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The Origins Foundation Podcast
Episode 595 - Richard York || Delisting Bontebok At CITES
00:44:49
Richard York, CEO of Wildlife Ranching South Africa (WRSA), joins Robbie to talk about WRSA’s proposal to delist the bontebok—an endemic species to South Africa—at CITES. Following a non-detrimental finding submitted to the South African government, the government took up the mantle to remove the bontebok from Appendix II and manage the population through hunting. This proposal is a critical one, as it will be the first voted on at CITES (votes occur alphabetically) and has no reason not to be approved—except if politics and anti-use organizations play their respective games.
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A
Bow hunting all comes down to a moment.
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B
And in the moment you want equipment.
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A
On your bow that will get the job done. Trophy Ridge products are the tools bow hunters trust react technology, sights, rests, stabilizers and quivers to help a bow hunter be successful in the field.
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B
And those tools are from Trophy Ridge. At Midway USA we put customers first. The Nitro Express shipping system is icing on the cake. It was a big investment of time and money to take super fast low cost shipping to a whole new level. The Nitro Express helps ensure same day shipping and low shipping cost. We hope you enjoy the Nitro Express. We've built it just for you, for just about everything. For the outdoors, go to midway USA.com I'm Larry Potterfield with Midway USA. Thanks for your business. Richard York is the CEO of Wildlife Ranching South Africa WRSA. WRSA has submitted a proposal. They worked with partners to put forward a non detrimental finding an NDF to the South African government. And the South African government looked at their proposal, looked at all the data and said yes, we want to move forward. A CITES proposal to delist take off appendix to the buntebok. The bontebok is a very endemic species to South Africa, doesn't occur outside of South Africa and through hunting they have shown that the population has increased dramatically. And so they want to take the data, they want to take all this information to CITES and say look, this is a CITES success story. You guys listed it, we needed to work on it. We have worked on it. The population is doing amazing. We have all these things in place. Now delist it, take it off the list and let us do what we need to do with it and continue to trade with it to value this animal. So I wanted to talk to Richard about the proposal about Bunter book. And it's just a fascinating conversation for anybody that's interested in wildlife management, specifically in South Africa. Enjoy. So there's a reason why I started Blood Origins and that reason is simple, is that I wanted to convey the truth about hunting. It brings awareness to non hunters that it's more than just killing animals.
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A
How do I start it? Brittany?
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B
My name.
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A
Does my hair look okay?
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B
My name is Mike Axelrod. Start again. Yeah, I hated it too. Braxton, you said something in the car to me. You said that you were living on borrowed time. There's a perception around who hunters are, what we're supposed to be. And a feminist that works for a non profit that is a hunter that has only eaten wild game for the last 20 years is likely not the thing that people think about when it comes to a hunter. Richard, have we had you on the podcast before? I feel like I have. No. First time.
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A
First time.
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B
Geez, man. And I'm sure you've done a bunch of podcasts though.
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A
Yeah, I've done quite a few interviews. Not podcasts, that many, but quite a few interviews, yeah.
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B
That's awesome. That's awesome. Well, we're happy to have you, Richard York. Why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself?
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A
Hi. Good day, everyone. My name is Richard York. I'm the CEO of Wildlife Ranch in South Africa and it's arguably my privilege to serve the most beautiful industry in the world. I've got a blessed background in terms of farming, in terms of hunting and yeah, we, we make our, our hobby, our lifestyle, so we're very blessed.
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B
Richard, you say it's the most beautiful place in the world. I, I, I, I tend to agree, obviously because I'm from South Africa, but talk to give us a little bit of history about wildlife in South Africa, because I think I know it's not, you know, we've talked about it a lot on, on our podcast, we talk a lot about it on our social media and it's probably germane to the conversation we're going to have today. To me, I, I was even on a podcast yesterday. I say to people what there are two, to me, there are two bastions of wildlife conservation success in this world. The United States, given where they came from in the early 1900s to the wildlife successes that they have today. And then I use South Africa as the other example.
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A
Yep. So to, to clarify my statement, I said the most beautiful industry in the world. Oh, sorry, that's quite right to say most beautiful place in the world.
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B
Listen, I didn't think I'd be there. 4:55 in the morning. It's 4:55 in the morning. My listening skills aren't quite on point yet.
