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Kruger Parke-Times
Bustads thatndCannd huntng s vyn’s spnsblty 
Htag st plaqus n Kug std
200-bdhtlplanndf Kug
Clck tcks twads wat scacty 
Kazs n Kug
June 2009 - e1
 
Newsclips
Drg bst nKrger Park
Mpumalanga police have arrestedtwo suspected drug smugglers and con-fiscated 33kg of dagga in the KrugerNational Park (KNP), Beeld newspa-per reported on Friday May 15. PoliceInspector Oosie Oosthuizen stoppedand searched the vehicle in the KrugerNational Park, about eight kilometresfrom the Malelane gate, on Thursday,said Skukuza spokesperson InspectorOubaas Coetzer.He found three bags of dagga worthR68 000 in the vehicle. It is believedthe men were smuggling the drugsfrom Swaziland to Gauteng. The pairappeared in a Skukuza court on Fri-day.Sapa
Elephant klls mann Lmpp
 A man in his fifties was trampled todeath by an elephant in the Madimboarea near Masisi in the Kruger Na-tional Park, Limpopo police said onMonday May 4, 2009.Superintendent Ronel Otto said Nel-son Masikhwa and another man werewalking in the area around 5.30pm onSunday. Details were unclear but it ap-pears an elephant charged the two andtrampled Masikhwa.The other man ran to a nearby vil-lage to get help but when the man,residents and police returned Masikh-wa was already dead and the elephantgone. The elephant who trampledMasikhwa could not be identified andno elephants were shot due to the in-cident. An inquest into Masikhwa’sdeath was being investigated, saidOtto.www.iol.co.za
kruger park times - 2 - kruger park times
The Kruger National Park’s (KNP) acting managing executive Abe Sibiya officiallyopened the new, state-of-the-art R5,2-mil-lion Mopani Conference Centre on Friday June 12, 2009.“I can proudly state at the official open-ing this facility at Mopani Rest Camp thatthe KNP has certainly arrived as a confer-ence venue with a number of world classoptions that will hopefully meet and exceedmost clients’ needs,” Sibiya said.“Kruger’s tourism business has alwaysbeen seasonal with high season times coin-ciding with South African school holidays.Conferences are seen as one of the waysin which these huge drops during off peak times could be negated,” explained Sibiya.Built with the assistance to InfrastructureDevelopment Program (IDP) funding fromthe South African Government, the confer-ence centre can house up to 300 people cin-ema style in its main hall. The facility wasconverted from the camp’s shop and store-rooms and this work took nine months tocomplete.“As I stand before you, I can proudly saythat the establishment of this facility onlyhad a negligible environmental impact andthis was short term. All these buildings werealready here and all they needed was to re-organise the interior and equip them forconferencing,” said Mr Sibiya.In addition to the main conference hall,the facility also includes three break-awayrooms which can house 21, 30 and 45 peo-ple respectively (all cinema style) and a teaarea which includes a wooden deck thatoverlooks the nearby Pioneer Dam.The break away rooms also include 15moveable panels that can convert the threeseparate rooms into either two larger rooms(one hosting 67 people cinema style and theother housing 45 people cinema style) orone large venue which can house 150 peo-ple cinema style. All four venues, the mainhall and each of the three breakaway roomsinclude screens and full audio visual aids.Mopani Rest Camp is one of the newerlarge camps in the KNP and can accommo-date 506 people. It is situated 74 kilometresnorth of Phalaborwa Entrance Gate.In the KNP, other conference centres in-clude Berg en Dal Rest Camp, a small venueat the Elephant Hall in Letaba Rest Camp,a small conference centre at ShingwedziRest Camp and the conference facility inSkukuza Rest Camp, which is presently be-ing upgraded. For more information aboutthe new Mopani Conference Centre, accessthe SANParks Website (www.sanparks.org)or contact Christa von Elling on (013) 7356535.
Nw cnfnc cnt at Mpan Camp pnd
Ben van Eeden, Abe Sbya andWllam Mabasa  the KrgerNatnal ParkGarth Hlt, hsptalty man-ager  Mpan rest Camp.
