Sustainable use of wildlife is a conditional promise — that SA has not reached

A recent exposé documenting leopard-related prosecutorial failures in the Western and Northern Cape between 2024 and 2026 revealed a deeply troubling enforcement record. Across seven incidents involving the trapping, unlawful capture or killing of protected leopards, there was one single R1,000 admission-of-guilt fine, multiple failures by the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) to prosecute and no meaningful custodial sentence, and one matter, delayed for years through procedural failures, may yet end in a constitutionally permanent acquittal.

This is not simply an enforcement problem. It strikes at the legitimacy of the entire sustainable-use framework; undermining both the regulatory architecture and the prosecutorial mechanisms that are meant to give it teeth. As documented in earlier pieces in this series, these failures recur across quota processes, administrative law and biodiversity management.

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Trophy hunting quotas without accountability: How different courts are exposing the same broken state

April 8, 2026

South Africa’s biodiversity governance model is built on the proposition that wildlife has economic value and that, where landowners derive benefit from species on their property, they will protect them. This philosophy is embedded in the National Environmental Management Act, the National Environmental Management: Biodiversity Act (Nemba), provincial conservation laws and policies, the quota systems and permit regimes that flow from them.

In principle, the argument has merit. Incentivising stewardship can contribute to conservation outcomes, even if it does shield unlawful offtakes of wildlife. But the model is conditional. It depends on the state enforcing the scientific, legal and administrative obligations that underpin it. That condition is frequently ignored in public debate and the state administration.

Section 24 of the Constitution creates more than a policy aspiration. It creates a constitutional duty. In administering biodiversity, the state acts not as a broker between private landowners and wildlife, but as trustee on behalf of the public. Wildlife is a public good held in trust; the landowner’s authority to utilise it exists within a framework of public trusteeship and legal accountability. Contrary to the pre-constitutional era and precedents of the Common Law property provisions, the wildlife on a private farm is now not the landowner’s asset to dispose of at will. Wildlife is therefore not merely a private asset, but a public goods asset. It is not a private entitlement. Sustainable use derives its legitimacy from that framework. When the framework is not enforced, the legitimacy begins to collapse.

Defenders of sustainable use often portray critics as ideological opponents of all consumptive use. But the central critique raised in recent debates is not philosophical absolutism. It is governance failure.

While the financial interest explains the support from the game and hunting industry, support for the sustainable use lobby has attracted substantial media and academic backing.

Researcher Christina Hiller declared her allegiance to the sustainable use “if it pays it stays” paradigm and reconstructed it as the rational approach; the reasonable, pragmatic middle ground, while characterising critics as a rigid “no-use” bloc. This framing is a sleight of hand. The critics do not form a coherent no-use movement. Their objections are grounded in broken governance: flawed quota setting processes, missing leopard non-detriment findings since 2015, repeated court exposures and failure to prosecute leopard killings and unlawful captures which impact the species under question. That is a science-and-process critique, not a worldview.

Hiller’s dismissive reference to “world-view wrestlers” of critiques of the sustainable use lobby and calls for “accommodation” amount to a polite way of saying: stop challenging our quotas and offtakes of species for financial gain, and permit the “shoot, shovel and shut up” practice in dealing with problem species like leopard. The subtext of “let’s understand each other” is that sustainable use must simply be accepted without accountability.

Her “Babel” metaphor is troubling. In the biblical story, the Babel fable describes a divine imposition of incomprehension. This debate involves people who comprehend each other perfectly and disagree about facts and accountability. Everyone is citing the same laws, the same court cases, the same missing non-detriment findings since 2015. The clash is not that we cannot understand each other; it is that some are pointing at clear governance failures while others defend the status quo entitlements. Calling that “different languages” politely dodges the argument, and worse, it flattens power and accountability. Treating clear governance failures as just another worldview quietly shields bad process, repeated court losses, quotas set without the required science, and failure to prosecute biodiversity crimes. It turns a debate about whether the system is working into a feel-good story about mutual understanding.

A R1,000 admission-of-guilt fine for killing a leopard is not a deterrent. Economically speaking, it is a subsidy.

Courts have repeatedly exposed administrative and procedural defects in biodiversity governance. South Africa has not produced a lawful non-detriment finding for leopards since 2015, despite quotas continuing to be debated and pursued. Questions around scientific integrity, procedural compliance and regulatory accountability have persisted for years.

