests and public land.

The Game and Feral Animal Control Repeal Bill 2010 is now available.

“Feral animals are a significant environmental problem in Australia but the Games Council, set up as a favour by the Labor Party to the Shooters Party to shore up their vote, is a bankrupt vehicle for managing invasive species,” Ms Rhiannon said.  “The more than $11 million in public funding and millions in loans spent propping up the Gaming Council since 2002 would be better spent developing an evidenced based, strategic plan using professionals to tackle invasive species.

“The Game Council was set up to be self funding, yet the Auditor General has noted its ongoing financial difficulties, with the government being forced to prop it up with loans and additional recurrent funding to manage ongoing debt problems.

 

“Former Premier Bob Carr’s establishment of the Game Council in 2002 was an act of unashamed capitulation to the gun and hunting lobbies, legitimising recreational animal cruelty while risking an increase in feral animal populations.

 

“The Greens Bill also prohibits recreational hunting in state forests, national parks and Crown Land.

 

“As part of the deal making between Labor and the Shooters Party, NSW’s state forests have been lately opened up to recreational shooters, risking public safety.  “There is still currently a Shooters Party private members bill before parliament which if passed would broaden where recreational shooters can hunt to include national parks.

 

“The NSW government has agreed to various demands by the Shooters Party for changes to gun ownership laws in recent years and there is no guarantee that shooting in national parks will not be next on the list.  “In the interests of the environment and good government NSW Labor should support the Greens’ bill to abolish the Game Council and ensure the professional and scientific management of invasive species in NSW,” Ms Rhiannon said.

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It’s 2011 and we’re still killing Tigers!

[‘Police Seize Firearms Used by Wildlife Officials to Fight Off Poachers‘ by Sarah Pappin, Bushwarriors, 20100716,

^http://bushwarriors.wordpress.com/tag/south-china-tiger/]

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In only the last eight years, the Bengal Tiger population has decreased by over 61% and is now frighteningly close to extinction with only 1,400 of the cats left.  Habitat loss and poaching are to blame for their decline.  Nagarhole Tiger Reserve is home to the highest density of these tigers in all of India, attracting a heavy and constant flow of poachers.  Forest officers tasked with protecting the National Park’s tiger population (and other wildlife) from the poachers are now impeded by a devastating combination of muddy monsoon conditions and a complete lack of defense.

Comments:

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Arvind Telkar (20100717):  “Poaching is one of the heinous crimes, which must be dealt with a very severe punishment. The law should be changed in such a manner, that he must think hundred times before aiming any wild animal.”

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Franklin Joel (20100717):   “Thank you very much for sharing,I am sharing this on my wall. Please do something to Stop Poaching, My eyes are wet seeing these pictures..The Hon. court should pronounce the highest punishment to these people….”

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Anne Maher (20100719):     “Absolute tragedy. Decisions made by idiots. They must be in on the corrupt poaching activities to leave the Wildlife rangers and the Tigers so unprotected.  Spare us from brainless individuals.”

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Amay (20100903):    “What cruel people they are the biggest criminals i hav ever seen in my life how badly these people hav cut the tigers they truly deserve a capital punishment.”

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Zachary  (20101118):    “What the hell is wrong with these people?! why don’t they do something to stop this? I don’t give a damn if they think that certain parts have special healing or good luck charms, this is wrong!  This is just digusting.”

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An effective tool against poachers

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An effective but under-resourced force against poachers

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Mass murder is considered possibly the worst crime that can be committed.

But there is a worse crime than mass murder and worse than war crime, and worse than crimes against humanity.  Murder; extermination; torture; rape; political, racial, or religious persecution and other inhumane acts reach the threshold of crimes against humanity only if they are part of a widespread or systematic practice.

Even worse than crimes against humanity is the extreme extension of mass murder – genocide.  Genocide is “the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group”.  What crime could possible be more evil than the willful targeting of an entire part of the human species in order to systematically wipe it out of existence?  – such as what has been attempted upon the Jews, Armenians, Rwandan Tutsis, Bosnian Muslims, Sri Lankan Tamils.

Armenian Genocide 1915

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“More inhumanity has been done by man himself than any other of nature’s causes.”

~ (1673) by Samuel von Pufendorf

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Yet still, there is a worse crime.   It is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an entire species from the planet. In the same vein as genocide, is human-caused extinction or ‘speciescide‘, a relatively new concept.  It is new concept because humans have only recently recognised species extinction as a problem.  It is also a new concept because the global rate of non-human species extinction is increasing at an accelerating rate.

