Ivo Vegter: Why Dion George had to go and Willie Aucamp get promoted

Key topics:Debate over sustainable wildlife use vs animal-rights driven restrictionsCritique of Dion George’s policies as inconsistent with law and sustainabilityWillie Aucamp seen as balancing conservation with economic wildlife use.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..By Ivo Vegter*.The new environment minister, Willie Aucamp, is the right person to regulate wildlife conservation and environment-adjacent economic activity.If environmental journalists are to be believed, vested interests have just captured the environment ministry from the saviour of South Africa’s natural heritage, Dion George.Last week, President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that the minister in the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and Environment (DFFE), Dion George of the Democratic Alliance, had been removed from his position. He is succeeded by Willie Aucamp, another DA parliamentarian, who previously served as a whip and one of the party’s national spokespeople.Aucamp is a farmer from Kuruman in the Northern Cape, in addition to having studied law and having experience in business. His farming endeavours encompass a wide range of animals, from chickens to buffalo.Last month, he attended the annual dinner and award ceremony of Wildlife Ranching South Africa. This was enough for environmental journalist Adam Cruise to pre-emptively denounce him as a sort of Trojan Horse for the “wildlife-trade lobby”.Don Pinnock, another veteran environmental writer, says that the decision “is about the soul of environmental governance in South Africa,” adding that “the lines between conservation and commerce have all but dissolved”.Pinnock is right. It is about the soul of environmental governance in South Africa, and whether the environment is governed for its own sake, or for the sake of the people of South Africa.There should not be “lines between conservation and commerce”.Without commerce, conservation is unsustainable. Without conservation, wildlife-related commerce is unsustainble. Each needs to thrive for the other to succeed. Each needs to thrive in order to benefit the people of South Africa who have an interest in wildlife and the natural environment..“Tossed around”.Cruise makes the same mistake: “Daily Maverick readers are used to hearing the phrase ‘sustainable use’ tossed around as a political magic spell – a way to make any form of exploitation sound rational and green. But sustainable for whom? For SAPA’s members and their balance sheets, or for South Africa’s biodiversity, its conscience and its long-term tourism economy? Steenhuisen’s manoeuvre suggests that, when forced to choose, the DA leadership is more worried about hunters and wildlife ranchers than about lions in cages and a country’s integrity on the world stage.”That is a false dichotomy. Sustainable use has always referred to ecological sustainability and economic sustainability.To quote the National Environmental Management: Biodiversity Act (NEMBA), “’Sustainable’, in relation to the use of a biological resource, means the use of such resource in a way and at a rate that (a) would not lead to its long-term decline; (b) would not disrupt the ecological integrity of the ecosystem in which it occurs; (c) would ensure its continued use to meet the needs and aspirations of present and future generations of people.” (My italics.)It is “tossed around” not because it is a glib political slogan.It is used because it is the core principle embedded in global conservation treaties, from the World Conservation Strategy published in 1980 by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), and the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), and throughout all subsequent international conservation treaties, including the Convention on Biological Diversity of 1992, which South Africa has signed and ratified.It is used because it is written into the Bill of Rights of the Constitution of South Africa, which says: “Everyone has the right … to have the environment protected, for the benefit of present and future generations, through reasonable legislative and other measures that … promote conservation; and secure ecologically sustainable development and use of natural resources while promoting justifiable economic and social development.” (My italics.)It is used because it lies at the heart of NEMBA, which in its preamble states that its purpose is, among other things, to provide for “the sustainable use of indigenous biological resources”.The government is not “forced to choose”, as Cruise would have it. It is required by law, by the Constitution, and by international treaty, to provide for both sustainable conservation and a sustainable wildlife use industry..Just doing my job.Dion George, the outgoing minister, said he was just doing his job. At the outset of his 16-month term in office, he said that he would follow in the footsteps of his predecessor, Barbara Creecy.That was before he had familiarised himself with the portfolio, or with the various interests affected by environmental and conservation decisions.The problem with that position is that Creecy, herself unfamiliar with the portfolio, was comprehensively railroaded by foreign and domestic animal rights NGOs who are resolutely opposed to any and all use of, or trade in, wildlife, whether sustainable or not.Cruise makes the same error, arguing that the choice is between “whether wild animals are commodities to be warehoused, slaughtered and sold by the kilo, or living beings embedded in ecosystems that deserve protection for their own sake”.Note how he caricatures the wildlife industry in exaggerated terms, just as Pinnock does, by associating them with its worst exponents. Also note how he views the only alternative to be that animals have rights for their own sake. Such an alternative does not permit any consumptive use of animals for the benefit of the people.This goes to the heart of the disagreement. If animals have rights, then their use, and especially consumptive use, whether sustainable or otherwise, ipso facto violates those rights.Conversely, since South Africa, and the world, formally recognise the human right to sustainable use of natural resources, including wildlife, animals cannot have absolute rights. They surely have a right to welfare, and a minimum of suffering, but absolute rights for their own sake, they cannot have..Lions and rhinos.As soon as Dion George took office, he announced a freeze on permits for new lion breeding facilities, and a moratorium on trade in lion-derived products.Opponents of the industry call any and all lion hunting on private game farms “canned hunting”, and unfairly associate all such farms with a handful of examples of lions kept in inhumane conditions.They are opposed to the trade in lion bones and other lion products, no matter the source or the conditions in which the lions are kept. Like all prohibitionists, they mistakenly believe that allowing trade would “create demand” and threaten wild populations with poaching.History has proven the opposite: legal wildlife trade has brought many species (like crocodilia and vicuña) back from the brink of extinction, while trade prohibitions (such as on ivory and rhino horn) has not prevented widespread poaching..DA resolutions.Speaking to Daily Maverick, George said that his actions as environment minister carried out the DA resolutions from its 2023 Congress.This is true. The DA did promise “an end to captive predator