- [04:48]
A
No problem, Ruby. So to answer the question about most beautiful country in the world, we've got nine unique biomes in South Africa and that that changes uniquely across our landscape. Different management styles, different requirements, from arid deserts to wet forests, etc. So we are the third most biodiverse country in the world, which makes us very unique in terms of the fauna and flora that we have in the country. And then yeah, to answer our industry wise and to, to say where we've come from, very few people know this, but South Africa actually almost decimated its entire wildlife population in the 1950s as a result of rinderpest and as a result of disease we actually hired people to go and wipe out wildlife populations. And we had under 500,000 head of wildlife and 557,000 head of wildlife in the 1950s. In came the Game Theft act of 1991 and a few pioneering game farmers before that. And we've now seen wildlife surge to above the 20 million head mark with 80% or 16 million of those animals occurring in privately owned wildlife land. So the private sector, which we represent as wildlife ranch in South Africa is leading the charge with numbers, with habitat. We're talking about 17% of South Africa's land mass is now under some form of wildlife management and rewilding. That's basically taken place on our, on our back door.
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B
Richard, you talk about the Game Theft Act. Wasn't there a law in. Maybe I need an education here. I, I thought there was a law that got changed in the early 80s that allowed wildlife to belong to the, the person who owned it, the, the land itself.
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A
So that, that was basically the Game Theft Act. So one, one thing that South Africa gets crucified for in the media and wrongfully so is that they say fences are often considered a problem in South Africa. And it's. We talk about high fence hunting.
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B
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- [09:58]
A
But without fences in South Africa, you can't own the wildlife. So the Game Theft act is basically written that as soon as you put a fence around your property, you are then entitled and in charge of those animals in your property and you are the custodian who can look after it and you get your ownership as a result of that fence and South Africa uniquely so we the 25th biggest population in the world. We've got over 60 million people. If we had to take our landmass and divide it amongst the people, we'd only be sitting with 2 hectares per person and there's just not enough habitat for everyone. So fences have played a vital role in terms of one in terms of ownership and two in terms of management. And as soon as you put something Behind a fence, you've got to manage it and you take the responsibility of looking after it. And it's, that's where our role comes in as the wildlife ranching sector is to say we look after our wildlife, we look after our management. And everything in South Africa is unfortunately fenced. Even Kruger national park is fenced.
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B
Yeah, I was going through some, some work and I was going through some papers. Sorry. And it's, I, I found this statistic which is pretty awesome. You know, I often use the fact that hunting game, game ranches, game management areas, if you look across Africa, often they occupy double the amount of land that your state and your national parks occupy. And in South Africa specifically, I think that number is about 78,000 square kilometers is occupied by state and national parks. But if you total up all the private land area, it's about 205,000 square kilometers. And it's a great statistic that we use because, you know, we use it in the context of people wanting to ban hunting, they want to ban the use, they want to ban the use of wildlife. Really at the end of the day. And you're like, but there's so much land being protected because of, of hunting. What would you do? Like, what's your solution to get rid of this thing. You want to get rid of wildlife and go back to where we were in the 70s, which is Catholic sheep, goats, which is, there's nothing wrong with it, it's just not. Doesn't create a prolific wildlife environment.
- [12:18]
A
Yeah, 100%. So we've got, we've got three key messages that we tell basically the world is that if you want to make wildlife habitat grow, wildlife needs to one, be able to outperform other land use options. If it can't outperform other land use options, no one's going to want it. And two, that the wildlife economy in South Africa is our renewable and sustainable gold. No one else has got the wildlife that we've got. If we talk about species conservation, the amount of species that are privately conserved, even in this instance the Bontebok, more than 75% of them are privately conserved. And it's the private sector that's having that huge impact. And the third key message, and this is something very few people understand, and our well meaning public falls often prey to what I brand or what I've described as emotional terrorism from our animal rights nos, is they think that wildlife trade bans are going to save species. Where we say the biggest threat to wildlife is when it becomes valueless to rural people. That's the biggest threat. So. And trade bans do nothing except that they make it valueless to rural people. And even our topic that we're going to be speaking about today, about the Bunte book, it says here right at the end on the conclusion, the appendix cites two listing of Bonteboc unnecessarily impedes private sector investment in the conservation of the Bunte book and participation in a meta population management plan, both of which require sustainable financial funding models. So here, even in our application that we take into cites, we say it is important that we have financial models available for us that we can use and that we can benefit from.