‘Speciescide‘ is a derived concept from the ecophilosophy of ‘speciesism‘ being a prejudice manifested as a widespread discrimination practised by humans against other species (Richard D. Ryder, 1973).

Yet deliberately causing a species to become regionally extinct, extinct in the wild or globally extinct, are not yet recognised as crimes legally.  Human-caused extinction of a species is not yet a criminal offense.

Yet it is the most immoral crime that can be inflicted on the planet.  Even if a nuclear holocaust wiped out 6 billion of the human species, there would still be one billion surviving from which to perpetuate the species.  But wiping out an entire species is absolute, irreversible, extincting.

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide establishes “genocide” as an international crime, which signatory nations “undertake to prevent and punish.”

It says that genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

• Killing members of the group;
• Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
• Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
• Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
• Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

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Speciescide is a worse crime than described by the above definition of genocide and even worse than the previous “the deliberate and systematic destruction..” definition.

Speciescide is ecological genocide.  It entails annihilating very member of a species until there is no surviving individual on the planet – the entire species becomes globally extinct.  They will never be seen again on the planet.  Speciescide is thus the worst hate crime possible.  Speciescide is what Tasmanian colonists did to the Thylacene.   It is what Traditional Chinese Medicine has just committed upon Africa’s Western Black Rhinoceros.

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‘Africa’s Western black rhino declared extinct’

[Source: ‘Africa’s Western black rhino declared extinct’, Los Angeles Times, 20111010, ^http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2011/11/africa-western-black-rhino-extinct-conservation.html]

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Africa’s Western black rhino has officially been declared extinct and other subspecies of rhinoceros could follow, according to the latest review by a leading conservation organization.

Western Black Rhino and her calf – never again on the planet

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The International Union for Conservation of Nature listed the Northern white rhino in central Africa as “possibly extinct in the wild” and the Javan rhino as “probably extinct” in Vietnam.

The organization blamed a lack of political support for conservation efforts in many rhino habitats, international organized crime groups targeting the animal, increasing illegal demand for rhino horns and commercial poaching.

“In the case of both the Western black rhino and the Northern white rhino, the situation could have had very different results if the suggested conservation measures had been implemented,” Simon Stuart, chairman of IUCN’s Species

Survival Commission, said in a statement Thursday. “These measures must be strengthened now, specifically managing habitats in order to improve breeding performance, preventing other rhinos from fading into extinction.”

The last Javan rhino in Vietnam is believed to have been killed by poachers in 2010, reducing the species to a tiny, declining population in Java.

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The rhinos were among more than 61,900 animal and plant species reviewed for the IUCN’s latest Red List of Threatened Species. A quarter of the mammals on the Red List were found to be at risk of extinction. But the organization said there

have also been conservation successes.  Fewer than 100 Southern white rhinos survived at the end of the 19th century, but the population in the wild is now believed to number over 20,000.  Numerous other species are threatened, including many types of plants.  The Chinese water fir, which used to be widespread throughout China and Vietnam, was listed as “critically endangered,” due primarily to expanding intensive agriculture.  The IUCN also listed five out of eight tuna species as “threatened” or “near threatened,” and added 26 recently discovered amphibians to the Red List, including the blessed poison frog.

“This update offers both good and bad news on the status of many species around the world,” said Jane Smart, director of the IUCN Global Species Program. “We have the knowledge that conservation works if executed in a timely manner, yet, without strong political will in combination with targeted efforts and resources, the wonders of nature and the services it provides can be lost forever.”

Stumpy’s lifeless body, her life stolen by poachers

(Photo credit: Lewa Wildlife Conservancy)

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‘Stumpy was the oldest female black rhino at the Conservancy, and had spent 26 years enjoying her freedom on the property.  Her eighth calf, only a year and a half old, was dealt a minor wound to the neck in the incident and will survive.  Coincidentally, on the day Stumpy drew her last breath, a first breath was taken by a newborn  rhino at the rhino refuge.’

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[Source: ^http://bushwarriors.wordpress.com/tag/rhino-horn-trade/page/6/]

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‘DEAD MEN DON’T DEAL’ Campaign

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Rhinos have been slaughtered to near extinction to satisfy the demand of rhino horn products in China and Vietnam. All based on rhino horn cultural myths. It has the same effect as chewing ones fingernails.

