BY JOHN NASH
Silly season August it is, and World Lion Day on the 10th has seen the publication of another soppy-science report, this time in Nature Conservation, a publication that “strongly encourages papers on ethical… issues related to the management and use of biodiversity and ecosystems” but then also rejects manuscripts of “low scientific quality”. How it squares the circle between an unscientific ethical (subjective human moral) standpoint and a scientific (objective unemotional) standpoint is the sort of Teletubby yoga that infests the world these days and frankly makes me want to bite off my own scrotum.
The report, entitled “Under the lion’s paw: lion farming in South Africa and the illegal international bone trade” was written by Angie Elwin, Eyob Asfaw and Neil D’Cruze, all three employees of World Animal Protection (WAP), listed by the IWMC as “an animal rights NGO that reported a global income of USD 60.6 million in 2019” – a suitable motive, Monsieur Poirot?
Animal rights (AR), as you know – as opposed to the noble task of animal welfare – is a sad mental abnormality that afflicts well-fed, saturated-brain-fat urban people. Symptoms include an irrational demand that “animals should have the same rights as humans”, despite the rather obvious fact that we humans have used animals as commodities for food and clothing for the whole of our evolutionary history. (The use of animal resources is therefore perfectly normal human behaviour. That would suggest to those who think logically that AR is not).
Undaunted by mere reality, WAP, on the other hand, reckons “wild animals are born to be wild – not to be used by people or be exploited for profit, so they must be protected, not owned” – a sage piece of advice, unfortunately more rectum than dictum.
Meanwhile, in the real world, if farmers had to protect all the world’s wild deer, rabbits, mice, slugs and pigeons, the pious, finger-wagging AR souls and vegetarians would all starve to death. In Africa, lions and elephants present the same challenge to food supplies.
When it comes to animal use, WAP, amusingly, is also committed to seeking “an end to the factory farming of 80 billion animals annually”.
When you live in suburbia, rake in 60 million green a year and have all your food (nicely wrapped and cleansed of the blood and sweat that was shed in its production) delivered to your immaculate front door by an unpaid rubber-boat immigrant on an electric bike, affordable food is perhaps not a priority, so farmers beware – facts and truth will not protect you from the fundamentalists.
Dr D’Cruze is also a Research Associate at Oxford’s WildCRU, an organisation that seeks to “underpin solutions to conservation problems through primary scientific research of the highest calibre”. Measured by primary science alone, Dr D’Cruze’s “ethical conservation solutions” must be about as much use to WildCRU’s scientific endeavours as a handbrake on a canoe, which is hardly surprising since animal rights are all about well-fed human sentimentality and absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with either science or wildlife.
WAP doesn’t miss a trick – it took its “critical message” to the UN COP27 climate conference, urging delegates “to understand inextricable connections. How factory farming, which condemns 80 billion animals to unimaginable and largely secret suffering, depends on a huge carbon footprint to fuel its existence”.
Call me old-fashioned, but I would imagine the animal cost and carbon footprint of 60 million dollars of public charity annually sucked out of Townies by WAP is a smidgen less critical to human survival than farmers are. But then again, with enough green you can paint your own bandwagon.
And so, what about this new, exciting “lion farming” paper?
Well, there’s not a lot I can say because there’s not a lot to it – it’s based on anonymous informants’ evidence “about two lion farming operations in South Africa”. It even started off by shooting itself in the foot – “In South Africa, although free ranging (lion) populations are increasing, the number of lions in captivity in private commercial facilities far outnumber those in the wild. In a region where lions have declined by 43%”, South Africa is a country where “free ranging lion populations are increasing…(they) have raised many more (lions) than even the rising wild population”.
Outside AR la-la land, most sane people would call that a roaring success (pun intended).
The paper then tells you what their research really uncovered – two criminal outfits. Yes – a magnificent total of two criminal organisations operating among perhaps 400 lion-breeding operations in South Africa. That is a somewhat less than scientific 0.5% sample of the lion-breeding industry, whose organisation, the much-maligned SAPA, is trying hard to improve without any help.
To suggest that this mini- research à deux describes a whole industry is akin to presenting two methylated UK hobos in a cardboard bender as a “scientifically robust representative of life in the UK”.
