OP-ED: Trophy hunting quotas: Civil society objected, but did anyone in government listen?

On 31 August, Environment Minister David Maynier published South Africa’s CITES export quotas for elephant, black rhinoceros and leopard hunting trophies for 2026 and 2027. The notice authorises the export of 300 elephant tusks from no more than 150 elephants in each year, 11 black rhino trophies annually and 11 leopard trophies in 2026, falling to 10 the following year.

For decisions authorising the killing of some of South Africa’s most ecologically significant and heavily contested wild animals, the final Gazette is strikingly sparse. It gives us the numbers, but very little of the reasoning that produced them. There is no published comments-and-responses report, no readily identifiable Non-Detriment Finding for any of the three species, no disclosure of the Scientific Authority’s recommendation, no population models, no explanation of how animal wellbeing was considered, and, in the case of leopard, not even a map showing where the authorised hunting may take place.

None of this would be quite so troubling had the government not already invited the public to participate in the process.

In February, the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment (DFFE) called for submissions on its proposed 2026 and 2027 quotas. A number of organisations responded with substantial scientific, legal and ethical objections. The EMS Foundation, Landmark Foundation, Biodiversity Law Centre and Born Free were among those questioning whether the ecological evidence was adequate, whether the required CITES Non-Detriment Findings were current and defensible, whether the leopard monitoring programme could support the proposed allocation, whether animal wellbeing had properly entered the decision-making process and whether precaution required zero quotas in circumstances of unresolved uncertainty.

The final decision nevertheless authorises almost everything the government originally contemplated. The elephant quota remains untouched; eight south-central black rhinos may still be hunted each year despite particular concerns having been raised about that subspecies; and the leopard quota remains 11 in 2026 and 10 in 2027. 

The government is not obliged to agree with organisations that oppose trophy hunting. It is, however, obliged to conduct environmental decision-making rationally, lawfully and transparently, and public consultation becomes little more than administrative theatre if detailed submissions disappear into an institutional void from which no explanation subsequently emerges.

The Landmark Foundation’s March submission was particularly detailed. It questioned the status and trajectory of leopard populations, the adequacy of monitoring, population modelling, identification of hunting zones, age and sex determination, cumulative mortality, the legal requirements surrounding CITES Non-Detriment Findings, constitutional obligations and the independence of the scientific advisory process. 

Following publication of the quotas, Landmark has now asked a more elementary set of questions: Was its submission actually placed before the Scientific Authority? Was it placed before the minister? Did officials responsible for the recommendation consider it? Was a comments-and-responses report prepared? Did any of the objections lead to further modelling or scientific review? And where, precisely, in the administrative record is the consideration of those objections recorded? 

Those should not be difficult questions for a public authority to answer.

The original February notice indicated that comments and responses would be incorporated into a report that might be made publicly available. Yet no such report accompanied the August decision. Without it, there is no way of knowing which objections were accepted, which were rejected, why any were rejected, whether the submissions caused the Scientific Authority to revisit its assessments or even whether the two modest alterations between the draft and final quotas arose from the public process at all. 

This leaves a peculiar form of consultation in which the public can speak but cannot discover whether anyone listened.

What Non-Detriment Finding?

The question hovering over the entire process is the status of the CITES Non-Detriment Findings.

An NDF is not decorative bureaucracy. It is the scientific mechanism through which a CITES Scientific Authority determines whether international trade will be detrimental to the survival of the species concerned. An export quota should flow from that assessment; the quota should not be established first and scientifically justified afterwards.

Yet the final notice identifies no NDF for elephant, black rhino or leopard, gives no indication when any such assessment was completed, and does not show how the final numbers relate to the Scientific Authority’s advice. The submissions specifically objected to this absence, with EMS pointing out that the latest publicly available leopard NDF had supported a zero quota and arguing that no positive leopard quota should be established without a current and defensible finding. 

Landmark has consequently asked the DFFE and the South African National Biodiversity Institute (Sanbi) to state which leopard NDF was relied upon, when it was completed, when it was last reviewed, who authored and independently reviewed it, what population data were used and whether the Scientific Authority made a fresh determination before recommending the final quota. 

