TAKING ELEPHANTS OUT OF THE ROOM INDABA ELEPHANTS IN CAPTIVITY: AFRICA’S ROLE

SPEAKERS: BIOS AND TOPICS

David Bilchitz, Prof.

Topic: The policy framework of sustainable use in relation to animal welfare and elephants Brief Bio: David Bilchitz is a Professor of Fundamental Rights and Constitutional Law at the University of Johannesburg and Director of the South African Institute for Advanced Constitutional, Public, Human Rights and International Law (SAIFAC). He is also Secretary-General of the International Association of Constitutional Law until 2018 and a Director of Animal Law Reform SA). David has a BA (Hons) LLB cum laude from Wits University. He graduated with an MPhil in Philosophy from St John's College, University of Cambridge and with a PhD in law from the same university. David worked as law clerk to Deputy Judge-President (then) Langa of the South African Constitutional Court in 2000. He has published widely with 1 monograph, 4 edited collections, 21 book chapters and over 40 journal articles. David is a Director of Animal Law Reform South Africa. He has written several articles considering the changes that the new democratic constitutional order - that emerged in South Africa in 1994 - should bring

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about in relation to the status and entitlements of animals. Prof Bilchitz has also sought actively to change the plight of animals in South Africa. He was heavily involved in the campaign to stop the resumption of elephant culling; and helped successfully to provide high-level input that impacted upon the Norms and Standards on Elephant Management in South Africa, the piece of legislation that comes closest to engaging directly with the interests of animals. He has also been heavily involved in making submissions to parliament and the executive around the Performing Animals Protection Act. Gay Bradshaw, Dr

Topic: New scientific paradigms, epigenetics and neuroscience dictate the transformation of conservation into self-determination and compel the reframing of how Elephants are approached - within the social justice movement of self-determination. This is true for all wildlife species.

Brief Bio: Gay Bradshaw holds doctorate degrees in both ecology and psychology and a Master's in geophysics. Her research expertise focuses on the sources and healing of human-caused violence to Animals. She was first to diagnose Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in free living Elephants and Chimpanzees which has led to the establishment of the field of trans-species psychology— the theory and practice animal psychological rehabilitation and conservation. Her books include Elephants on the edge: What animals teach us about humanity (2009), Carnivore Minds: Who these fearsome animals really are (2017), and Talking with Bears: Conversations with Charlie Russell (2020). She is the executive director of The Kerulos Center for Nonviolence, and The Tortoise and the Hare sanctuary located in Oregon, USA. Gay’s research has been featured in numerous media, including ABC 20/20, Stern, National Geographic, New York Times, Time, New Scientist, Nature, and the London Telegraph. Her area of specialization is elderly individuals who have suffered capture and captivity.

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Lenin Tinashe Chisaira

Topic: The capture and sale of Zimbabwe's young elephants: Challenges and opportunities for animal

welfare in Zimbabwe's legal and policy frameworks. Brief Bio: Lenin is an environmental lawyer and researcher in Harare, Zimbabwe. He works as the Director of the People and Earth Solidarity Law Network (PESLawyers), a non-profit environmental law organisation based in Harare, Zimbabwe. Lenin holds an LLM (International Human Rights Law and Public Policy) with the University College Cork, Ireland; LLM (Economic Regulation) and PGCert in Environmental and Natural Resources Law (University of London) as well as an LLB Hons (University of Zimbabwe). Lenin and the PESLawyers are currently involved in a court action on access to information on animal capture and wildlife trade transparency in Zimbabwe. He has just attended the CITES Cop 18 Conference in Geneva, Switzerland.

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Audrey Delsink Kettles

Topic: Elephant value: Rands and Sense Brief Bio: Audrey Delsink Kettles is the Wildlife Director of Humane Society International/Africa. She oversees HSI’s wildlife campaigns in Africa, including work to champion the protection of wildlife including humane population control alternatives and human-wildlife conflict solutions, and to challenge the captive lion breeding and trophy hunting industry. She is also responsible for HSI’s Back to the Wild program, which facilitates the release of compromised indigenous wildlife, often through confiscations, back to protected preserves. She also manages campaigns including domestic dog sterilisation and vaccination programs to combat zoonotic diseases and their spread to endangered wildlife such as the African Painted Dog. Audrey has acted as the Field Director for the world-renowned African Elephant Immuno-contraception Program since 2000. She has been actively involved in both national, provincial and private elephant management, and together with the immune-contraception research team, has helped to shape policy and legislation regarding wild African elephants in South Africa, most notably through the gazetting of the Norms and Standards of Elephant Management in South Africa (2008). She completed her MSc biology on immune-contraception of African elephants (University of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa). She worked as the Research Ecologist at the Greater Makalali Private Game Reserve for 18 years and together with her husband, she managed the 30,000 ha Big Five private nature reserve. She continues to oversee MSc and PhD research projects on protected reserves, with co-authorship on numerous peer-reviewed publications. Audrey is currently completing her PhD at UKZN’s Amarula Elephant Research Program. She explores elephant behaviour as the basis for developing conservation and elephant management strategies in public and private game parks. With her vast elephant conservation and management experience, she is a specialist member of the Elephant Specialist Advisory Group. Over the years Audrey has facilitated the rescue, rehabilitation and release of numerous indigenous African wildlife species, including Ground Pangolin, Cape Clawless Otter, Caracal, Serval, Black-backed Jackal, African Wildcat, Small and Large Spotted genets and Barn Owl, to name but a few.

