NSPCA told to stick to animal welfare

If the NSPCA wants to maintain any credibility in the wildlife industry it should remain a welfare organisation and not act as an animal rights organisation, according to Stewart Dorrington, president of the Professional Hunters’ Association of South Africa. He was responding to a recent statement by the National Council of SPCAs to the effect that it was disappointed and distressed by the news that the new regulations governing lion hunting will only come into effect from February 2008. “Unless the minister declares a moratorium on hunting – lion hunting in particular – we are concerned that South Africa will become a killing field. The announcement effectively gives unscrupulous lion farmers the leeway to try and deplete their stock in the interim period, needless to say at a profit. By ‘deplete’ we mean hunting and there is no doubt that until the new regulations are brought in, canned hunting as we know and condemn it will continue,” said Rick Allan of the SPCA’s wildlife unit in the statement. Dorrington conceded that the SPCA, as an animal welfare organisation, is entitled to their views but believes that statements like these sound more like something from an animal rights group. “South Africa has in its constitution the right to sustainable use of the environment. Hunting is regarded by the IUCN as a means of sustainable use. Rick Allen should be more concerned about the manner in which wild animals are kept than in the manner in which they are harvested. The consequences of not hunting would be dire for all wildlife and conservation in South Africa, especially that which occurs on private land,” Dorrington told Farmer’s Weekly. – Roelof Bezuidenhout