Wildlife plays a fundamental role in maintaining healthy ecosystems and supporting the balance of nature. Yet today, countless species are facing increasing threats caused by habitat destruction, climate change, illegal wildlife trade, poaching, and the exploitation of animals for entertainment and tourism.

For this reason, the protection of wildlife is not only an environmental priority but also a responsibility toward a natural heritage that belongs to all humanity.

Combating the exploitation of wildlife

Across many parts of the world, wild animals continue to be exploited for profit. From wildlife trafficking and illegal hunting to the use of animals in tourist attractions, these practices cause immense suffering and contribute to the decline of already vulnerable species.

OIPA ETS is actively engaged in international campaigns aimed at combating the exploitation of wildlife and promoting respect for animals in their natural habitats.

Our initiatives focus on several key areas, including:

• opposing the use of wild animals in tourism and entertainment
• raising awareness about wildlife trafficking and illegal trade
• advocating against hunting practices that threaten endangered species
• supporting actions that prevent poaching and protect wildlife populations.

Through advocacy, education, and collaboration with local organizations, OIPA works to encourage more responsible policies and practices that prioritize the protection of animals and ecosystems.

A global network working for wildlife protection

Through its international network, OIPA collaborates with Member Leagues and representatives around the world to promote concrete initiatives for wildlife protection.

Many of these efforts take place in regions where biodiversity is exceptionally rich but also highly threatened. In Africa, several projects support conservation activities and the protection of endangered species, while in Asia OIPA and its partners work to raise awareness and address practices that exploit wild animals.

Protecting wildlife for future generations

Protecting wildlife requires long-term commitment, international cooperation, and increased public awareness.

Governments, organizations, and citizens all have a role to play in ensuring that animals can live in their natural environments free from exploitation and harm.

On World Wildlife Day, OIPA reaffirms its commitment to defending wildlife around the globe and working alongside its international network to promote a future in which animals are respected, protected, and allowed to thrive in the wild.

L'articolo World Wildlife Day: Protecting Wildlife Means Protecting Our Planet proviene da OIPA.

• Do not engage in cub petting

• Do not engage in lion walking

• Do not volunteer to take care of lion cubs

• Write to S.A. Embassies/Consulates in your country asking them to put an end to cub petting and lion canned hunting industries

• Watch the film “Blood Lions”

• Share this campaign

L'articolo WHAT YOU CAN DO proviene da OIPA.

Hunters claim that trophy hunting is a sustainable conservation tool and that somehow generates significant income for conservation. Nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed, trophy hunters’ targets are young and healthy specimens and not, as they pretend, only those old and sick.

Furthermore, trophy hunting does not financially benefit local communities, nor it creates vast job opportunities or produce significant tourism revenue.

South Africa has the largest hunting industry worldwide and it is the second most popular source for American trophy imports. Trophy hunting is still practiced in many African countries and foreign trophy hunters pay a lot of money to kill these animals.

This “hobby” is extremely expensive; just one lion might cost even as much as £20,000. For this reason, most hunters go illegal and in certain cases, lions are also attracted out of the protected areas! (Just 40% of trophy hunting takes place in protected areas with 1,800 male lions hunted out of protected areas).  There is, in fact, an “inseparable line” between trophy hunting and poaching. However, laws against poachers go harsh on African people whilst wealthy westerns carry out the same practice lawfully just because they pay.

CITES has observed that more than 8,000 lions live in farms and captive facilities while just between 1,300 and 1,700 adults remain in the wild.

Regardless of the influence exerted by some ministers and politicians, the South African government still allows trophy hunting as it increases capital, the defensive argument being that lion abuse is part of an overall conservation strategy for the benefit of wildlife.

Across the continent, the average input to GDP from hunting is 0.06% for the 11 African nations where this practice is allowed.

African rural communities receive money if they pass over their land to hunting operators. In Zimbabwe, a community (household of 10 people) will receive between $1 to $3 per year if 15% of their land can be devoted to trophy hunting. In Tanzania, instead communities receive $4 per year, per square km. The hunting operators receive instead $110!

http://www.bloodlions.org/the-campaign/

L'articolo TROPHY HUNTING: KILLING FOR FUN……. proviene da OIPA.

