PLETTENBERG BAY NEWS - The SA Animal Sanctuary Alliance (SAASA), based in Plettenberg Bay, is standing up for animal rights and has severed ties with Fair Trade Tourism SA (FTT) over its policies around captive wildlife.
“We feel that the recently introduced FTT captive wildlife criteria are not strict enough, they are open to interpretation and don’t sufficiently address the interest of captive wildlife,” said SAASA chief executive Tony Blignaut.
“However, we are fully committed to continue following the other FTT principals in our business model, as we believe these represent best practice in the industry.”
'Animal welfare top priority'
Blignaut added that their four wildlife sanctuaries – Monkeyland Plett, Birds of Eden, Jukani and Monkeyland KZN – placed the welfare and the needs of their animals “above all else” and believe they had an intrinsic right to be treated respectfully.
“We have always prescribed to a complete hands-off rule when it comes to our sanctuaries and have adopted a ‘no grey areas’ policy,” he said.
“It’s the grey areas where the disagreement lies. FTT based their captive wildlife criteria mostly on the widely accepted African Business Travel Association (ABTA) animal welfare guidelines. However, the latter still allow for some human-wildlife interaction and feeding of wildlife, as long as a thorough risk assessment has been undertaken.”
'More stringent standards needed'
Blignaut further said that the alliance would like to see the FTT certification standard for captive wildlife to be made more stringent and adopt the Dutch ANVR Addendum of Unacceptable Practices Regarding Animals in Tourism. “The ANVR has taken a firm stance against, for example, walking with any big cats, as well as using birds of prey for display and falconry, where birds are tethered.
“We don’t allow any hands-on interaction in any of our sanctuaries, regardless whether we deal with lions, lemurs or budgies,” said SASAA marketing manager Lara Mostert.
She added that they understood the need for businesses to be financially viable in order to look after those animals in a sustainable manner.
'Ethical balance the goal'
“However, every business needs to find the ethical balance between animal welfare and financial health.” “The compromise at Monkeyland and Birds of Eden, for example, is to have feeding stations set up in strategic places that encourage the animals to feed in public access areas, but with the complete freedom of coming and going whenever they like. This allows visitors close-up encounters without the need for hands-on interaction or to hand feed the animals.”
Blignaut said if FTT would consider making their captive wildlife criteria more in line with what was better for the animals, they would once again realign with the organisation.
FTT managing director Jane Edge had not responded to queries about the issue before going to print.
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