Wildlife is not livestock — Aucamp’s dangerous plan to turn conservation into agriculture

On 17 October, at a gala dinner hosted by Wildlife Ranching South Africa (WRSA), Agriculture Minister Willie Aucamp made a comment that should concern anyone who believes South Africa’s wildlife deserves something more than a price tag. He wants the regulation of the wildlife ranching industry moved from the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE) to the Department of Agriculture.

“I firmly believe that game farming is an agricultural commodity,” he reportedly told the gathering, adding that although the proposed transfer could not happen overnight, he would continue supporting it.

It was a remarkable statement, not least because Aucamp previously occupied the environmental portfolio responsible for protecting the very biodiversity he now appears determined to place within an agricultural framework. What Aucamp is advocating could fundamentally alter the philosophy governing South Africa’s wildlife, shifting regulatory authority towards animal production, commercial utilisation and agricultural economics.

Wildlife is not livestock. A lion is not a goat. A rhinoceros is not merely a breeding commodity because someone has placed her in a pen. Yet this is precisely the conceptual territory into which Aucamp’s proposal takes us.

The resurrection of a failed idea

South Africa has already been through a remarkably similar controversy, one that ended with the Department of Agriculture suffering a significant defeat in the Gauteng High Court in 2023.

In 2016 and 2019, the department attempted to bring numerous wildlife species under the Animal Improvement Act of 1998 by declaring them animals for the purposes of that legislation. The species included lions, cheetahs, rhinoceroses, giraffes, buffaloes and numerous antelope species, bringing them within legislation concerned with animal breeding, genetic improvement and agricultural production.

The implications then were substantial. The Animal Improvement Act concerns the “improvement” of animal production and performance. Biodiversity legislation, by contrast, addresses ecological integrity, species conservation, genetic diversity and the protection of biological resources.

These are not interchangeable objectives. 

Consequently, the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT) and the South African Hunters and Game Conservation Association challenged the listings and in March 2023 the Gauteng High Court rightly set aside the 2016 and 2019 decisions. The court established that agricultural authorities cannot disregard the wider environmental and constitutional framework when making decisions affecting wildlife.

The judgment therefore remains directly relevant to any renewed attempt to expand agricultural authority over wildlife. It should serve as a warning against repeating the same conceptual mistake through a different administrative route.

Conservation cannot be reduced to production

The big issue is that commercial wildlife production and biodiversity conservation are not synonymous.

A property containing thousands of commercially valuable animals does not constitute a healthy ecosystem. High-density stocking, selective breeding, predator removal and genetic manipulation can increase economic returns while undermining ecological integrity. An enterprise breeding unusually coloured antelope or genetically selected trophy animals may be financially successful without meaningfully conserving naturally functioning populations.

Agricultural production generally seeks to control nature, whereas conservation, properly understood, protects the conditions under which nature can function. One prioritises productivity, ownership and commercial return; the other must accommodate evolutionary processes, ecological complexity, species interactions and the intrinsic value of living beings.

The danger arises when the first becomes the organising principle of the second.

The statistical sleight of hand: Farming wildlife is not conserving nature

Aucamp reportedly told his audience that global wildlife populations had declined by 73% since 1970, while South Africa’s wildlife numbers had increased by an extraordinary 4,000%. He attributed this supposed conservation triumph to private ownership and sustainable use.

It is a convenient narrative for the wildlife ranching industry. It is also a deeply misleading comparison.

The global figure comes from the World Wide Fund for Nature’s Living Planet Index, which documents an average 73% decline in monitored vertebrate populations between 1970 and 2022. It measures the collapse of wildlife populations in their ecological contexts, not simply the number of animals available for counting, breeding or commercial exploitation.

The claimed 4,000% South African increase, meanwhile, demands serious interrogation. Which species? What baseline? How many of these animals are free-ranging, and how many are commercially bred, intensively managed or confined behind fences? Where is the independently verified national dataset supporting this extraordinary claim?

But the more fundamental problem, as mentioned, is that increasing the number of commercially farmed wild animals is not the same as conserving wildlife in nature.

A thousand bontebok bred on a game farm cannot be equated with a wild population functioning within a shrinking ecosystem in the Western Cape. Nor can commercially produced lions, selectively bred buffaloes or intensively managed rhinoceroses compensate for the disappearance of wild populations, their habitats and the complex ecological relationships that sustain them.