Do these AR navel-lint harvesters think that banning legal and properly regulated lion farming, hunting and derivatives trades will somehow make eco-criminals (who clearly already ignore the law) suddenly see the light, cross the green Rubicon, don daisy headdresses and turn into bunny-hugging temperance vegetarians?
I’ll wager that’s pushing scientific speculation a tad too far.
Could someone please tell these AR squealers that criminal eco-villains are not lion farmers. If real, what they do is not farming or hunting – it is crime. Their customers are not hunters – they are criminals, too.
In the real world, lion farmers farm lions and lion hunters pay to hunt lions, while bone dealers deal in bones. Farmers and hunters hate criminals, too. I won’t bore you with the insightful finding that the two anonymous criminal organisations are about as tasty as sick parrot’s cage sand.
The authors also “gratefully acknowledge Louise de Waal of Blood Lions for her informative insights on this article”. There’s a rude word in science for that kind of “informative insight”, too. What the hell happened to science in this batty pile of lion excrement? What the hell has all this to do with conservation – other than the fact that every farmed lion skelly sold into the bone trade fills an existing demand that might otherwise fall on a wild lion?
There is an estimated Far East Medicine demand for perhaps 1500 lion skeletons annually and only half a dozen problem wild lions are hunted. The rest can be supplied from farmed lions rather than from poaching.
Ban lion farming and you give criminals a monopoly and the huge demand will then fall on South Africa’s 3500 wild lions.
You can’t check the research in this paper because they didn’t collect any identifiable information and say they won’t let you have it anyway. If this was a scientific experiment for Biology GCSE, it would be in the bin by now.
In case you are still not convinced, the paper included a couple of nasty photos unconnected with the research, so the sudden resemblance of this “scientific paper” to the very unscientific, manipulative TV adverts for animal donations, whose graphics put granny off her supper, is more than obvious. About now, you realise that this research paper has little to do with science, conservation or lion farming and more to do with emotion (Donate here).
Meanwhile, before you lose your sense of proportion over three hysterics, two anonymous criminal outfits, some unverifiable eco-porn and two unconnected prurient photos, all fashioned into an AR penny dreadful, just remember that the UK RSPCA deal with a thousand cases of animal cruelty reported to them every week, and despite their stomach-churning TV adverts, no sane person in the UK suggests that animal cruelty is normal or we must ban pet keeping or animal farming.
Because that is what this is – lion farming, and although it won’t ever be popular (nor I for pointing it out), it can only be judged as farming seriously dangerous animals, not as a rerun of Lion King.
In the real world even bad lion farms are no worse than life for wild lions, where only 50% of cubs make it to their first birthday, only 5% of males get to breed and 50% of all lions are viciously killed by other lions. The rest fall to slow and distressing deaths from injuries, infected wounds, starvation, predators or disease. Shooting is a blessing. Disney is pretend.
Lion life is unbelievably ferocious, and we humans couldn’t tolerate it for a single minute – in fact we invented human civilisation to avoid it.
Lions are born into violence, live by violence and die by violence. You may think that lions are magnificent, as we all do, but the lions we see are only magnificent because the lions we see are the victors of total and unrelenting inner-savannah gang violence, plunder, infanticide and rape. They are wonderful, magnificent, nasty, smelly killers that live uncivilised lives measurably worse than the worst dysfunctional human family on the worst inner-city sink estate you can begin to imagine.
Unless, of course, you live on public donations and operate an AR eco-porn bakery distributing extra spicy buns from a bandwagon in the city.
Meanwhile, in the real world, someone else will sort out the real lion problem using backbone, not wishbone.
Someone bring in some legislation against these con artists and paid shills, will they? The sooner the better.
John Nash grew up in West Cornwall and was a £10 pom to Johannesburg in the early 1960’s. He started well in construction project management, mainly high-rise buildings but it wasn’t really Africa, so he went bush, prospecting and trading around the murkier bits of the bottom half of the continent. Now retired back in Cornwall among all the other evil old pirates. His interests are still sustainable resources, wildlife management and the utilitarian needs of rural Africa.