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Marion Garai, Dr

Topic: Latest data on elephants in zoos worldwide, including numbers, births, deaths, accidents, Brief Bio: Dr Garai studied Zoology at the Universities of Zürich, Switzerland and Pretoria University, South Africa. Her areas of specialisation and expertise are on the social behaviour of elephants in captivity particularly in zoos and Social and Stress Related Behaviours of translocated juvenile elephants, including orphans. Marion is a long standing member of the IUCN/SCC African Elephant Specialist Group. Was Vice Chair of the “Committee for the Training and Welfare of Elephants” This was the Tuli debacle. She was the Founder and Chairperson of EMOA (Elephant Management & Owners Association). Since 2000 she has been a Trustee of Space for Elephants Foundation (SEF). In 2012 she co-founded, and is the current Chairperson of the Elephant Specialist Advisory Group, South Africa (ESAG). She is also a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the European Elephant Group (EEG), Germany and a Trustee of the Elephant Reintegration Trust (ERT). Marion has published extensively both academically and beyond, including a guide for tourists entitled “Understanding elephants”.

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Lynne James

Topic: Zimbabwe's live elephant captures: our experience. Brief Bio: Born on the Isle of Man, Lynne grew up in Luanshya, Zambia went to school in Zimbabwe and Scotland and has a BSc (Nursing) from the University of Cape Town. She and her family live on a farm in the Odzi District, just west of Mutare. Lynne is the Chair of the Mutare SPCA in Zimbabwe and has been a volunteer there for the past 8 years. She has been actively involved in trying to stop the live capture of Zimbabwe elephants into captivity since 2015.

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Jim Karani, Advocate

Topic: Elephants in Captivity: Policy contexts including trade, ‘sustainable use’ and the CITES “acceptable destinations” issue and an Analysis of legal interventions in relation to captive elephants. Brief Bio: Jim is Africa’s first Animal lawyer and an Advocate of the High Court of Kenya who holds a Bachelor degree in Law (LL.B) from University of Nairobi, Kenya; A Master’s degree in Animal Law (LL.M) from Northwestern Lewis & Clark Law School, USA; and currently pursuing a Doctorate in Law (LL.D) at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. He currently works as the Legal Affairs Manager at WildlifeDirect Kenya and leads the Eyes in the Courtroom project that monitors and evaluates the effectiveness of wildlife law enforcement in Kenya. He tracks the progress of wildlife crime cases in court rooms in Kenya to ensure wildlife traffickers are brought to justice and facilitates best practice - capacity building efforts aimed at strengthening law enforcement’s response to wildlife crime. He also is involved in public interest litigation that champions the enforcement and compliance of laws to protect and preserve wildlife habitats and their wild populations. He is an expert in international comparative law and advices on the implementation of Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), Criminal, Environmental and Natural Resources Law. He is keen on bringing wildlife traffickers and poachers to justice and securing the preservation and protection of wildlife habitats that allow non-human animals to thrive and endure forever.

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Kahindi Lekalhaile

Topic: Animal welfare considerations for decision makers on keeping elephants in captivity. Brief Bio: Kahindi is currently the Chief Operations Director at the Africa Network for Anima Welfare. He was the CEO of Ecotoruism Kenya before he joined ANAW in 2014. He has a Masters I Environmental Studies from the University of Strathclyde and is currently studying for a Phd. He is also a part-time lecturer in tourism Management at Moi University, Kenya. He spent much of his earlier life as the coordinator and manager of the STE project for monitoring the illegal killing of elephants (MIKE) in the Laikipia-Samburu areawhere his achievements earned him the Disney Wildlife Conservation Effort Award in 2006. His work was featured in documentaries and news features produced by Reuters, CNN, the National Geographic and the recent BBC series entitled: “Living with elephants”