breeding, captive ‘canned lion’ hunts and lion bone export”.It proposed to offer “voluntary exit options” to game ranchers who owned lions and permitted hunting on their farms, to arrange for disposal (as opposed to sale) of stockpiled lion bones, and to “euthanise” all of the over 8,000 lions on game farms that could not be relocated to recognised rescue facilities, and to redeploy affected staff elsewhere in the wildlife industry.Out of some 320 facilities holding lions, only a handful have accepted the idea of voluntary closure, which George’s department offered them. However, there is no clarity on incentives to close. Game farmers say they haven’t been told whether they will be paid for the lions that are euthanised, or for the lion bones they are supposed to dispose of. They haven’t been given any guarantees about staff redeployment, or about compensation.George’s edicts were never gazetted, but they were already being implemented at provincial level, which is where the permitting authority lies. This premature implementation of aspirational policy will inevitably lead to legal cases, as would-be game farm owners challenge unlawful permitting decisions in court.One game farmer, who spoke to me on condition of anonymity, told me that it looked like there was no way to create this policy to be consistent with existing law. “They’re chasing an emotional desired outcome, that has no place in legislative reality,” he said.George also retrenched to a reflexive position opposing the international trade in rhino horn – a position recently contradicted by a high court ruling that says international rules permit the export of horn from rhinos bred for conservation purposes (such as those bred by the retired John Hume, who is facing criminal prosecution on related charges)..Not his mandate.The problem here is clear: Dion George might have been implementing DA resolutions, but that was not his mandate. His mandate was to implement lawful policies that are consistent with relevant legislation, the Constitution, and international treaties to which South Africa is a party.If he wanted to change that legislation, he would have had to present a bill to Parliament, where the legislature could debate the matter and decide on a way forward. In the absence of such a bill, he did not have the discretion to make policy that was inconsistent with the core values at the heart of South Africa’s environmental legislation, which takes into account not only the welfare of wildlife and conservation sustainability, but also the needs and aspirations of the people of South Africa – that is, the wildlife industry..South African Conservation Model.Not only is wildlife trade legal in South Africa, it lies at the core of the success of the South African Conservation Model. Unlike the far less successful North American Conservation Model, South Africa established private property rights in game animals, and made hunting wildlife on private property legal.That decision has brought numerous species, starting with the white rhino, back from the edge of extinction.In 1965, there was virtually no game outside of national parks. Today, three quarters of all South Africa’s land under game, and three quarters of all South Africa’s head of game, exists on private game reserves, private breeding ranches, and private hunting farms.The commercial ecosystem that sustains this industry is heavily dependent on hunting a small number of these animals. Eco-tourism brings in only 5% of the industry’s revenue, and could never sustain so much land under private conservation.Absent legal wildlife trade and legal trophy hunting, a very large proportion of the land under game would become financially non-viable, and revert back to livestock or crop farming, which would be catastrophic for South Africa’s biodiversity.It would also harm the people employed on game farms, who can earn substantially more there than they could in the general agriculture sector..Regulator.Writes Cruise: “The DA cannot have it both ways. It cannot trade on the language of compassion, ethics and global conservation standards in its press releases, then quietly reposition its leadership to reassure the very industries that have dragged South Africa’s name through the mud.”The global conservation standard is sustainable use. It has been enshrined in domestic environmental policy and global conservation treaties since 1980.The wildlife industry is diverse. There are divisions within it on subjects such as “canned” hunting. It is not a monolithic entity in which all members have to pay for the sins of a minority.It is possible (and necessary) to act against cases of animal abuse and the egregious practices of a minority, without shutting down an entire industry sector.What environmental writers and politicians like Dion George propose is akin to closing down the financial industry because some companies commit fraud, or banning livestock farming because some farmers keep livestock in poor conditions.The proper role of government as a regulator in the wildlife industry is the same as it is in the livestock farming industry: establish norms and standards that permit the industry to thrive and grow while assuring animal welfare and preventing abuses..Exceptions.Animal rights activists have an agenda, and it is diametrically opposed to sustainable use and the right of people to economically benefit from the game animals with which they live.The activists know that if they can get governments to roll over on certain charismatic megafauna, like elephants, rhinos or lions, they can use that as the thin end of the wedge to extend trade bans and “rights” to other species.They fully intend to do so, as they showed with the specious listing of all subspecies of giraffe on Appendix II of the CITES Convention, even though only some east African subspecies are threatened, while southern African species are thriving.Ministers like Barbara Creecy and Dion George have been dupes for the global anti-trade lobby. The environment ministry, one might say, had been “captured” by international NGOs and the interests of Western elites that seek to impose their emotional values on the people of Africa, who actually have to live with and manage wildlife..False dichotomy.The appointment of Willie Aucamp in place of Dion George had to happen. George was not “under-performing”, so much as performing in the interests of the wrong people.The question facing a South African environment minister is not whether or not to prohibit trade in wildlife or game products.The question is how to support the trade in wildlife and its commercial use for tourism, food and sport, while also ensuring high operational standards and environmental sustainability.Aucamp, upon his appointment, said: “Through my own actions, and that of my department, we must contribute every day towards growing the economy and creating jobs, and that must take place in synergy with protecting our wildlife heritage in this country.”In rejecting the false dichotomy of having to choose between protecting the environment and enabling the commercial use of wildlife in the interest of the economy and the people of South Africa, Aucamp marks himself as the right person for the job – which neither Dion George, nor his predecessor, Barbara Creecy, were..*Ivo Vegter is a freelance journalist..*This article was originally published by Daily Friend and has been republished with permission.

Ivo Vegter: Why Dion George had to go and Willie Aucamp get promoted

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