One early morning in 2015, Karen Trendler beinged in front of her computer system and began to trawl sites offering tiger cubs. Four hours later on, by 12.30pm, she had actually protected one.
“It was just to show how easy it is for a member of the public to purchase a tiger,” remembered Trendler, a preservation professional, who was dealing with a reporter on an examination. “We went right the way through to saying ‘yes we will [buy]’ and we’ll transfer the funds.”
The cub would have been provided to her home in Westcliff, Johannesburg. “Obviously, we didn’t transfer the funds because we didn’t want to be part of it … And who would we have reported that owner to? He was doing something legal.”
On Monday, surveillance footage apparently caught a young female tiger wandering the driveway of a workplace complex in Edenvale in Ekurhuleni. Last month, another female tiger, Sheba, got away from her enclosure on a smallholding in Walkerville, Joburg. She severely mauled a male, William Mokoena, and killed 2 dogs and a pig, prior to she was shot dead. The tigers were independently owned animals who got away.
Trendler, who previously ran the wildlife trade and trafficking system of the National Council of SPCAs (NSPCA), said the keeping of tigers and unique animals is mainly uncontrolled, has actually grown and is carefully connected to the captive lion breeding market.
With captive-bred lions, for instance, each province has specific fencing requirements. “The fact that the tigers are totally unregulated means that you can keep them in your backyard in Benoni with a precast fence or an ordinary garden fence.”
As tigers are not controlled, “there’s no way of knowing how many there are, where they are, or of being able to do an inspection — until something happens … National policy says it’s okay to keep tigers, that ‘we’re not concerned about it’. Then with the municipalities and the provinces, the legislation is fragmented and different across the different provinces.”
Kelly Marnewick, a senior speaker in the department of nature preservation at the Tshwane University of Technology, said: “Tigers are exotic. You don’t need any permits to keep them, the same as you wouldn’t need any permits to keep a goldfish or an African grey parrot. Anyone can own a tiger … It’s problematic because not only is it a human safety risk, particularly in urban areas, but it also becomes a welfare risk to the animals.”
Albi Modise, representative for the department of forestry, fisheries and environment (DFFE) said tigers are an alien types.
“The regulations require listing of such species and for the applicant to apply for a permit to introduce and keep [them]. The issuing of permits for enclosures for wild species is the responsibility of respective provincial and/or municipal authorities.”
The keeping of non-indigenous types and normally keeping animals as animals is controlled by provinces and by by-laws, where they exist.
Douglas Wolhuter, supervisor of the NSPCA’s wildlife security system, said in its last evaluation listing in 2021, it situated a minimum of 16 facilities in suburbs that housed tigers. On average, there are 5 to 6 grievances about tigers yearly, “however these are on the rise as people become more aware of the tiger problem”.
It’s fairly simple to own a tiger as the only authorization requirement in the East Rand is an import authorization when bringing one from another province. “However, tigers sourced within Gauteng would be exempt from this requirement. There is a deficiency in terms of the wild animal definition in that it excludes exotic animals.”
Most tigers on the East Rand are sourced through a breeding center in North West “and as such, the predator industry plays a large role”. Apart from Gauteng, other provinces which have “lax laws” are North West, Mpumalanga and Limpopo, nevertheless it is community by-laws that are the “primary failing as the by-laws allow for exotics”.
For Marnewick, the less individuals “glamourise and glorify” owning a tiger, the much better. “Owners need to be held more accountable for damage caused when their animals escape.”
The function of the NSPCA or SPCA is to guarantee re-capture techniques are gentle and well-being is thought about, said Wolhuter.
“The animals are inevitably killed when there is a great risk to people or their property. That’s when a decision has to be made between darting, trapping or a death shot.”
In 2021, DFFE Minister Barbara Creecy revealed a top-level panel had recommended South Africa no longer captive-breed lions, keep lions in captivity or utilize captive lions or their derivatives commercially.