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B
So, you know, so today what we wanted to talk about is again, we've had a conversation with Peter Swart about the giraffe cites proposal being moved forward at COP in Uzbekistan. You know, for those who haven't listened to that podcast, just as a summation, CITES is a convention of countries. How many countries? 180. Right?
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A
Yeah, it's in excess of 180.
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B
180. And that convention votes on what species live on what appendices, up list, D list conversations, yada, yada, yada. And but those are important decisions and it goes comes down to a vote. And those decisions then determine permitting regulations around those species. And so giraffe is a proposal that because giraffe is on Appendix two, we believe, I say we in the proverbial sense, South Africa believes, the government believes that giraffes need to be delisted off Appendix 2, specifically southern giraffes, because of the exceptional work that has been done by private branching, private landowners. There's a lot of giraffes. We don't need the excessive regulation anymore. They have value. We want them to continue to have value. Similar thing is going is being proposed for Bontabok. So give us this history of Bronteboc in South Africa to like get to this point, we're like, okay look man, we don't need, we don't need it on the, on the site's appendix anymore.
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A
Yeah, 100%. So Buntabuck were first listed and this is something that I even made an error and when I did my application, Bonte book was first listed on cites in 1975 as Appendix 1 and then transferred or downlisted from to Appendix 2 in 1981, where it's remained to date. So we've gone through quite a rigorous process as South Africa to get to this point. One being it's not just a snap of your fingers and you go to CITES and you make a proposal to uplist or delist. You've got to have the science base behind you. And what people need to realize is CITE stands for the Convention of International Trade in Endangered Species. So our key focus that we need to have a look at is trade. And that's why we take in a proposal to cites. And was actually WRSA that went through the proposal or went through the process of approaching the government, our Department of Environmental affairs and Fisheries. And we said we would like to make a proposal that we need to delist the bun to bulk from Appendix 2. We then had to provide the scientific evidence, we then had to provide motivations and then we had to go to a public participation hearing process. We had to make the submission and say this is what the results are. Can we please make this proposal? And then our governments listen to us and they taking this proposal forward to cites. What does make me nervous is that it is the first proposal that's going to be taking place at cites because I hear that.
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B
What do you mean? So they've already listed them all out. You're number one.
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A
We number one. So it, it goes alphabetically. So we proposal one. So document cop 20. Proposal one is going to be the Bonterbok. So we're going to take.
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B
Give me the science then. Give me the science, Richard. Like I'm, I'm at cop. I'm a random country in Europe that doesn't have a bon to bok. I don't even know what the f a Bontebok is like. What's the science to say? Yes, you know, I agree with you. I think we should delist this appendix, this animal off appendix.
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A
When, when bon book was listed There was only 17 individuals in South Africa in the 19.
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B
When was it listed 19. Was it listed that early?
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A
It was listed 1975. But sorry, when, when in 1930. Sorry. There were 17 individuals.
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B
Okay, okay, okay, okay.
- [17:57]
A
Bon book now is sitting at between 9,819 to 11,000 SPE individuals. So there's been a remarkable growth that's taken place in the population in terms of securing the population our NDFs. And an NDF is called a non detrimental finding that every country needs to do based on a species that is on, on CITES Appendix one or Appendix two or even appendix three. We've gone through the process. We did this process in 2024 where we put in the hard miles of having the discussion of showing the data. The Bonter book is totally secure in its historic distribution range which is considered to be the Western cape, of which 25% of the population occur. The rest of the 75% of the population occur outside the natural distribution range. And when we're talking about trade and we're talking about threats, it's important to realize that between 2010 and 2023, CITES exported, include, exclude, included 2090 trophies and 35 line animals with no evidence of illegal trade. So one of CITE's key functions is to prevent illicit trade and to look after a species. So we've got the evidence that we've grown the population, we've got the evidence that the population's biggest threats, and we can go through them later, the four threats that they are is not. One of them is trade. Trade is not a threat. So hunting is not a threat. In actual fact, hunting is viewed as the solution to this because it's creating the economic values. And our proposal even says, as such, to say hunting can unlock more habitat within South Africa if it's easier to hunt. If you haven't got this trade restrictions on the hunting of animals such as CITES2 can often pose. So we've seen remarkable growth. The population's growing, it's stable. We've got amazing platforms locally in South Africa. We've got our NEMBA legislation, National Environmental Management Biodiversities Act, We've got top species regulations, which is threatened or protected species regulations. We've got an implemented biodiversity management plan for Bontebok that was done in 2015, 2019. Sorry. And even when you read our submission about the genetic tests that have been done, they've got an over. I just want to get to the point here. They've got over 12,334 DNA samples on, on record on labs. So we've got a huge database to work from and say, this is what the population is, this is its genetic integrity, and we can make sure that we can look after the species because it's got an economic value. And that's ultimately what we want to achieve at cites. We want to unlock the economic value.
