Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 1 2020 i PRIVATE GAME | WILDLIFE RANCHING

Michael ’t Sas-Rolfes Conservation economist Research associate: University of Oxford Research fellow: Oxford Martin School, African Wildlife Economy Institute (AWEI) and Property and Environment Research Center (PERC) Michael ’t Sas-Rolfes is a researcher, writer and consultant, with expertise relating to various aspects of the wildlife economy. He is currently conducting doctoral research at the University of Oxford, UK and maintains research fellowships with several esteemed institutions, including the Oxford Martin School, African Wildlife Economy Institute (at Stellenbosch University), University of the Witwatersrand and the Property and Environment Research Center (in Montana, USA). Passionate about nature and African wildlife since childhood, Michael's undergraduate studies in commerce included an analysis of the role of emerging private sector markets in support of rhino conservation. Following some active participation in the wildlife industry (as…

Catherine E. Semcer Research fellow: Property and Environment Research Center (PERC) and African Wildlife Economy Institute (AWEI). Catherine E. Semcer is a research fellow with the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC) where her work focuses on rights and market-based solutions to policy challenges in environmental security, conservation finance and sustainability. “Catherine’s work focuses on rights and market-based solutions to policy challenges in environmental security, conservation finance and sustainability.” Catherine is the past COO of Humanitarian Operations Protecting Elephants (H.O.P.E.), a boutique NGO delivering training, advisory, assistance and procurement services to African counter-poaching programmes. During her tenure with H.O.P.E. she was responsible for leading the opening of projects in Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Ethiopia. Prior to working with H.O.P.E. Catherine served as Senior Washington D.C. Representative for Sierra Club, where she…

Ian Cox is a commercial attorney practicing for his own account in Durban. His interest in environmental law was piqued when DEFF tried to list trout as an invasive species. Ian is a passionate fly-fisherman. He quickly realised that environmental laws were not being developed or applied as the Constitution intended. A custodian is somebody who is responsible for taking care of or protecting something. Section 25 of the Constitution obliges the state to protect an environment that is not harmful to our health and wellbeing through reasonable legislative and other measures that prevent pollution and ecological degradation, promote conservation and secure ecologically sustainable development and use of natural resources while promoting justifiable economic and social development. The term ‘environment' can be confusing as it can mean different things to…

Dr Michelle Otto, resident veterinarian for John Hume, the largest private rhino farm breeder in the world, Buffalo Dream Ranch. It is a well-known fact that the southern white rhino have already undergone a genetic bottle neck. Having had their wild number reduced to less than 50 at the onset of the 1900s in a single location, the ability of the southern white rhino to have recovered genetically to several viable populations today is remarkable. Of course, this could not have been accomplished if not for the sustainable conservation programmes that led to the translocation of rhino from this small, isolated population to several other locations such as the Kruger National Park in the 1960s, as well as allowing private land owners to establish their own southern white rhino breeding…

Authors: Sipho Kings and Sarah Wild Publisher: Pan Macmillan Language: English Pages: 222 Format: Paperback Price: R297 at Exclusive Books The authors Kings and Wild, journalists with extensive experience in environmental issues, deal with the global causes and consequences of climate change but also highlight the role South Africa plays and the effects the country is experiencing right now. The book provides well-researched background as well as solutions. The information is of vital importance to all citizens, including game farmers whose ecosystems are being adversely affected. South Africa’s situation and consequences In 2019, SA experienced temperatures on average 2o C hotter than those recorded since 1900, which is twice the global average increase. According to the UN climate change body (IPCC), the difference between a 1,5o and 2o C increase…

Southern Africa's wildlife industry has become a contemporary world leader in conservation innovation, providing considerable ecological, biodiversity and economic benefits to the region. Wildlife ranchers love nature and are conservationists at heart – that is why they choose this lifestyle. What wildlife ranchers in South Africa have achieved over the past few decades is to take 20 million ha of marginal, often degraded agricultural land and improve the broader biodiversity in this huge area (20% of South African agricultural land) through introducing and increasing the numbers of indigenous wildlife species with the consequential improved sustainability of the land, diversity and health of all plants and animals found there. Adding substantially to the fringes of national parks such as the Kruger, Hluhluwe-iMfolozi and Addo, and providing additional habitat and corridors for…

Dr Lucy Kemp (Pri. Nat. Sci.) Project Manager: Mabula Ground Hornbill Project Chair: South African Southern Ground-Hornbill Action Group Co-chair: IUCN Hornbill Specialist Group Raised in a family of biologists and trained with an MSc in Marine Biology, yet most happy when in the bush, Lucy Kemp was an unlikely candidate to take over a ground-hornbill conservation project, given she spent her whole life avoiding birds, and ground-hornbills in particular, as these where her parents' ‘thing'. But a childhood of spending time in close proximity to ongoing groundhornbill research, combined with her growing love of ‘the bush' and a strong personal need to conserve wild places, set her on course for a career in conservation. The southern ground-hornbill had lost 50-80% of its historical South African range (which included much…

OVERVIEW Firearm amnesty was declared from 1 December 2019 to 31 May 2020 in terms of section 139 of the Firearms Control Act, 2000 (Act 60 of 2000) (the Act). The aim is the reduction of the number of illegally possessed firearms. It has never been a success as criminals do not surrender their guns. A person who partakes may not be prosecuted in relation to • the firearm, for having it without the appropriate licence, or • the ammunition, for having it without having been in lawful possession of a firearm capable of discharging the ammunition. You may apply for a licence in respect of that firearm within 14 days from the date on which the firearm was surrendered. If a licence is granted, the firearm and ammunition must…