China is costing the world its rhinos.

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• It is seen as a remedy for nearly everything (evil possession included) in China and Vietnam
• China and Vietnam fund international organized poaching teams to kill rhino.
• Science proves there is no medicinal value about rhino horn.
• Rhino is said to be the most endangered species to date.

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However, even if Chinese trade makers are aware that the Rhino population is on near brink to extinction; the continual demand for rhino horn persists.

Unless a serious measure evolves, Chinese businessmen will not stop.

(Ed:  This is speciescide)

So, the idea sprung to mind to form a campaign that will create a cultural scare. Namely, the DEAD MEN DON’T DEAL campaign that revolves around the sudden deaths of dealers. Without knowing who or how these smugglers are tortured it will create a cultural scare amoungst those who are guilty.  The idea derives from laying revenge out into the air. The revenge of the rhino. Getting back at those who took away a lot of the rhino population. The main objective here is to create fear for those who are involved in the illegal dealing of rhino horn.

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Dehorning

The demand for Rhino has become so high that conservation officials have gotten to the point where they actually saw off their horns so rhino poachers will have no cause to kill them. These desperate measures have raised questions if removing Rhino horn impairs the rhino’s ability to survive or reproduce; one usage of the horn is to defend a mother’s young from predators.

Many parks and game reserved have battled the on going poaching around this endangered specie. Dr David Mabunda- Chief executive of SANParks stated that it is no longer appropriate to refer to this illegal action as poaching anymore as the levels of sophistication, violence and money behind it continue to raise. He also stated that the country has been working hard to bring this nearly extinct specie back, even if it requires one to become the last standing man.

Endangered stats continue to rise as reports keep coming in. In January an epidemic occurred where poachers were found using aircraft to hunt down rhino in Harare-Zimbabwe, as demand in Asia was great due to medicinal benefit growth. 7 endangered rhinos were killed, this representing one third of 22 rhinos poached throughout 2010.  South Africa has about 1000 surviving rhino’s n which extra help for their existence has been sent, last year 333 rhinos were poached in South Africa nearly three times as many then 2009. However, 2011 proves to have lowered the killings. South Africa has over 21 000 more rhinos then any country in the world which puts the country as well as the animals in greater danger.

Demands in Vietnam have been noticed to increase. The black market offers huge amounts of money for trading these species for Traditional Chinese Medicine such as high blood pressure and other impairments. Experts state that as little as 5 rhinos remain in Vietnam.  South Africa has become internationally known for banning rhino horn distribution.

World efforts to ‘demystify’ the medicinal affects of rhino horn fail to reach Asia and thus the uproar continues.

[Source: ^http://savetherhino.wordpress.com/]

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“For one species to mourn the death of another is a new thing under the sun. The Cro-Magnon who slew the last mammoth thought only of steaks. The sportsman who shot the last passenger pigeon thought only of his prowess. The sailor who clubbed the last auck thought of nothing at all. But we, who have lost our pigeons, mourn the loss. Had the funeral been ours, the pigeons would hardly have mourned us. In this fact, rather than in Mr. DuPont’s nylons or Mr. Vannevar Bush’s bombs, lies objective evidence of our superiority over the beasts.”

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~  Aldo Leopold: ‘A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There‘, 1948, Oxford University Press, New York, 1987, pp. 109-110.

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Further Reading:

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[1]  Book:   ‘ Tiger Bone and Rhino Horn:  The Destruction of Wildlife for Traditional Chinese Medicine‘

by Richard Ellis
Format:    Hardcover, 294 pages, Revised and Tea Edition
Release Date:     27 May 2005

‘In parts of Korea and China, moon bears, black but for the crescent-shaped patch of white on their chests, are captured in the wild and imprisoned in squeeze cages, where steel catheters drain their bile as a cure for ailments ranging from upset stomach to skin burns. Rhinos are being illegally poached for their horns, as are tigers for their bones, thought to improve virility. Booming economies and growing wealth in parts of Asia are increasing demand for these precious medicinals while already endangered species are being sacrificed for temporary treatments for nausea and erectile dysfunction. Richard Ellis, one of the world’s foremost experts in wildlife extinction, brings his alarm to the pages of “Tiger Bone & Rhino Horn”, in the hope that through an exposure of this drug trade, something can be done to save the animals most direly threatened. Trade in animal parts for traditional Chinese medicine is a leading cause of species endangerment in Asia, and poaching is increasing at an alarming rate. Although most of traditional Chinese medicine is not a cause for concern because it relies on herbs and other plants, as wildlife habitats are shrinking for the hunted large species, the situation is becoming ever more critical. Ellis tells us what has been done successfully, and contemplates what can and must be done to save these rare animals from extinction.’.