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B
The challenge at cites, and there's lots of things that we, that I want to talk through, but the challenge. Let's talk about at cites, the biggest sort of hurdle in front of us. The challenge at CITES is votes or politics.
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A
Absolutely.
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B
You need 120 votes out of 180 to say yes, we agree with you 100%, 2/3 majority. And Europe, for example, they don't vote individually, they vote as a bloc. How are. Do we know where we're at? Do we Know where we are with the politics? Who's doing the politics? Is the South African government doing the politics? Are you doing the politics? Like, where do you think we stand?
- [21:25]
A
So in terms of the people who cast the vote, you 100% it is the individual countries or management authorities. So that's where it's important, one, that we consult locally here as sadic, and then two, we need to speak to the European voting bloc because you're quite right, that vote swings a lot of the decisions. Are they for it, are they against it? If they're against something, you very seldom get it through. You, you've got to definitely break that hurdle. What is nice about the Bunter book, and this is going to be the real test about CITES this year, is the Bonte book is only endemic to South Africa. So it is a species that we should be the only country that really has a say. And we've made a very strong proposal in this document to say we need to delist the Bono. So if the other countries turn against it and say, no, sorry, we're not going to delist it, well, then they're actually proving to us and they're showing to us that CITES is broken. And then we maybe need to look at something else because we've got the science, we've got the evidence that trade isn't an issue, we've got the, the points. I just want to skip you forward in terms of the document where we.
- [22:36]
B
Talk about what are the threats? What are the four things that you mentioned?
- [22:40]
A
I'll get to. I'll get to threats now, but in terms of consultation, they did no consultation under point number 10 because it's endemic to South Africa and they need to respect our sovereign rights in terms of South Africa that we've done the work. In terms of the threats, legal trade is not a threat at all. The biggest threats are one, limited optimal habitat within the natural distribution range. That's the western Cape, where 25% of the population already occurs. We've already got four national parks in the Western Cape that secure the majority of the Bontvo there on what we call Renosterfeld. Number two, the biggest threat is small fragmented populations and an absence of a coordinated meta population management plan. Now, I tend to disagree with that point slightly because we've already got a biodiversity management plan in place and that is as good as your METAM population management plan. We've already got the DNA testing in place. It's one of our protocols at WRSA with the department put in, in effect a few years ago to say, do the DNA to make sure that the animal is pure before you can move it and before you can export the trophy. So that is also in place. We talk about the low number. The third threat is the low genetic variation within the natural distribution range. Now that's quite an interesting one because we say in 75% of the population occurs outside the natural distribution range. That's with private landowners such as ourselves. And we tend, in a lot of the research that we've done, for instance on the lions, et cetera, we tend to have a greater genetic diversification on private herds because inbreeding is something that we want to prevent at all costs. So we often trade and do business with other farmers and that increases our genetic variation, variation of our herds. And then the fourth risk is the hybridization part. Now we're doing the DNA tests. If a hybrid is picked up, it's automatically called, it's not allowed to be traded, it's not allowed to be moved.
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B
So explain to me that situation because that was the thing that blew my mind when I was in South Africa. I was talking to, and that's why I'm wearing the Tam safaris hat, I was talking to Urban Tam about this and, and he said to me, he said something interesting and it's just, I just couldn't wrap my mind around it that no import or export permits would be granted to a Bontebok Blesbok cross. And I was like that doesn't make any sense because that makes it an even more generic kind of animal. It makes it even less of a quote unquote special endangered animal. Makes it, you know, again makes it less valuable, not, not, not less valuable, less problematic from a, an endangered, like hey, something's going to go wrong. So what's the deal with this whole like genetic crossbreeding, not allowed to trade. You just mentioned colored. What's the deal here?