Writing in The Conversation, NGO World Animal Protection said it had actually gotten reports that some lion farm owners seem moving from lions to tigers and ligers, which are lion-tiger hybrids. “This may be in response to South Africa’s recent announcement of its decision to end lion farming.”
Trendler concurred. “We’re now looking at winding down … the lion industry, well, they’re just going to move to tigers. There already are a lot of tigers in that industry, they’re unregulated and they’re not going to have the hype around them that the lions have, so we’re just going to see a swing. We’re already seeing it.”
A report in 2015 by Four Paws discovered 359 tigers and 93 tiger parts were exported from South Africa in between 2011 and 2020, generally to Vietnam, China and Thailand, “which all have high demand for tiger parts used in traditional medicine and luxury items”.
Hundreds of personal centers breed lions, tigers, leopards and jaguars and, sometimes, cross-breed them for industrial functions. The absence of efficient controls on record-keeping and guideline, and the level of obvious breeding and industrial trade, has actually made it difficult to approximate the real variety of animals, it said.
Fiona Miles, Four Paws director in South Africa, said it was prompting the DFFE to consist of all huge cats, consisting of non-indigenous types, which are likewise being “intensively bred”, in the phase-out of the lion breeding market.
As news broke of the tiger in Edenvale on Monday, Wendy Willson the legal and operations lead at the Johannesburg Wildlife Veterinary Hospital had her hands complete with the case of a male selling poached animals on the side of the roadway in Tarlton.
“Everyone thinks the illegal animal trade is something that happens only with tigers and tiger kings in a world removed from everyday life, but the trade is real, it’s everywhere and it’s violent,” said Willson.
Since the medical facility’s beginning in 2017, it has actually taped an approximate 200% to 1 000% boost in the unlawful animal sell native types, consisting of Southern African pythons, chameleons, screens, tortoises, meerkats, serval, monkeys, baboons, mongooses, badgers, owls and jackals. “We are literally haemorrhaging our indigenous animals out of this country and it’s not been taken seriously.”
A wild animal cannot have all its requirements for health and well-being satisfied in captivity however numerous people and collectors wish to own wildlife merely for the “ego boost” it offers.
She informed of a rattlesnake discovered abandoned in a storage facility in Roodepoort in 2015. “Nobody in fact understood it was a rattlesnake. When individuals entered there to start cleansing, they discovered this rattlesnake in a damaged enclosure, totally dehydrated and starving to death.
“But it’s a rattlesnake — there is no anti-venom for [it] and some completely innocent person is at huge risk because someone took a decision to own a rattlesnake and then leave this incredibly dangerous animal.”
Willson said legislation and policies need to be tightened up to safeguard animals and individuals.
Wolhuter said poisonous snakes such as cottonmouths, for which there is no anti-venom available, and chinchillas remain in high need as animals “yet no home environment can match that of what these creatures truly need to thrive”.
“Yellow neck slider turtles and other species of fish are also hazardous to the local indigenous species in South Africa as are some species of exotic snakes.”
After Sheba’s escape, Creecy advised the biodiversity and preservation group, which represents provinces and towns, to talk about a regulative structure to govern unique animals in captivity, Modise said. They satisfied last Thursday.
“DFFE and provinces have agreed to establish a task team, together with the SA Local Government Association, to audit facilities where such exotic species and other dangerous animals … are kept in captivity with a view to developing a national regulatory framework.”
Trendler said: “Once they start controling [tigers] they then need to cops and implement, and we’ve heard a few of the provinces state they don’t have a capability to implement. And once again, how do you unexpectedly state to every tiger owner, that you’re not permitted to keep them or breed them?
“This is precisely the very same method the lion market is stating, ‘You gave us permits to conduct this business, now you’re informing us we can’t do it. We’ve invested money, we have staff, we have animals. If you eliminate our licenses we’re going to sue you for loss of earnings.’
“So, there could be legal challenges when they try to regulate it.”