[Source:  ^http://www.fishpond.com.au/Books/Tiger-Bone-and-Rhino-Horn-Richard-Ellis/9781559635325] .

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This article was initially published by Tigerquoll onCanDoBetter.net on 20090524:

 

Australia’s native kangaroo – targeted by poachers and mass slaughter encouraged by Australian governments

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The Australian outback town of Mitchell lies in the Western Downs region of southern Queensland on the Warrego Highway just shy of 600 km west of Brisbane on the way to Charleville. Situated on the Maranoa River, the town of Mitchell was named in honour of the 19th Century explorer, and the town emerged as a pastoral town out of the farming of grains, beef and sheep. Tourism has become a strong drawcard to Mitchell and especially to its Great Artesian Spa.

But more recently, Mitchell’s fame has been lowered to infamy with it taking on a reputation for becoming the home of the kangaroo slaughter trade.

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“You see a lot of utes in Mitchell and the towns just like it that emerge from the roadside only to disappear again as you drive west through southern Queensland on the Warrego Highway. You can tell the ones that are driven by kangaroo shooters. They have racks for guns and long spikes upon which the freshly eviscerated carcasses are placed.  One, parked just around the corner, has black steel bullbars with the words “roo raper” cut into them.”

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‘Besides the slaughter of Australia’s iconic kangaroos for pet meat and indeed export for human consumption in fancy restaurant,

it is the sanitary conditions that is shocking and a life threatening time bomb’

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Following the international biolab standards of Silliker, animal liberation chief, Mark Pearson says “the last time we did swabs here and in Charleville, they were alarmingly high in E.coli.“

‘The chiller doors aren’t locked. When Ben-Ami opens the first, problems are immediately apparent. Bright drips from fresh kills are spotting onto another layer of older, duller, deader blood, which is particularly thick nearest the front. The lip of the door frame is so thick and sticky, the red’s turned a dull, dark brown. Hairs are stuck to it.

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‘The carcasses are packed as tightly as possible.

They hang from hooks by their legs,

their heads and tails missing,

gaping rents where their stomachs once were,

leg muscles tensed visibly;

severed necks poke into gut cavities;

hundreds of paws hang in a grisly reach towards the bloody floor.

According to their tags,

they’re four days dead.’

“These are quite young ones, heads cut off quite low,” Pearson says, pointing to a nub of spine that’s jutting out just above the shoulder.

“Most of them are cut too far back.” To decapitate in this way requires significantly more effort than using the traditional method, with a slice directly beloiw the jawline. It also makes bad financial sense to remove most of the neck , as harvesters are paid by weight. Proof, claim the activists, that an illegal shot in the jaw or neck has been covered up.

‘Pearson points to the floor. “They’re bringing in new carcasses and hanging them above the floor, which has blood from old carcasses. Blood is a Petri dish for disease and contamination. This is a major breach of any export abattoir standards.” he points to a small grey kangaroo that is caked elbow to paw in blood and dirt. “That’s from the evisceration,” he says. That’s all supposed to fall to the ground. And don’t forget, these would have been on the back [of a ute] for four, five, six hours, and it would have been 20 degrees. When you consider this is export meat…Uh-oh…”

Besides Mitchell, the roo rapers store their roo chillers at Charleville, Augathella and Blackall. The practice in outback Queensland is widespread.

To struggling towns in the outback like Mitchell, kangaroo meat is big business. “The Kangaroo Industry Industry Association of Australia says theirs is a business worth $270 million a year that directly employs about 4000 people” many in remote areas.”

[Source: Sydney Morning Herald, Good Weekend magazine, 20090523]

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AusHunt, a website dedicated to hunting in Australia and it’s hunters, advocates:

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“Kangaroo shooting is a unique job and many people are involved in one way or another in Australia’s kangaroo industry. My advice for the wannabe ‘roo shooter? You’ll need to make a few phone calls to chiller-box operators in various rural centers to evaluate the impact another ‘roo shooter would have there. Then decide on a location.

Before doing anything, take a week off work and go out with a qualified, professional ‘roo shooter and see what is actually involved.