 
kruger park times - 3 - kruger park times
Cannd huntng, a publc spnsblty 
Every year thousands of people visit facil-ities in South Africa where they can interactwith lion cubs, young Cheetah and in somecases even tigers. But seldom do people ask what happens to the cubs when they growtoo big for the facilities to manage them.“There is substantial evidence to suggestthat these animals are very often sold, or‘returned’ to lion and other predator breed-ing facilities from which they are often soldon as trophies into the very lucrative cannedhunting industry, which has thrived in South Africa for at least the past 12 years,” saysYolan Friedmann, CEO of the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT). With the inclusion of lions in the Threat-ened or Protected Species Regulations, thehunting of a captive bred lion within a pe-riod of less than 24 months post its releaseinto an extensive wildlife area is now pro-hibited.Cubs are often taken away from theirmothers to stimulate faster reproductionand so keep up a constant supply of pet-ting lions. Visitors pay to pet the animal andhave their photograph taken with it, and ei-ther do not consider the animal’s situationand what will happen to it when it growsup, or they assume that there is a conserva-tion effort associated with petting lions.
Hman mprnted
The lions are however human imprintedand have not grown up in a natural socialgroup, making it impossible to release theminto a natural habitat for the long term.This, coupled with the disease risk posed bycaptive bred animals, as well as their dubi-ous genetic lineage renders them a risk forrelease. They therefore have no conserva-tion value and are purely a source of in-come for those exploiting them.Often the situation of a “paying volun-teer” is also exploited for further financialgain, with volunteers being told that thelion mothers are not able to care for theiroffspring and that once they are old enoughhand raised lions are returned to the wild. A recent report by the National Councilof SPCAs suggests that many of these li-ons end up as targets for canned hunting.The report states that “the hunting of cap-tive bred lions is in fact at an all time highand the South African Predator Breeders Association (SAPBA) estimated in Januarythis year that about 1 050 lions were huntedin South Africa in 2008. Nearly all of theseanimals were raised in captivity. This is amore than 300% increase on the 322 lionsthe Department of Environmental Affairsand Tourism (DEAT) says were hunted in2006 and a 35% increase on their 2007 fig-ure of 700.”This raises the question: where do allthese lions come from? In South Africa, athriving canned hunting industry can inmost cases be linked to an equally thriving industry based on cub petting and commer-cial captive breeding centres.The EWT encourages the public to takean active role in putting an end to cannedhunting by asking the following questionsbefore taking an opportunity to play witha cub:
• Where is the cub’s mother?• Why is the cub not being raised by its
mother?
• What happens to the facility’s cubs
when they grow up?
• If they are released into larger wildlife
areas, where are these and can the facilityprovide documentation to prove a viableand ethical release process?
• If, and therefore once cubs have been re
-leased, do they have the opportunity to liveout their natural lives, or are they hunted?
• If they are sold to game reserves, is their
future secure or is this a cover for simplybeing hunted?
• If they become part of a breeding pro
-gramme, for what purpose?
• What happens to the facility’s surplus
animals?Some may argue that there is educational value in allowing people to handle wild ani-mals. However this kind of education pro- vides the incorrect message that wild ani-mals exist for human entertainment, thatthey can be petted like domestic animals,and that they have value only in captivityand not in their natural habitats. Moreover,lion cubs are naturally boisterous and evena young lion is capable of inflicting damageon a human being. Visitors are expectedto sign indemnity forms that protect the fa-cility, but many people are hurt, sometimes very badly, through these interactions. It isalso important to note that captive breed-ing is not a conservation recommendationfor any carnivore species in South Africa.Carnivores in fact breed extremely well inthe right conditions and for almost all ourthreatened carnivore species, the conser- vation priorities include reducing human-wildlife conflict, securing suitable habitat,reducing poaching and illegal offtake andmaintaining balanced, functioning eco-systems. Without these in place, captivebreeding leads to an over-supply of non-releasable animals which often end up astrophies.The Endangered Wildlife Trust is notagainst legal, ethical forms of sustainableuse and recognises the role that hunting plays in many conservation programmes. We do not however support the intensivebreeding of wild animals for canned hunt-ing. It must be noted that other species arealso hunted under condtions where theyhave no chance of escape and thus are also victims of canned hunting. While we urge the government to ad-dress captive lion breeding situation inSouth Africa, and all canned hunting, wesimilarly urge members of the public torecognise their role in supporting or put-ting an end to both the cruel treatmentof lions in some captive facilities, and thepractise of canned lion hunting.The EWT is working with many otherNGOs to develop an ethical, humane pro-posal which may avert the continuance of cruelty being meted down to Africa’s King of the Beasts.
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