At the same time, enforcement against unlawful leopard and other wildlife killings have been alarmingly weak or absent. The consequence is that the practical incentives operating on the ground increasingly reward illegal conduct rather than lawful stewardship. Environmental enforcement theory is clear: deterrence only functions where the cost of violating the law exceeds the benefit derived from the offence. In the leopard context, the numbers matter.

A professional leopard rescue operation can cost between R60,000 and R80,000. A legal leopard trophy hunt may generate between R600,000 and R1-million. Leopard skins retain significant commercial value in illegal trade networks. The statutory maximum penalty for offences involving listed threatened or protected species under Nemba can reach R10-million. Against those figures, a R1,000 admission-of-guilt fine for killing a leopard is not a deterrent. Economically speaking, it is a subsidy.

It signals that the unlawful removal of a protected predator carries little meaningful risk. It communicates to landowners and agricultural communities that the illegal route; poison, gin traps, shooting or unlawful capture, may be cheaper, faster and effectively consequence-free. Farmers and landowners are not irrational actors. They observe what happens to neighbours who illegally kill predators. They draw practical conclusions from enforcement outcomes. If prosecutions collapse, investigations fail or penalties remain trivial, the legal framework loses credibility.

Under those conditions, the sustainable use model begins to invert itself. The principle of “if it pays, it stays” depends on the lawful route carrying a credible advantage over the unlawful one. If illegal killing carries minimal risk while lawful coexistence imposes financial and operational burdens, the incentive structure no longer supports conservation.

Too often, criticisms of governance failures are dismissed as ideological opposition to all forms of consumptive use.

This matters because leopard mortality does not occur in isolation. Trophy hunting quotas, retaliatory killings, illegal trapping, cultural harvesting, habitat fragmentation and road mortality all contribute cumulative pressure on already vulnerable populations. Weak enforcement and flawed legislative governance compound those pressures.

The issue is therefore not whether sustainable use can theoretically contribute to conservation. In some contexts, it may. The issue is whether South Africa’s institutions are presently capable of administering such a framework lawfully and credibly, and at present, the evidence is deeply concerning.

When a collared research leopard is killed and was reportedly shot without meaningful investigative consequence, or when an animal caught in gin traps suffers catastrophic injuries while meaningful prosecutions fail to materialise, public confidence in biodiversity governance erodes. So too does confidence in the state’s willingness to fulfil its constitutional obligations.

None of this requires adopting an absolutist anti-use position. One can accept that conservation models may involve regulated use while still insisting that those models comply with constitutional duties, scientific standards and the rule of law.

That distinction is important.

Too often, criticisms of governance failures are dismissed as ideological opposition to all forms of consumptive use. But exposing failures in enforcement, scientific process or legal compliance is not extremism. It is accountability.

The cost of illegally killing a protected species must exceed the cost of tolerating it.

The debate about sustainable use in South Africa has become heavily rhetorical. Phrases such as “balanced conservation”, “pragmatism” and “coexistence” are repeatedly invoked. Yet rhetoric cannot substitute for functioning institutions. A conservation framework survives not on slogans, but on enforcement credibility. Without credible enforcement, sustainable use becomes vulnerable to regulatory capture and institutional drift. The system increasingly serves those extracting value from wildlife while externalising ecological costs onto the broader public and future generations.

This is precisely why the constitutional dimension matters. Section 24 does not protect biodiversity only when it is commercially useful. Nor does it subordinate ecological integrity to private economic incentives. It imposes a trusteeship obligation on the state to protect the environment for present and future generations. That obligation requires more than platitudes, publishing policies and issuing permits. It requires meaningful enforcement where laws are violated and transparent accountability. Where that enforcement collapses, sustainable use ceases to function as a conservation mechanism. It becomes branding without accountability.

The current enforcement record surrounding leopard-related offences in South Africa raises uncomfortable but unavoidable questions. If unlawful killings routinely produce negligible sanctions, what incentive structure is actually being created? If legal compliance is costly while illegal conduct carries little consequence, what behaviour is being rewarded?

The answers are increasingly difficult to avoid. Sustainable use rests on a conditional promise: where wildlife has recognised value, landowners will protect it. But that promise depends on enforcement. The cost of illegally killing a protected species must exceed the cost of tolerating it. Remove that condition and the framework inverts itself. Illegal killing becomes cheaper, faster and effectively consequence-free, as it has been for generations, to the demise of many species.

When the state ceases to act as trustee, and instead presides over a system in which protected species exist largely at the mercy of inconsistent enforcement and weak accountability, that is not sustainable use. It is impunity with a conservation letterhead. DM

The views expressed are those of the author.