Lion bones are especially used in Chinese medicine but shamans consider the bones of wild big cats more effective than that of captive-bred animals.

The lion bone trade is a relatively new business as farmers and breeders are replacing it from that of the tigers victims of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). Indeed ‘tiger bone wine’ has been used in TCM for at least 1,000 years if not more, e.g. the treatment of rheumatism and impotence, even if there are no proved medicinal properties. This fortifying wine is very expensive: a bottle is sold at around £130! A part from the bones, other body parts of the tiger, such as its bones, teeth, and claws, are used in various treatments because the animal represents strength and bravery, which, thanks to the placebo effect are believed to be transferred to the patient.

The export of lion bones and skeletons from South Africa to South Eastern Asia began around 2008, when the African country issued its first export permit for 50 skeletons destined for Laos that were obtained from captive-bred lions. The larger importers are Vietnam and Laos. In most cases, lion parts are traded as with tigers. This trade is however regarded as being unlawful under the CITES Convention on International Trade of Endangered Species. Indeed, tigers are threatened with extinction: fewer than 4,000 remain in the wild. As a consequence, lion bones are even sold on the black market as tiger bones very often.

This rise in the trade of lion bones shouldn’t come as a surprise. In 2016 the United States banned the import of captive-origin lion trophies. Breeding facilities began looking for alternative markets, such as the sale of lion skeleton.

According to international regulations, the African lion, Panthera leo, is included in Appendix II to CITES, which means lions and lion parts can be traded internationally only under strict regulation: the global trade of body parts from lions killed in the wild is banned by international treaties – but permitted for animals bred in captivity.  In 2016, the 17th CITES Conference of the Parties decided that no bone exports should be allowed from wild lions. On the other hand, the conference also agreed that South Africa should establish a quota for skeleton exports from captive-bred lion, also recognising that captive breeding in South Africa is the only country allowed as no other country has permission to export lion bones.

Therefore, the body parts of captive-bred lions from South Africa can currently be exported legally out of the country. In 2017, the Department of Environmental Affairs set an annual lion skeleton export quota at 800 but unfortunately it almost doubled to 1500 by July 2018.

Monitoring methods, however, are not that effective: a report prepared for CITES suggests that 3,469 skeletons were exported in 2017, nearly double the assigned number. It is clear that law enforcement is equivocal as the black market trade is very widespread and it is hard for officials to distinguish between legal and illegal bone stock.

L'articolo LION BONE TRADE TO ASIA proviene da OIPA.

The committee chairman Mohlopi Mapulane of the Parliament Portfolio Committee on Environmental Affairs  in 2018 stated:

“It seems as if South Africa’s conservation reputation is being compromised by Captive Lion practice which does not seem to benefit broader conservation but a small number of breeders without proper scientific or conservation basis”.

In August 2018, Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Environmental Affairs hosted a two-day colloquium on captive lion breeding under the title: ‘Captive Lion Breeding for Hunting In South Africa: Harming Or Promoting the Conservation Image of the Country’. The colloquium heard acceptance from the department of environmental affairs (DEA), the scientific authority, the department of agriculture, forestry and fisheries, and conservation bodies. After submissions from all the parties involved a report was adopted by the Parliamentary Committee.

Nonetheless, on February 2019 the Parliament declares its opposition against the Portfolio Committee on Environmental Affairs, as it does not want the South African National Parks (SANParks) to sign any form of collaborative agreement with the Kruger National Park and the Association of Private Nature Reserves.

The Minister of Environmental Affairs, therefore, reacts by introducing sanctions.

Recently in Cape Town the South Africa’s new Minister of Environmental Affairs: Nomvula Mokonyane told the agency will appoint a high-level panel to review policies and legislation on matters connected to elephants, lions, leopards and rhinoceros handling, management, breeding, hunting and trade.

Statistics from the African population shows that locals are deeply concerned about what is happening and wish to put an end to this sad story, once more, because it is damaging the country’s reputation.