The government may well possess answers to all of these questions. If so, publishing them would strengthen its claim that the quota is founded on credible science.

The difficulty arises when the public is repeatedly told that wildlife utilisation is “science-based” while access to the relevant science remains dependent upon persistence, formal correspondence and eventually statutory requests for information.

The animal behind the quota

There is also something conceptually impoverished in reducing this entire exercise to sustainable numerical extraction.

The National Environmental Management: Biodiversity Act now expressly incorporates animal wellbeing into South Africa’s biodiversity legislation, while our courts have repeatedly moved away from treating conservation and the interests of individual animals as conceptually separate universes. Yet the Gazette gives no indication that the physical, behavioural or social consequences of trophy hunting entered the final assessment.

For leopards, the notice stipulates that exported trophies must come from adult males seven years or older. On paper, this sounds reassuring. In practice, the submissions asked how sex and age are reliably determined before an animal is shot, who independently verifies the hunter’s assessment, what happens when a younger male or female is killed, whether such an animal counts against the quota and what sanctions follow an error. None of those questions is addressed by the final notice. 

The elephant quota raises comparable concerns because the ecological consequences of selectively removing older males cannot sensibly be reduced to national abundance alone. The EMS Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) request specifically seeks information on the age and sex structure of populations from which hunting may occur, the effects of removing older or large-tusked males, and cumulative mortality arising from hunting, poaching, management killing and other causes. 

A population estimate is not the same thing as a demographic argument. Nor is a living animal merely a unit within an export calculation.

The new minister and the inherited policy

Maynier inherited this quota process from his predecessor, Willie Aucamp, and that requires a degree of fairness in assessing his responsibility. The February proposal, the public consultation process and much of the scientific work had already taken place before he assumed office.

But he is the minister whose name now appears on the final decision.

Landmark is therefore asking whether he independently reviewed the scientific basis of the leopard quota, examined the NDF, considered the objections received during consultation, sought independent scientific advice or otherwise satisfied himself that the inherited process was defensible rather than merely allowing it to continue to its predetermined conclusion. 

Those questions are especially relevant because environmental governance does not occur in an institutional vacuum. Landmark argues that the new minister should therefore demonstrate that he independently interrogated the assumptions inherited from the previous administration rather than simply continuing them. 

That does not imply that the new minister reached the wrong conclusion. It requires that he show us how he reached it.

Having to use PAIA after being invited to participate

The EMS Foundation has now filed a PAIA request seeking the material that should allow the public to understand the decision: the comments-and-responses report; the minister’s decision memorandum; the Scientific Authority’s advice; the data, models and calculations underpinning each quota; the leopard monitoring evidence; maps of the hunting zones; animal wellbeing assessments; records considering zero quotas or a moratorium; and the socioeconomic evidence said to support trophy hunting. 

There is something profoundly unsatisfactory about the chronology.

First the public is invited to comment on the proposed killing and export of elephants, rhinos and leopards. Then substantive scientific and legal objections are submitted. The decision is subsequently made without the evidentiary record or a meaningful response to those objections being published. Finally, civil society must invoke the Promotion of Access to Information Act in order to discover the information necessary to understand how the public decision was reached.

That is not what participatory environmental governance ought to look like.

Wildlife is held and governed in the public interest. Decisions authorising private access to kill wild animals and export their bodies cannot be treated as little more than an allocation exercise between the government and commercial users. They engage constitutional environmental responsibilities, biodiversity conservation, intergenerational equity, animal wellbeing and the integrity of the scientific institutions advising the state.

There is consequently a simple way for the DFFE and Sanbi to dispel the growing suspicion that the consultation process was merely procedural.

Publish the record. If the scientific case for these quotas is as strong as the DFFE and Sanbi presumably believe it to be, scrutiny should pose no threat to it.

If the record cannot withstand scrutiny, then the controversy is no longer simply about trophy hunting. It is about how environmental power is being exercised. DM