OFFICIAL MEDIA RELEASE – VANTARA
The Wildlife Animal Protection Forum of South Africa (WAPFSA) is a national network of thirty South African organizations established in 2017. WAPFSA is explicitly designed as a vehicle to engage with governments on the issue of the conservation, wellbeing and protection of wild animals and the natural environment in which they live.
Our policy positions are based on robust science, ethical and compassionate conservation practices and harmonious co-existence within nature.
On the 6 March 2025 WAPFSA sent a letter of concern to Dion George, the South African Minister of Environment Forestry and Fisheries, copying in other relevant sections in his department as well as the CITES Secretariat. The letter related to the export of a large number of wild animals among others leopards, cheetahs, lions and tigers from South Africa to the Greens Zoological Rescue and Rehabilitation Centre (GZRRC) in India (also known as Vantara).
Part of WAPFSA’s remit is the monitoring of international trade in wildlife. Bearing in mind that all South Africanshave a Constitutional right to have their environment protected through reasonable legislative and other measuresthat promote conservation as well as a right to the information held by the state that is required for the exercise of theenvironmental right, it is clearly reasonable and in the public interest that WAPFSA is permitted to raise concernsabout the international wildlife trade with the relevant authorities and ask them to investigate these concerns.
As is clear from the many links provided in our letter and Report, WAPFSA identified issues already publicly raised by others in published documents and sources and requested that the authorities investigate further. The tone of the letter is reasonable and respectful. WAPFSA addressed its concerns not to the media but to the properauthorities in South Africa.
On the 11th March 2025, WAPFSA received a letter from SHS Chambers, lawyers for the GZRRC, the content of which attempts to allege that WAPFSA’s letter to the South African organisation’s own government was defamatory and contained falsehoods.
Attorneys acting for WAPFSA responded to SHS Chambers on the 18th March 2025, stating that their allegations are both incorrect and unsubstantiated, furthermore they suggest that the real purpose of the letteris to intimidate WAPFSA into dropping its investigations, all of which are undertaken purely in the public interest,into wildlife trade from South Africa.
WAPFSA believes that for people to be able to participate fully in their country’s democratic systems and processes, they need information to help them make informed choices.
Where information is hidden, limited, or misconstrued to suit a certain agenda, people are excluded, unable to engage with governance issues from a well-rounded point of view and to hold their governments to account. This in turn impacts the realisation of human rights, not least because freedom of expression is itself a fundamental human right, constitutionally protected in South Africa and enshrined in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Transparency and access to information, therefore, is non-negotiable, and it is what members of civil society organisations and the global media fight for, every day of their lives.
Date: 19th March 2025
WAPFSA Administrator
email: administrator@wapfsa.org
Image: South African Cheetahs in Limpopo Province 2025
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