Data from the South African Institute of International Affairs has reported that the revenues generated by the lion cub petting and lion walking tourist attractions, even though highly lucrative, constitute just 1.85 percent of South Africa’s overall tourism industry income !!!!

Two years ago the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, CITES, divulgated a petition vividly denouncing the illegality of the trade of lions body. CITES will hold its next meeting in Colombo, Sri Lanka from May 23 to June 3, 2019.

In 2018 even the U.S. Pro-Trophy Hunting Group Safari Club International admitted that:

“canned hunting has doubtful value to the conservation of lions in the wild”.

In addition, other hunting organizations have made their voice heard against trophy hunting of captive-bred lions including the Dallas Safari Club, Boone and Crockett Club, Operators and Professional Hunter Associations of Africa and Namibia Professional Hunters Association.

The world’s largest hunting organisation: Safari Club International has now banned the Professional Hunters Association in South Africa representatives from the lion hunting at their annual conference and even refused to register South African lion trophies in their record books (February 2018).

Safari Club International now says:

 it “opposes hunting of African lions bred in captivity”.

Why is it that South Africa has just watched as the US, Australia, France and the Netherlands have all banned the importation of captive-bred lion trophies and of other important species?

Not to mention the 45 airlines that have placed embargoes on hunting trophies. How can it be that British Airways, Air France, American Airlines, Delta, Lufthansa and the Emirates are more concerned about wildlife than South Africa is?

It is astonishing that even a conservative US president like Trump, whose two sons are enthusiastic big game hunters, has chosen to side with the conservationists and go up against his own department: the Hunters, and the National Rifle Association (NRA) lobby.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (16000 leading conservation scientists), at its last World Conservation Congress, requested its director-general to encourage South Africa to draft and enact legislation by 2020 to terminate lion breeding for the purposes of hunting.

The African Department of Environment affair (DEA) study is quite simple: abolish captive-bred lion hunting over the next three years. Seeing as the 200 South African farms that are breeding lions for the bullet cannot release the cats into the wild for many reasons, therefore, Males and females must be kept separate and not allowed to breed. The remaining ones can be hunted over the next three years but then it must be banned once and for all.

The Tourism department is well aware of the loss to Brand South Africa. Created in 2002 to help generate a positive and compelling brand image for South Africa, ‘Brand South Africa’ is a Nation brand that educates people and has an international appeal stimulating global competitiveness. ‘Brand South Africa’ cooperates in partnership with other stakeholders trying to articulate awareness campaigns and a positive image of the wild life both nationally and internationally. Patriotism amongst South Africans in this way is enhanced.

L'articolo BRAND SOUTH AFRICA AT RISK, SOUTH AFRICAN GOVERNMENT POSITION proviene da OIPA.

The story blows the lid off claims made by these hunting operators in attempting to justify what they do. Last year alone over 800 captive lions were shot in South Africa, mostly by wealthy international hunters under conditions that are considered anything but sporting.

Ian has been following this story since 1999, and the film shows him going onto these breeding farms to witness the impact that decades of intensive breeding is having on captive lions and other predators.

Aggressive farmers and many others within the professional hunting community resent his questioning, but the highly profitable commercialization of lions is plain to see – cub petting, volunteer recruitment, lion walking, canned hunting, trading and the new lion bone trade are on the increase. And all are being justified under the guise of conservation, research and education.

In parallel the film follows Rick, who purchases a South African lion online from his home in Hawaii. He then travels to South Africa to follow the path paved by many canned hunters.

We also speak to trophy hunters, operators and breeders, as well as recognized lion ecologists, conservationists and animal welfare experts about the predator hunting industry.

The film shows in intimate detail how lucrative it is to breed lions, and how the authorities and most professional hunting and tourism bodies have become complicit in allowing the industries to flourish.

There is also hope in our story as we cover the latest developments with the Australian government announcing a complete ban on the importation of all African lion trophies into Australia.

Blood Lions is a compelling call to action and shows how you can get involved in a global campaign to stop lions being bred for the bullet.

Read more here: http://www.bloodlions.org/the-film/

L'articolo BLOOD LIONS – THE DOCUMENTARY proviene da OIPA.