In February of this year, the Minister of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development, Thoko Didiza, proposed an amendment to the Meat Safety Act to include a number of wild animals, including giraffes, rhinos and elephants.

This month, the Victorian government announced on-the-spot fines for trespassers on farms following an upper house inquiry into how animal activism affects agriculture.

There is no escaping the fact the mechanisms driving CITES are categorically failing the species that the treaty was enacted to protect. 

Scientists have conducted one of the world’s first studies into the entire genome sequence of lions to reveal the evolutionary history of living and extinct lion species.

Intensive farming and the wildlife trade are driving the “alarming” emergence rate of zoonotic diseases, the World Wildlife Fund has warned. 

There are times of spectacular policy myopia – and promoting a revision to the Meat Safety Act by the South African government is surely one of these moments.