Conservation is not an exercise in livestock accounting. It is about maintaining viable wild populations, genetic integrity, functioning ecosystems and the evolutionary processes that have shaped them over millennia.

If multiplying animals for the sake of numbers were sufficient evidence of conservation success, we could simply count captive lions, zoo animals and commercially bred game as proof that biodiversity is flourishing. The absurdity should be obvious.

Yet this is the logic implicit in Aucamp’s comparison: that the commercial multiplication of selected species somehow offsets the wider ecological destruction documented by global biodiversity science.

It does not. A thriving wildlife industry does not equate to a thriving natural world.

And until Aucamp can demonstrate otherwise through credible, independently verified ecological evidence, his 4,000% claim belongs in the realm of industry promotion, not conservation science.

The animals cannot be forgotten

There is another question conspicuously absent from the economic framing of this debate: what happens to the animals themselves?

Wildlife ranching is routinely defended through arguments about economic growth, land use and conservation. Far less attention is given to the animals whose reproduction, confinement and deaths sustain the industry.

Yet South African environmental law increasingly recognises animal wellbeing as an integral consideration. On 9 October, just eight days before Aucamp addressed WRSA, the Constitutional Court unanimously dismissed a challenge by the South African Hunters and Game Conservation Association to animal wellbeing provisions introduced into biodiversity legislation.

These provisions recognise that animal wellbeing encompasses physical, physiological and mental health, quality of life and the ability to cope with the environment. A lion bred commercially does not lose its behavioural needs or capacity to suffer. An antelope subjected to intensive breeding is not necessarily thriving because it reproduces unusual colourants in its offspring.

There is a profound ethical distinction between protecting animals as living participants in ecosystems and managing them primarily as units of production.

Whose interests come first?

Perhaps the most revealing moment of Aucamp’s address was his reported gratitude to WRSA and its members for defending him against criticism of his support for wildlife ranching and sustainable use during his tenure as environment minister.

There is nothing inherently improper about a minister engaging with industry. But there is a significant difference between listening to commercial interests and publicly championing their preferred regulatory arrangements. When a minister who previously oversaw biodiversity protection openly advocates transferring greater authority to the department he now heads, questions about whose interests are being prioritised become unavoidable.

Who stands to gain from this proposed transfer? Would it mean fewer environmental restrictions, easier breeding and trading permits, and greater freedom to commercialise wildlife? What discussions have already taken place between the minister, WRSA and other industry representatives? And where are the independent ecological assessments, scientific evidence and animal wellbeing considerations that should underpin such a consequential proposal?

These are not peripheral questions. They go to the heart of environmental governance and public accountability. The wildlife ranching industry is entitled to make its case, but it is not entitled to dictate the terms under which South Africa’s biodiversity is governed.

The fundamental question is whether wildlife policy is being shaped by the public interest in conservation or by the commercial interests of those who stand to profit from its exploitation.

Wildlife is not livestock

The issue is ultimately far more profound than which government department gets to regulate wildlife. It is about whether South Africa intends to conserve its natural heritage or progressively surrender it to the commercial ambitions of an industry that increasingly regards wild animals as agricultural assets.

When wildlife is reduced to the language of production, breeding, ownership and profit, conservation ceases to be the governing principle and becomes little more than a convenient justification for commercial exploitation. The animal becomes a commodity, the ecosystem becomes a production unit, and biodiversity is measured by what can be bred, bought, sold or killed.

The 2023 high court judgment and the recent Constitutional Court decision remind us that South Africa’s wildlife exists within a constitutional framework of environmental protection and animal wellbeing. These are public obligations, not commercial inconveniences to be negotiated away whenever an industry seeks greater regulatory freedom.

Aucamp’s proposal therefore demands resistance to something more fundamental than an administrative transfer: the creeping conversion of South Africa’s wildlife heritage into an agricultural enterprise.

A wild animal does not become livestock because someone intensively breeds it, attaches an ownership certificate or assigns it a commercial value. And multiplying animals for profit is not the same as conserving nature.

South Africa’s wildlife is not an agricultural commodity. It is a living national heritage for all South Africans, and it must not be sacrificed on the altar of commercial production that benefits a select few. DM