Newsletter 82
04/11/13
Profit is the Name of Your Game
"The blue whales can't find a mate
You using rhino horn as a
aphrodisiac
60,000 tigers pacing up and
down
The wild tiger going going
gone
You milking bears from their
gall bladders
You shooting trophy lions in
small enclosures
The lungs of the world you
desecrate
The oceans and rivers you
pollute
You're a reckless ape, a
destructive ape
And profit is the name of your
game
Be careful super ape, be careful
super ape"
From the Song
"Goddess Gaia"
by JV
In the canned lion industry, cubs are removed
immediately after birth. The cubs will be given supplements because
they have been denied the vital nutrients from the mother's milk.
At 8 weeks old, the cubs will be leased out to petting zoos where
they will earn income. Once they are too big for the petting zoos, they
are brought back to the breeding stations.
When
their manes are at their peak, the male lions are photographed and
the pictures sent to the hunting conventions in America and
Europe.
The hunters come out to South Africa and
the lion in hunted in a confined space. All transactions are in US
dollars.
The hunter takes the trophy. The rest of the body
parts of the lion are bought by a Taiwanese group in Johannesburg
who ship the body parts to China where they are relabeled tiger body
parts. The body parts industry from South Africa alone is a cool R50
million per annum.
If South Africa has 7,000 lions in captivity and
10% are being hunted, then 700 canned lion hunts per year are being
conducted. This is a billion rand industry.
The lionesses that bred the cubs, comes back
immediately into estrus. She is mated again and produces more cubs,
the proverbial breeding machine.
In the wilds she would breed every 3 years. In
the canned lion industry, it can be 2 litters per year. Profit is the
driving force.
The breeder, professional hunter, client, body
parts trader and end user all benefit. For the unfortunate lions
there are no benefits.
The tiger is an appendix 1 CITES animal (this
means it's highly endangered) Therefore the tiger cannot be hunted
legally and so the risk and therefore the price to hunt a tiger, is higher in the
canned tiger hunting industry in South Africa.
In South Africa canned tiger hunts are conducted
in all the provinces with higher prices paid for white tigers.
The tiger trophies are smuggled out of South
Africa, labeled as museum pieces, research merchandise or they use
other devious methods. The tiger body parts travel the same route as
the lions, to China!
Botswana and Zambia have recently outlawed the
hunting of cats and so lion, tiger, and canned leopard hunts will
boom in South Africa from 2014 and onwards. Nothing to do with
conservation, everything to do with money.
Another endangered cat, the cheetah, fetches
around R80,000 for a cub. The cheetah dealers pull the same tricks as the
lion dealers.
Cheetah cubs are removed hours after birth and once
again they are denied the valuable mother's milk which gives
them the vital calcium.
Cheetah are more susceptible to
nutritional problems than lions.
The cheetah in its evolutionary
journey "bottlenecked" and so today the cheetah has an extremely
narrow genetic base.
Bone growth for cheetah is more important than
any other cat, because the cheetah relies totally on speed to get it
to point of contact with the prey. Therefore bone growth in young
cheetah is crucial.
I recently acquired a cheetah cub from a cheetah dealer.
The cub has had problems with its feet. Vets have diagnosed the
following:
1) Taken too soon from its mother.
2) Imbalance in calcium phosphate ratio (calcium was too low)
3) Wrong or insufficient supplements
The dealers answer to my query and I quote: "It
is compulsory to take cubs away from the mother on about 4 days.
From 9 days it gets too difficult because they get too bonded with
the mother".
What he's actually saying is, "we take the cubs
away, so the mother can come back into estrus quickly, so we can get
more cubs for more money". No consideration to the cheetah mothers
or the cubs. Clearly profit, not conservation is the incentive.
The rhino and elephant poachers have taken the
poaching to a new level of brutality. Cyanide
poisoning of water holes can now kill quicker, bigger numbers and
more silently than guns. Brace yourself for a thousand rhinos lost
in South Africa by the end of 2013.
Greed and profit drives this industry
relentlessly.
In the last line of the song Goddess Gaia warns,
"Be careful Super
Ape
Be careful"
Tread Lightly on the Earth
JV
Avaaz petition against
canned lion hunting in South Africa
with almost 1,2 million signatures!!!
Amazing win! A South
African court just ruled that the government
violated our right to free speech when they
tore down ads calling for the protection of
South Africa’s lions -- and we’re all over
the news. Let’s use this momentum to get our
petition to 1 million and save the lions.
The South African airport authority (ACSA)
refused to put our ads back up and, since
their censorship violates our free speech
rights under the South African constitution,
we've taken them to court! We won't let the
government silence our calls to save South
Africa's lions. You can read our opening
court filing
here, ACSA's
response
here and our reply
to their response
here. The court
hearing should take place early in 2013.
Hundreds of South African lions are being slaughtered to
make bogus sex potions for men. But we can stop this cruel
trade by hitting the government where it hurts -- the
tourism industry.
A global ban on tiger bone sales has traders hunting a new
prize -- the majestic lions. Lions are farmed under
appalling conditions in South Africa for "canned hunting",
where rich tourists pay thousands to shoot them through
fences. Now experts say lion bones from these killing farms
are being exported to phony 'medicine' makers in Asia for
record profits. Trade is exploding and experts fear that as
prices rise, even wild lions -- with only 20,000 left in
Africa -- will come under poaching attack.
If we can show President Zuma that this brutal trade is
hurting South Africa's image as a tourist destination, he
could ban the trade in lion bones. Avaaz is taking out
strong ads in airports, tourism websites and magazines, but
we urgently need 1 million petition signers to give the ads
their force. Sign the petition to build our numbers fast.
Closing date for entries for photo
competition - 15th November 2013
First Prize - Big Cat Safari with John Varty at
Londolozi Game Reserve and at Tiger Canyons
Rules:
1) You have to enter only 6 pictures: 3x tiger pictures and 3x
leopard pictures
2) Each picture score points out of 10 - winner will be the one with
the highest number out of 60. One bad picture will give you a bad
score...
3) Pictures can be taken anywhere in the world
4) Picture size: not more than 500KB
(jpeg files)
5) Closing date: 15th November 2013
6) Email to
[email protected]
Do NOT send more than 3 tiger pictures
Do NOT send more than 3 leopard pictures
Do NOT send only tiger or only leopard pictures
Do NOT send more than 500KB per picture
You will be disqualified!