Australia’s kangaroo industry is one of the only jobs in the world where a person can legally shoot wild animals full-time for a living.

Kangaroo shooting is a tough life with long hours, and a certain danger element. Depending on weather conditions (wind, rain), phases of the moon and drought, the kangaroo shooter may have a good or bad night. It can be a very irregular income earner.

Many shooters struggle to make money, some make a living, and a few make good profits of A$100,000/annum +. Dedication is the name of the game …. going out night after night and avoiding the temptations of the local pub. The upside is that the shooter is very independent and can lead an exciting outdoors life, totally using his wits, determination and shooting prowess to make money.

Okay, you like what you see and you’ve done your courses. Move to the rural center that you have selected and get a day job there, whether it be pumping gas or whatever. Then, start looking around for properties on which to shoot and start off by shooting week-ends. See how you go, then move on to fulltime when you know that you can make money. Good luck!”

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‘Kangaroo harvesting under the spotlight’

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Animal welfare activists are hoping public outrage over the slaughter of cattle in Indonesia can be redirected towards a new target – the commercial harvest of kangaroos.  But activists’ involvement with research at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), has sparked a major scientific blue.

A year ago, animal welfare group Voiceless established THINKK at UTS, specifically to oppose the commercial kangaroo harvest.  The unit’s lead scientist, ecologist Dr Dror Ben-Ami, says a lot of information about the kangaroo industry is misrepresented and not researched thoroughly.

This year, the national quota for the commercial harvest of kangaroos is set at around 3.7 million animals, but Dr Ben-Ami fears the real toll may be much higher.

“We estimate that up to a million dependent young are killed inhumanely every year as a result of the kangaroo industry,” he said.

 

“Those numbers come from industry statistics, in the sense of how many females are killed every year, and from behavioural reproductive ecology knowledge about how many young each female will have.”

There are in fact no industry figures on how many joeys are killed. Their main protection is the commercial shooters licence, which bans the hunting of females with dependent young.

Professor Mike Archer, the dean of science at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), says shooters are aware female kangaroos may be carrying joeys.

“There is an effort made by the shooters. They’re aware of this issue,” he said.  He has raised questions about the research being done by THINKK.

“If a group like that were actually based in my university, in the University of New South Wales, we would be having a very serious think about whether they actually belong there,” he said.

 

“If they publish their own papers, refereed their papers themselves, didn’t quote real experts in the field, we would be very uncomfortable if they were operating in UNSW.”

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Hygiene fears

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Adult kangaroos are shot by night and driven to chillers the next day for processing, leading to another of THINKK’s major concerns – the hygiene of the meat.

In early 2009, Animal Liberation collected samples from unlocked outback chillers, which tested positive for E. coli and salmonella.  Several months later, major export destination Russia slapped a ban on kangaroo meat, citing contamination fears.

“If one ate kangaroo meat with high levels of E. coli, you’d have a upset stomach – that would be the case with most people,” Dr Ben-Ami said.

Animal Liberation went on to set up new lab tests of supermarket meat. Dr Ben-Ami says the findings are concerning.

“The results have shown very high levels of E. coli, above alert levels of 1,000 colony-forming units and also a couple of samples came back positive for salmonella,” he said.

There are hundreds of different kinds of E. coli, but only some can be toxic. Animal Liberation’s tests did not establish whether the E. coli found in the kangaroo meat was dangerous.

But UNSW researcher Rosie Cooney says Dr Ben-Ami’s concerns about the contamination of kangaroo meat are overstated.

“A large study done some years ago that looked at over 200,000 carcasses found in fact that the rates of rejection for contamination of kangaroo carcasses were actually considerably less than those for sheep,” she said.
Science ‘under siege’

Dr Cooney and her colleagues believe when it comes to the commercial harvest of kangaroos, the science is now under siege.  This has spurred them into action, with a national group of scientists about to publish a critique of THINKK’s claims.

This group says the research proves there is great environmental benefit in encouraging farmers to harvest kangaroos for profit.

“They’re then going to want to value those animals, keep them on their land and importantly, maintain the habitat, the native vegetation, for those creatures as well,” she said.

Dr Ben-Ami says his critics should “write back and engage in academic dialogue, rather than smearing”.

THINKK has today released a new paper arguing against the kangaroo harvest on animal welfare grounds.  Their key claim is that that shooters are missing the mark and joeys are being left to die.

[Read Paper]

“We’re taking a native animal out of its natural habitat in great numbers every year and thinking that that has no ramifications, and I think that’s absurd,” he said.