- [25:50]
A
So basically bontebok and a. Blessbuck are two separate species, but they can interbreed. And then you get a subspecies or a hybrid that is viable, that can produce viable offspring. So that's why we've put in place regulations and rules to say keep the two species separate, that they don't interbreed and that we don't hybridize and weaken the, the two separate species.
- [26:17]
B
And that's a common, like people know that like the private ranching industry in South Africa is like okay, we've got blessed block in one paddock, Bon to book in another.
- [26:26]
A
Yes. So for instance, in the Limpopo where We predominantly farm or ranch, we not allowed to keep onto book at all. So we keep less buck on our property. We don't have Bontebok at all. And that is something that's already quite strongly enforced and it's enforced as well with the U.S. fish and Wildlife Services under the 4D ruling. And I must be honest, you're hitting the nail on the head of people that have done the considerable work like the Tams, like the Harrod Heineken, like the Jenny Curries of the world, the John Hertz, the Dion Furstenbergs, the engagements that we've had. We brought out U S Fish and Wildlife a few years ago and showed them our properties and showed what country.
- [27:07]
B
Wildlife service went to TAM safari. So they went and saw the contributions of hunters to Amy Bell and his kids and all that. And according to Peter Tam, the. I don't know who the director was at Fish and Wildlife Service at the time, but the staff members are like she became a totally different person from absolutely awcf. I think they were at AWCF down in Cape Town and then they came and visited the Thames and she just was. Her mind was blown like she's like I had no idea, I had no idea that hunting is doing all these.
- [27:37]
A
Things after, after that. That was the second trip that they had done was the. The one just after awcf. So we've, we've been working with the departments internationally as well in doing that bridge breaking you are talking is quite important in terms of the communication. To come back to your previous question about who's going to take the responsibility in, in carrying across our message to the globe. We've got three public participation processes that are coming up now on the 23rd, the 25th and the 27th of August where we going to be interacting with our government and saying this needs to be made a priority. What are you doing? Who are you communicating with? We've already spoken to our scientific authority in South Africa and they've asked us there's no end to our proposal. This proposal document had to be submitted. I think it's 180 days before CITES but you can still provide information documents up until the day of the decision where it's been made and that's not going to be falling squarely on WRSA shoulders and our SUKO partners is to get those dot, get more data together, get more information about how many bond to book are out there, understand a much wider picture and, and give new information if new information is needed because some people might be Saying okay, so you haven't got a meta population management plan. Should we allow that? My argument is absolutely, because we have still got national legislation in place that is effective. And two, trade is not the threat. No evidence of trade being the threat. So therefore CITES is there to protect animals against illegal trade. If illegal trade's not the threat, it's a simple delisting in my mind from that point of view.
- [29:27]
B
What do you think the biggest challenge will be argument wise from somebody who says no, I do not want to delist.
- [29:35]
A
So this is sometimes where, where people let their emotions take, take control and say that predominantly the income generated from these bontebok is hunting. Yeah. They can't understand that hunting is a fantastic management tool in terms of bringing value to the animal on the ground. And that's what we're going to need to show is we need going to show. Listen, if you vote no on this proposal, you actually doing more damage to the species than anyone else, you must then take full responsibility to the negative growth that will probably take place as a result. Because if a proposal like this goes to CITES and I'm a Buntabook reader and it gets shot down, I'm going to disinvest out of the species because then clearly doing the right thing with science, doing the right thing with management, doing all the DNA tests before an animal is exported, before it's harvested, keeping accurate records to prove that we are accountable for what we are doing and then we're getting shot down. I'd rather just keep list back then because a blessback I can export without any paperwork or permits in terms of.
- [30:53]
B
That's a good point man. You know, it's, you almost are trying to create a, an infallible argument. Right? Here's, here's the history it's grown. Here's the situation that we've, we've, we've, we've put in place, we've put all the, all the blocks in place and then here's the data to show the population growth. Here's all the science. Yes, we may not have a meta population initiative management plan in place but this isn't like lions, this isn't like cheetahs. This, you, we don't, you know there's going to be movement happening regardless. You don't need a metapopulation initiative plan to say it's, you know, very purposely. Let's move Cheetah A to property B and move those cheaters over to another property. You know, movement happens already and because it's a species that People like to use and trade in and, and want on their property for, for hunting. I'm sure there's a pretty prolific game launching sector, game, you know, game management sector that people are buying animals off auction, bringing them to their farms which naturally, you know, is moving and mixing animals anyway.
