What a great meeting it was!
We had three new members join:
Babs Seymour – Forever Living Products (FLP)
Barry Nutley – Viridis
Steve Holley – Orca Local
And some visitors (as well as the usual members!)
Sarah Washford – Writer and trainer
Andy Setterfield – Hoodner’s Horse, Great Chart
Allison Hogben – Mobile Beauty Therapist
We had a talk from Adrian Harlam – Director of Animals at Port Lympne Wild Animal Park
Adrian started on the large Carnivores section in 1986, progressed through the ranks and become a Director.
Poaching in Tanzania
Recently Port Lympne has returned two Rhinos to Tanzania and these returned pair had a calf; so in two years the population has increased by one. 13 Rhinos have been killed in a 15 month period. The reason for the killings is that the poachers want the Rhino horn which sells for up to £25,000. The horn is used in remedies for rheumatism, arthritis and other alternative medicines. When the average yearly wage is £1500, then from a financial point of view, there is a big incentive to kill the Rhinos, and the poachers just cut the horn off and leave the rest of the body where the Rhino fell. Adrian also showed us an elephant tusk again recovered from smugglers, the ivory is used to make knife handles, and in the past, piano keys, snooker balls, and Japanese ivory carvings.
Lions
There are about 20,000 lions left in the wild. In South Africa they organise canned hunts; you choose your animal and they supply it and you shoot it. They breed the lion cubs and then take them away from their mother, so the lioness comes back into season. In the wild when the leader of the pride become old, he would either die from disease or be killed by a younger stronger lion. At the moment in South Africa, as they have a lot of visitors for the Football World Cup, they are offering two for one, shoot a male lion which is what everyone wants to do and also get to shoot a female lion as well for free. As these lions have been handreared, they don’t run away when they see man approaching, they think that they have come to play.
Port Lympne have a theatre group travelling around Africa performing play by mime to educate the African population about the wild animal population and how it is declining because of the poaching and hunting.
How to reduce poaching
One way to reduce the hunting would be to ban the import of animal trophies and skins into the UK. The UK has a very influential place in the Commonwealth so if we took the lead we could convince other European countries to follow suit. LionAid are campaigning for this currently.
Education at Port Lympne
Port Lympne see their role as to educate visitors about the animals, to get the visitors to like the animals and have an affinity with them. Then to progress onto why the animals desperately need the visitors’ help otherwise there will be no animals left for our grandchildren to see, they will only see them in old films or documentaries.
The Aspinall Foundation website talks about the international conservation work that Port Lympne is involved in.
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