With both sides claiming the science is on their side, the challenge for animal welfare groups is to get kangaroos off the menu.

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[Source: ‘Welfare Activists Target Kangaroo Industry‘, by Sarah Dingle and staff, 20110713, ABC Western Queensland, ^http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-07-13/welfare-activists-target-kangaroo-industry/2793878/?site=westqld, accessed 20111025]

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Would you eat this animal?

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Natural resources are at the heart of the booming Australian economy.  In particular, the country’s success in selling these economic growth goodies to a ravenous China has transformed the Aussie economy.

China is today Australia’s largest trading partner, buying up iron ore, coal, natural gas, and other industrial minerals to the tune of $55.2 billion a year — or more than 20 percent of Australia’s total exports.  So it’s not too surprising that some entrepreneurial Australians want to add another natural resource to that growing list: kangaroo meat. Australia is crawling with the creatures. And China is apparently hungry for them.That’s the plan, anyway, according to this fine feature story from Matt Siegel in the New York Times.“The Chinese have a strong culinary tradition in using wild foods, not just meat, but a wide range of wild foods called yaemei in Cantonese and yewei in Mandarin,” John Kelly, executive director of the Kangaroo Industry Association of Australia, a lobbying group, told Siegel. “Kangaroo will to a large extent just slot right into that existing tradition in much the same way it has in the European markets.”

China sent a government delegation to Australia last December to investigate the health and sanitary conditions of kangaroo producers, the New York Times reports.

And not without reason.  Kangaroo meat has come under increasing scrutiny following an E. coli outbreak in 2009, which led to a ban from kangaroo-scarfing Russia. The health scare also triggered a collapse of kangaroo meat exports, which tumbled from $38.4 million in 2008 to just $12.3 million last year.

But the new plan to sell kanga-meat to China comes with other challenges.  First off, kanga meat is a hard sell — even to Australians. According to a 2008 study cited by the New York Times, just 14.5 percent of Australians have “knowingly” eaten kangaroo meat, versus the 80 percent who eat beef.

The problem? Kangaroo meat has been commonly used as pet food and as skins for clothing.  Moreover, many Aussies view the country’s 25 million roos —who outnumber the 23 million human Australians — as large, destructive, and sometimes dangerous pests.

But the bigger challenge might be taste.

“It’s gamey — think beef plus arm pit,” says Freya Petersen, GlobalPost’s Breaking News Editor and our resident Australian staffer. “It needs to be cooked through but not over-cooked.”

“To me, it smells like pet food because we used to feed it to our dog and cat,” she adds.

Environmentalists and animal rights groups are also worried about the plan.

Australia’s kangaroo population “can’t even deal with the domestic and European consumption,” Nikki Sutterby of the Australian Society for Kangaroos told the New York Times. “How would it deal with a country as large as China starting to eat kangaroo meat?”

The kanga-meat crowd down under, however, remains undeterred.

“I’d expect us to be putting product into China at some time this year,” Kelly told the New York Times, adding that he expected China “at some stage to be a larger market than Russia ever was.”

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[Source: ‘Would you eat thsi animal?’, by Thomas Mucha, 20110415, ^http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/macro/kangaroo-australia-china]

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‘It sure ain’t Easy being Green! About the Kangaroo Coalition coordinator!’

by John Watson, Spectator News Magazine

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‘Pat O’Brien became a greenie, and activist, in Condobolin 35 years ago when he saw kangaroos herded together, shot and clubbed to death. Until that moment, he had been “normal”.

The meatworker, who was working his way around Australia with his wife and three kids, did not think about the environment, probably dropped paper on the ground and just lived his own life. However, because of that sight of kangaroos being slaughtered, he has spent the next 35 years fighting for animals and the environment….’

READ MORE: ^http://www.kangaroo-protection-coalition.com/coordinator.html

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Meanwhile, the Queensland Government tries to legitimise wildlife poaching  by using euphemistic language…’The Department’s Commercial Macropod Management Program administers the commerical harvest of macropods in Queensland.’

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^http://www.derm.qld.gov.au/wildlife-ecosystems/wildlife/wildlife_permits_and_licences/kangaroo_harvesting.html

‘It’s a poor farm that can’t sustain a few kangaroos.’