- [32:11]
A
Yeah, absolutely. So to answer the question linking to the previous one about Those threats, only 2% of Bontevoc trophy hunts occur in the Western Cape. So where we sane is their natural distribution range, only 2% of all hunts take place there. So we're not threatening through hunting at all the population locally in its natural distribution range. The biggest threat to it is it can't expand because there's other incentives through agriculture and through other land use options that are more viable in the Western Cape to generate an income. Secondly, if we have a look at illegal trade and I'm going to quite quickly from the document. Blanket trophy hunting bans and stringent administrative requirements impact negatively on sustainable funding models for conservation. By reducing the value proposition of the subspecies holds for South Africa for the private wildlife custodians. Deletion of Bonterbok from CITES Appendix 2 will significantly alleviate the administrative burden and attract more private investment in conservation of the Bontebok. And then to go even further and to answer that point that we made about the metapopulation plan not being in place, we've already got two other population monitoring systems in place. One being driven by government in the form of Sanby and the other one being driven by WRSA or the wildlife ranching sector. And I'll again like to just quote this paragraph. There are currently two processes underway to improve on the collation and accessibility of population data. Sanby is currently in the process of developing a national online species population database, the South African Wildlife Population System which will allow reserve managers to submit all populations of offtake data that can then be used on a provincial and national basis to monitor and report on population trends. Wildlife Ranch in South Africa has also started with the development of an online system for their members to submit population species data. Now what our system's done that's also a little bit unique is we've brought in and we've developed hunting register. So all export trophies that need to go out of the country need to be filled in. International hunts need to be filled in on a hunting register. We making it electronic and we making it available to any outfitter in the country or even ph, it's going to be free. Our argument that we've come to the government is say if there's something that's a regulatory requirement. We will make it free that there is no financial burden in anyone's way to complete it. And why do we want to have that, that, that that system in place is because then we've also got the data electronically. Because at the moment a lot of South Africa's work in terms of CITES is done through a paper trail.
- [35:04]
B
Yeah.
- [35:05]
A
In the modern era let's put things in place that collects the data and shows it. And the second thing that we've done is we also helping with the live trade in terms of movement permits. We've written software that can track an entire game auction where every single animals come from and every single animal's gone. And the reason we've done that is for disease control. South Africa is sitting with a situation at the moment with foot and now and it's actually the wildlife sector. In the past when we spoke about the decimation that took place was considered to be the threat against livestock. Now we are actually considered to be the leaders and livestock is the threat to wildlife. Because we have got such stringent rules in place in the midterms of movement of buffalo and we taking those developments that we've done for buffalo and filtering it down to all other species which will include the Bontebok, to be able to show the traceability, to be able to show the trade, to be able to show it's legal and make it accessible for people on the ground that they can perform their business, which is the ultimate goal of our association is to look after our members business, that they can keep the doors open, that they can keep trading and that they can grow their wildlife economy.
- [36:18]
B
Yeah, it's great points man. It's great point. I think the, the cherry on this conversation and hopefully it's a, it's a pleasant cherry and not a sour one. But if CITES on the first proposal votes it down, I think there should be a massive uproar because what else do you want us to do? Like what bar did we not hit? What bar did we not like measure up to? Everything is here, all the science is here, everything's in place. People have valued the animal. You can clearly see that we valued the animal. The value is not in crisis anymore. The animal is growing in population, it's growing in its distribution, doing all the things that you want, cites that you want, yet you still say no to us. That is, that would be very sad. And I think we should, and I think we should let the world know, you know, when it, when something like.