The collection and collation of the PROA members' data was undertaken by Dave Balfour and supported by the Department of Environmental Affairs, South Africa (2015) and the IUCN (2018). Hayley S. Clements was funded by a Claude Leon Postdoctoral Fellowship and a Jennifer Ward Oppenheimer Research Grant. Data can be requested from PROA (not open-access due to data sensitivity). Research was approved by Stellenbosch University Human Research Ethics Committee, reference 11333. PROA thanks all members that participated in the survey and strongly encourages all owners to participate in future surveys.…

Studies from Gertenbach (1980) in the Kruger National Park and Furstenburg (1919) in the southern Eastern Cape reveal a sequence of three (possible four) rainfall-related climatic cycles, when comparing 142 years' annual precipitation data since 1878 to present. Definite oscillations of rainy cycles of varying dry and wet periods were identified: Rainfall Cycle 1 (15-23 years) Repeated unstable short-term oscillations of alternating drier and wetter periods ranging from 5-12 years each, thus forming a total full cycle of repetition of between 15 and 23 years affecting fodder production and frequent animal migrations, e.g. the past springbok ‘treks' (migrations) and the Kaokoveld (desert) elephants, and more. Occurrences of single season events of extreme dry and wet years are most common within the durations of Cycle 1. Rainfall Cycle 2 (35-40 years)…

Emmanuel Koro Johannesburg-based international award-winning environmental journalist who has written extensively on environment and development issues in Africa. Western Celebration of African Poverty What the book is all about and why I wrote it This book focuses on one of the most frustrating realities in Africa. The continent is resource-rich but poor. Despite Africa's poverty challenges, the book illustrates glimpses of poverty-reducing possibilities in rural southern Africa, under the programme called Community Based Natural Resources Management (CBNRM). The CBNRM initiative enables rural communities to benefit from wildlife. It is a mind-set changing development approach, the benefits of which have transformed former poachers into absolute wildlife conservationists. It has made very traditional communities that used to resist family planning, embrace it, in order to avoid overpopulation that would displace wild animals…

In light of the Covid-19 pandemic, the EMS Foundation calls on government departments to ban the slaughter and eating of venison in South Africa and the export thereof. It is clear that environmental alarmists are wilfully spreading misinformation. Misrepresentation is a perception or manifestation through words or behaviour, and is not factually correct. There is a significant difference between bush meat, as is commonly used in the African continent, and regulated venison production. The bush meat practice is largely unregulated, but is an important source of protein for millions of people. This bush meat is the utilisation of any animal, reptile, amphibian, insect, bird, primate, etc. THERE IS A BIG DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BUSH MEAT AND VENISON, WHERE VENISON REFERS TO ANTELOPE. The venison value chain in South Africa has no…

Anderson, JM. 2001. Towards Gondwana Alive. National Botanical Institute, Pretoria. Bintanja, R. et al. 2008. North American ice-sheet dynamics and the onset of 100,000-year glacial cycles. Nature 454, 869e872. Bintanja, R. et al. 2005. Modelled atmospheric temperatures and global sea levels over the past million years. Nature 437, 125e128. Chase, BM. et al. 2010. Evidence for progressive Holocene aridification in southern Africa recorded in Namibian hyrax middens: Implications for African Monsoon dynamics and the “African Humid Period”. Quaternary Research, 74 (2010):36-45. Compton, J.S. 2011. Pleistocene sea-level fluctuations and human evolution on the southern coastal plain of South Africa. Quaternary Science Reviews 30(2011):506-527. Cromsigt, JPGM. et al. 2017. Conserving Africa's mega-diversity in the Anthropocene. Cambridge University Press. Furstenburg, D. 2019. Game population and aerial census, Correctional Services, Kirkwood. Technical Report. Geo…

In our article published in Wildlife Ranching, issue 5 2019*, the article ‘Legal Labelling – How legal is my “game boerewors”?' stated: “The current challenge for the game meat industry in legal compliance lies in the lack of a game regulation.” The actively debated challenges of the game meat industry and inputs with notes of concern from competitors in the meat market on the lack of game regulations promulgated, are due to be changed. A final draft document, i.e. the Game Meat Regulations**, was submitted to the Minister for signature and needs to be gazetted. The game meat industry has been developed over a period of more than 30 years and has been discovered, developed and also abused by numerous entrepreneurs, meat processors and retailers, being an affordable, readily available,…

Adjusting from -30 to +30 degrees Celsius was not the real challenge, but there were other tests, such as balancing a clumsy three-legged pot on a firepit, and making fire without using a whole packet of firelighters. It comes naturally to South Africans, but to me, coming from Estonia, cooking outdoors over the fire was radically different from our stirring the stew on the stove. I got to understand that the word ‘braai’ is not just about cooking steaks over the coals, but it’s an essential social part of South Africans’ lifestyle. Now, things what I don’t want to miss is the ‘bush’: the francolins’ high-pitched shrill, which apparently sounds like ‘beer and cognac’, but more like ‘braai and wine’ to me; the mournful calls of the jackals; the vast…