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Further Reading:

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[1]    ‘A Shot in the Dark‘, ^http://www.wildlifeadvocate.com/pdf/a_shot_in_the_dark.pdf ,    [Read Report] [2]    National Kangaroo Protection Coalition, ^http://www.kangaroo-protection-coalition.com/

[3]     THINKK (The Think Tank for Kangaroos), University of Technology Sydney, ^http://thinkkangaroos.uts.edu.au/

[4]    No Kangaroo Meat website, ^http://www.nokangaroomeat.org/

[5]    ‘Kangaroo Harvesting under the spotlight‘, ABC TV ‘730 Programme’, 20110713, ^http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2011/s3268904.htm

[6]    Australian Society For Kangaroos, ^http://www.australiansocietyforkangaroos.com/not_so_green.html

[7]   Read the original comments to the initial article by Tigerquoll on the CanDoBetter.net website:  ‘Kangaroo rapers of Mitchell (Qld) and the E.coli time bomb‘

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Eastern Grey Kangaroos

(Australian Geographic)

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New Rural Industries Association

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A new rural organisation in Australia, driving innovative agribusiness ideas, the New Rural Industries Association (NRIA) truly has some good ideas for those on the land.  But one of them is certainly not such a good idea – supporting more kangaroo slaughter.

Kangaroos around Canberra herded into pens for the slaughter

.. then butchered for packaging into cat and dog food

Photo by Andrew Taylor

[Source: ^http://www.smh.com.au/news/conservation/welfare-groups-outraged-as-kangaroo-cull-starts/2008/05/19/1211182703329.html]

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The NRIA on its new website states that its mission is:

“through cooperation, coordination and education, to create an environment for the development and capacity-building of new, innovative, Australian rural industries and to maximise the economic benefits our nation gains from such industries.”

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At what ecological cost?  At what untold wildlife trauma?

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It is all very well encouraging those on the land to make a quid and prosper from new emerging agricultural markets, but poaching wildlife is immoral in the mix of available options.

To push for more wildlife trade in Australia, is akin to the logging industry pushing for a new exploitative use of our native forests for ‘biomass’ – burning trees for power!  It is no different to the ‘bushmeat’ wildlife trade currently being prosecuted from Africa to Europe.

Reading the NRIA website section under  New Animal Industries – ‘Kangaroos and Wallabies‘-  the script seems taken drirectly out of a promotion by the Kangaroo Industry Association (KIA).  It is peppered with exploitative euphemistic terms like ‘kangaroo industry‘, ‘kangaroo harvesting‘ and ‘pest control‘.  All terms deliberately chosen to try to legitimise what is blatantly wildlife poaching.

Then it suggests that the poaching is legitimate by claiming there is “a quota system” and that the poaching is “administered by the state and federal governments”.

It then argues that this wildlife trade is highly lucrative, quoting the “kangaroo industry was an estimated $43.9 million in 2007”, with major export markets being Indonesia, New Zealand and Russia.  It is trying to sell kangaroo meat overseas beyond what has long been regarded as pet food.  It is trying to rebrand the pet food as ‘game meat’ and is having success in Europe, notably recently in France, South Africa  and Germany, and in Russia as sausage meat..

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‘Bushmeat’?

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Wildlife is wildlife and with so little remaining on so few token reserves, all wildlife deserve humanity’s utmost respect and protection.

Australian wildlife is no less deserving than African wildlife.  In Africa, ‘illegal bushmeat is being sold on Paris streets‘ ranging from monkey carcasses, smoked anteater, even preserved porcupine.  In Australian,  bushmeat is our wildlife – our native kangaroo, wallaby, koalas, platypus, echidna, Tasy devil, wombat, potoroo and many other unique and vulnerable fauna.

‘A bonobo, most human-like of the great apes, killed for meat’.

© SUSAN MILIUS / Science News 26feb2005

http://www.mindfully.org/Food/2005/Bushmeat-Hunger-Commerce26feb05.htm

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‘In Paris, a recent study has found more than five tonnes of bushmeat slips through the city’s main airport each week to serve its underground bushmeat market.   Experts suspect similar amounts are arriving in other European hubs as well – an illegal trade that is raising concerns about diseases ranging from monkeypox to Ebola, and is another twist in the continent’s struggle to integrate a growing African immigrant population.  According to research published in the journal ‘Conservation Letters’,

“Anecdotally we know it does happen … But it is quite surprising the volumes that are coming through,” said Marcus Rowcliffe, a research fellow of the Zoological Society of London and one of the study’s authors.