- [37:20]
A
That happens, yeah, 100%. You, you've hit the nail on the head. And I'm, I've still got confidence in cites. I've still got confidence in the science. Not the emotion, the science. Because what this proposal is, is science. It is years of dedicated work. And we mentioned those people that had done all the work prior, including the TAMs, who've always made their doors open to anyone that needs to come and do an investigation and see what's happening on the ground. I mean we've, we've even got further signs that we take further that we did a project in 2021 and 2022 in the Eastern Cape and in Limpopo where 137 farms were surveyed or ranches were surveyed in the eastern Cape totaling 758,000 hectares of land. Now that's huge. That was more land identified in those surveys in our own department thought they had under, under wildlife ranching. So there's a huge economic impact that's taking place. And what's important from this note where they did the research is they said almost all wildlife ranches conduct sustainable land management, which can be seen as a private investment into the public good through the provisions of ecosystem services through natural capital restoration. Those are the messages we need to get across. We've not grown this population because we've taken a hands off approach. Hunters have still played a key role to date to grow this population to where it is. Legal trade has played a key role to grow the population where it is. But we can grow this population so much quicker if we, to alleviate that administrative burden. Because some people just say, you know what, I'd love to shoot a Bunter book. But I'm not, I'm not keen to go through all this administrative nightmare and hassle of applying for a CITES too. Then I'm unsure, is my trophy going to make it to the us? Am I going to be waiting three years, four years to get my trophy into the us? What's the paperwork requirements? We need to break that down and that's I think what we're going to achieve here. So I'm hopeful, I really am, that CITES is going to make the right decision. Because if they don't, then CITES ultimately failed. And I think that must be the message that we convey from the NGOs and this, this is where CITES has changed into a large degree. One South Africa went and we created what we call SUKA, the Sustainable Use Coalition, which is between 11 membership organizations that have got together and say chaps, we stand for sustainable Use. At our first CITES cop, we made a huge difference because we had, for the first time, we had a network working together, making proposals together, interventions from the floor. Because you, as the ngo, sitting in the nosebleeds in the back, you maybe only get one comment and sometimes two comments from the floor based on a proposal. So we are always ensuring that people that were talking were connected in the network. And SUKA has now expanded with the iwmc and we are busy working through every single proposal that's currently out there that we're going to be breaking down into a simple informative leaflet for the government departments to say, this proposal is supported by SUKA and iwc. And because of the following reasons, because of the following information or this proposal for certain other proposals that have been. Proposals that have been made is rejected for the following reasons. And that's what we need to do. We need to take control of the narrative. And I, Robby, we've really done a lot of work to do that and for the first time, I think we've actually in a place to make a difference. So I'm confident in CITES this year. I'm confident that the work that we've branded the Bontebok as the conservation success story. As the CITES success story.
- [41:18]
B
Yeah, yeah, 100%.
- [41:19]
A
That's, that's the word that they must hear, that this is a cite success story. Cities that the day cite succeeds is not by uplifting more species onto cites, it's the day we have no species listed on cites. That's the day cites succeeds and that's the message that we must carry across.
- [41:41]
B
Well said. Well said, Richard. Well, we'll keep our eye on these two proposals, Bontebok and giraffe, that are coming out of South Africa, and hope that, you know, people can see the science, they can see the validity of the proposals, they can see that, you know, I don't see any reason for keeping these species on Appendix 2. And we move forward and value this wildlife the way that we need to. So appreciate your time. I know you have to get to a flight. I need to walk my hunting dog, who is being quite good and not whining in the background because he's like, why are you not taking me for a walk? But, yeah, thank you, Richard, really appreciate you coming on.
- [42:23]
A
Pleasure, Robbie. And just before we close, I need to. I need to confirm. So you were biased in admitting South Africa is the most beautiful country in the world. So when are you coming back to visit?
- [42:32]
B
I'm actually coming back very soon. It's August 7th. We're recording this podcast August 7th. I've been to South Africa twice this year already. This is trip number three, August 23rd, and it's going to be quite a special trip because a friend of mine won a springbok hunt and this friend of mine was the guy who introduced me to hunting here in in America. He's a big 6 foot 5, 260 pound redneck and he's never really hunted outside of America. And so he won the South African hunt and I said, I'm coming with you. I want to be right next to you when you put your first piece of good biltong in your mouth. I want to be next to you when you drink stony ginger beer for the first time. I want to be there with you when you start seeing all of these animals just running in the landscape and you're like, what is that? Oh, what is that? Oh what is that? What is that? I just want to be there. So I'm coming back very soon for five or six days of just watching him explore South Africa from a hunting perspective. So it's going to be quite special.
- [43:44]
A
Amazing. But please remember this, if ever you're in Limpopo and you need a bed, just shout.
- [43:50]
B
Will do. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Richard.
- [43:53]
A
Thank you sir. Have a wonderful day.
- [43:55]
B
Well, that's it for today. Appreciate you listening as always. Leave a review, share it with your friends, and most importantly, do what's right to convey the truth around hunting.
- [44:08]
A
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