An e-mail written to Mr. Sparks in January 2014
Dear Mr. Sparks,
NAPHA was very proactive and even convinced to give leopard hunting with hounds a fair chance – a trial period.
Why? At that very point in time it was an established fact that the population levels of both, the leopard and the cheetah, had not only recovered well in Namibia but had reached a density that caused more and more stock losses. We were desperately looking for internationally acceptable and ethical management “tools” to “manage “ these very high population levels - leopard hunting with hounds therefore seemed to be a very sensible supplementation to the traditional leopard hunting methods. There are very few other management “tools” that are acceptable- if any. If we would not find acceptable new utilisation methods, we would return to the indiscriminate killing and therewith wasting of this valuable natural resource, the leopard, by the very people, the farmers, who tolerated the leopards and who were the very people who were responsible for these unique conservation efforts and subsequent recovery in numbers in collaboration with the spotted cat foundations in Namibia.
Where and why did things go wrong ?
Right from the beginning this new hunting branch, the hounds men, was officially tasked and challenged by the NAPHA EXCO to develop and to impose on themselves transparent rules and regulations that would warrant a long term sustainable hunting with hounds. It is on record that the hounds men would be the architects of their own destiny. When it became obvious that out in the field many short cuts were taken, a special meeting was convened to once more tell the hounds men that they themselves were risking the future of this very new and promising enterprise.
A few reasons:
1. When law transgressions on a leopard hunts took place, the easiest way out for the involved hound master was just to say :<I am not the farmer, neither am I the PH or hunting outfitter, I am but merely a dog handler>- this was too easy to simply push away the responsibility and accountability.
2. You know that the leopard hunts with dogs lent itself to staged , canned leopard hunting. Suddenly the market value of alive leopards in a cage rose to N$ 20 000 and more. Leopards were transported on pick-ups throughout the country. We closed (at least )two hubs of canned leopard hunting , the participants in this detrimental hunting practice were also the hounds men- again it was just too easy for them to look to the other side.......... it was easy money. Was it shear coincidence that the hounds men involved were all Sa-cans???
3. Farm borders were crossed- again with the participation and the knowledge of the dog masters.
4. Leopards were poached – without consent and permission of the respective land owners- you personally were allegedly involved in two cases that I know of .
5. Suddenly foreign PH-es and their dog handlers flooded Namibia to make a quick buck. How can it be that a SA-can PH takes 19 leopards a year without having contributed to the conservation of leopards in the past and without having invested anything in this country- you also worked for that particular outfitter ! Just to put some figures to this calculation: 19 leopards x U$ 15 000 x N$ 8 = N$ 2,28 mil – not bad for no risk , no responsibility- this was blatant plundering of our natural resources.
6. More and more SA PH-es saw this gap, they recruited SA hound masters , contracted a few ignorant Namibian land owners and started a lucrative business.
The risk that these evil practices would ruin the reputation of Namibia as a reputable hunting destination was just too big. We were just demonstrated by the publication of the Cook report what detrimental impact the canned lion issue had on hunting in SA, in Africa and hunting world-wide . In Namibia we opted to react right in the beginning to discourage canned hunting in all its forms. Just look at the example in SA where the lion breeders became so influential that they succeeded to carry on with canned lion hunts- they just changed the terminology from canned hunting to hunting of captive bred lions.
We have to admit that our new leopard regulations are definitely not perfect and need meaningful adjustments.
However the distribution of tags on geographical grounds is much fairer system than the previous one which was exploited by scrupulous PH-es and the dog handlers ! The landowner is the person who tolerates and who suffers under the pressure of predators. He should be the one to decide to hunt or to let hunt the animals he took care of over sometimes decades - he should be the one who benefits from a meaningful trophy fee to partially compensate for the stock- and or game losses he sustained and that he was prepared to tolerate!
We do not want to keep any one out - come buy a farm in Namibia, invest, conserve, participate at our decision making process, and respect the laws of this country ! The decisions should and will be made in Namibia by Namibians and not somewhere at green tables in one of the metropolitans of the world. However if any a resolution is taken by means of a democratic vote, also the minority must accept this decision. This does not mean that any decision is irreversible, any situation or contributing factors might change.
Namibia initially had a CITES quota of 150 leopards annually. With the argument to make sensible provision for the “waste “ of indiscriminate killings by farmers of so-called “problem leopards”, Namibia was allowed an increased quota of 250 leopards annually. I do not have the total number of leopards utilized/killed in Namibia annually. Fact however is that much more leopards than our allocated CITES quota had always been killed in the past and are killed right at this point in time. The only hope is to gain another meaningful increase in CITES quota- this however is highly unlikely to happen as any increase in quota will only be granted based on a thorough, scientifically accepted leopard census . You should know , due to the behaviour of leopards , how difficult if not impossible such an action is.
Again come and help us to find answers and solutions- define and carry out that census- provide the scientific basis - this is the only slim chance that I see personally that the CITES quota for leopard could be increased for Namibia. Within the boundaries of the existing CITES quota of 250 leopards, I personally see but no chance and no room for leopard hunting with hounds now and in the future !
With best regards,
Rainer Ling