“Everyone knows bushmeat is sold in the area and they even know where to buy it,” said Hassan Kaouti, a local butcher. “But they won’t say it’s illegal.”

For the study, European experts checked 29 Air France flights from Central and West Africa that landed at Paris’ Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport over a 17-day stretch in June 2008.    Of 134 people searched, nine had bushmeat and 83 had livestock or fish.

The people with bushmeat had the largest amounts: one passenger had 51kg of bushmeat – and no other luggage. Most of the bushmeat was smoked and arrived as dried carcasses. Some animals were identifiable, though scientists boiled the remains of others and reassembled the skeletons to determine the species.

Experts found 11 types of bushmeat including monkeys, large rats, crocodiles, small antelopes and pangolins, or anteaters. Almost 40 per cent were listed on the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.

Based on what officials seized – 188kg of bushmeat – the researchers estimated that about five tonnes of bushmeat get into Paris each week.

Bushmeat is widely eaten and sold in Central and West Africa, with Central African Republic, Cameroon and Republic of Congo being the main sources. It varies whether it is legal.  It is typically allowed where people are permitted to hunt, as long as their prey aren’t endangered and they can prove the animals were killed in the wild.  And just as scientists have warned that eating African bushmeat is a potential health hazard, eating roadkill and wildlife is just at risk of bacterial infections like salmonella and ecoli.

Nina Marano, chief of the quarantine unit at the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, said similar underground markets for bushmeat exist across the US.   “We have to be culturally sensitive and recognise this is important for some African communities,” she said. “But there are no regulations for the preparation of meat from wildlife to render it safe.”

The scale of Europe’s illicit bushmeat trade suggests the emergence of a luxury market. Prices can be as high as 30 euros ($A43) per kilogram, double what more mundane supermarket meats cost.  “It’s like buying the best cut of organically grown beef,” Rowcliffe said, adding that bushmeat like giant rats and porcupine, which he has tasted, has a strong, gamey flavour.’

© AP, [Source:  ‘Illegal bushmeat sold on Paris streets’, AP, The West Australian,20100618,

http://au.news.yahoo.com/odd/a/-/odd/7419656/illegal-bushmeat-sold-on-paris-streets/]

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Meanwhile back in Australia, the NRIA claims “commercial harvesting” of wallabies is happening across Tasmania and on Flinders Island and King Island in Bass Strait…”ensuring the sustainability of the harvest“.  Shooters are now targeting Tasmania’s beautiful Bennett’s Wallaby (Macropus r. rufogriseus) and the Tasmanian Pademelon (Thylogale billardierii).

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“More than 9000 wallabies were harvested in 2005-06 but this was much less than the combined quota of 34,750.”

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[Source: New Rural Industries Australia ^http://www.nria.org.au/NewAnimalIndustries/KangaroosandWallabies.aspx ]

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Wildlife slaughter and trade is unnecessarily wicked!

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Why is Australia’s Gillard Government condoning a trade in Australian wildlife?

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Eastern Grey Kangaroos

Kangaroos are commonly killed to save crops and private property

(Photo by Michael Parsons)

[Source: Australian Geographic magazine, ^http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/journal/dingo-urine-saves-kangaroos-study-says.htm]

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Further Reading

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[1] Kangaroo Industry Association of Australia (^http://www.kangaroo-industry.asn.au).

[2] Australian Department of Environment and Water Resources, ^www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/trade-use/wild-harvest/kangaroo/stats.html, (for information on the kangaroo industry, including quotas and numbers harvested).

[3] New Rural Industries Australia ^http://www.nria.org.au/NewAnimalIndustries/KangaroosandWallabies.aspx ]

[4] ‘Illegal bushmeat sold on Paris streets’, AP, The West Australian, 20100618, ^http://au.news.yahoo.com/odd/a/-/odd/7419656/illegal-bushmeat-sold-on-paris-streets/]

[5] ‘Illegal Bushmeat Trade Rife in Europe, Research Finds’,  ScienceDaily (June 18, 2010), ^http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100617210641.htm

[6] Kangaroo Protection Coalition, ^http://www.kangaroo-protection-coalition.com/canberrakangaroocull.html

[7] AQIS Meat Notice 2010/02 – Microbiological Testing of Wild Game Carcases and Products  ^http://www.daff.gov.au/aqis/export/meat/elmer-3/notices/meat_notices_2010/2010-02_microbiological_testing_of_wild_game_carcases_and_products

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-end of article –