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William Keith Lindsay, Dr

Topic: Ecosystems need elephants and elephants need ecosystems: keeping elephants in the wild, not captivity. Brief Bio: Dr Keith Lindsay is a Canadian-British conservation biologist and environmental consultant based in Oxford, UK, with over 40 years’ professional experience. His expertise includes project design, management, and monitoring/ evaluation in the fields of biodiversity research and conservation, community-based natural resource management, and policy/ institutional analysis in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Keith's life-long involvement with elephants began in 1977 with the Amboseli Elephant Research Project in southern Kenya, and MSc and PhD research projects on feeding ecology and population demography. He has remained a Collaborating Researcher with AERP, focusing on ecosystem change, elephant ranging, and human-elephant co-existence. His professional work has included elephant-focused assignments in southern Africa (Botswana, South Africa), Central Africa (regional elephant conservation), West Africa (Mali's desert elephants) and East Africa (Kenya's elephant strategy, Tanzania forest conservation). Broader concerns include the ivory trade under CITES (the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species) and the welfare of captive elephants in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa.

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Brett Mitchell

Topic: The current status of captive elephants and the captive elephant industry in South Africa. Brief Bio: Brett has been working, handling & training elephants for the past 20 years, managing and operating businesses in the safari industry, specifically elephant back safaris.. He ran Pilansberg Elephant Back Safaris for 12 years. He is an elephant expert specialising in captive elephants (handling & training) and the re-integration of captive elephants into a wild system. Brett has developed a successful re-integration model for captive elephants and has to-date re-integrated over 17 captive elephants back into wild systems. He is currently the Chairperson of the Elephant Reintegration Trust since 2016.

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Joyce Poole, Dr

Topic: Who elephants are and why they are not suited to captivity. Brief Bio: Dr Poole is the Co-director of ElephantVoices, a research, conservation and advocacy organisation advancing the study of elephant cognition, communication and social behaviour, and promoting the scientifically sound and ethical management and care of elephants. Joyce is an elephant ethologist/ecologist, and conservation biologist and is a world authority on elephant reproductive, communicative and cognitive behaviour. Joyce has studied elephants and worked for their conservation and welfare for over four decades, beginning her life’s endeavour in Amboseli, Kenya in 1975. She graduated from Smith College in 1979, holds a Cambridge University PhD and was a Princeton University post-doctoral fellow. Poole’s African elephant discoveries include: the phenomenon and patterns of musth; infrasonic and long-distance communication; vocal imitation; documentation of elephant vocal and gestural repertoires and of elephant cognitive abilities. Poole is a leading voice for the protection and well-being of elephants. Her documentation of the damage wrought on elephant societies by poaching was instrumental to the 1989 ban on international trade in ivory. She has been an expert witness in numerous elephant cruelty cases, is lead author of The Elephant Charter and an outspoken critic of the capture of elephants for captivity. She has published numerous popular and scientific articles, written two books, and participated in scores of elephant documentaries.

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Yolanda Pretorius, Dr

Topic: Comparing stress of elephants in captivity, elephants in the wild and rehabilitated and re- integrated elephants. Brief Bio: Yolanda has a BSc(Hons) Wildlife Management from the University of Pretoria. Her thesis was on feed supplement for African elephant on a fenced game reserve. She has an MSc in Biology on stress in African elephant on a fenced game reserve from the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa and a PhD in Ecology with thesis on small scale foraging by large African herbivores from Wageningen University, the Netherlands. From 2013 to 2017 she was a Lecturer in Wildlife ecology and management at the Centre for Wildlife Management, University of Pretoria with research program on re-integration of captive elephant into the wild and the effects of tourism and management on elephant behaviour in fenced reserves. She is currently the Qualifications manager of the Higher Education Training Program in Natural Resource Management at the Southern African Wildlife College, the Vice Chairperson of the Elephant Specialist Advisory Group, South Africa and a Trustee of the Elephant Reintegration Trust (ERT) since 2016.

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Antoinette van de Water

Topic: The value of elephants for society and conservation strategies that reconcile conservation and human wellbeing goals. Brief Bio: As the director of Bring the Elephant Home, Antoinette has over 15 years of experience in community-based elephant conservation. She holds a Master's in Conservation Biology at Miami University, with dissertations on human-elephant conflicts, and the effectiveness of beehive fences as an elephant deterrence measure. In 2018, she started a position as a PhD researcher at the University of KwaZulu-Natal on the social dimensions of human-elephant coexistence in Africa. Antoinette won three conservation awards, is a co-author of the book “The Great Elephant Escape”, featured in several documentaries and is a trustee of the Elephant Specialist Advisory Group.

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Chair – Donald Pinnock

Donald Pinnock is a South African writer, investigative journalist, and photographer. He is a Research Fellow at the Centre of Criminology, UCT and a former editor of Getaway magazine in Cape Town. He has been an electronic engineer, lecturer in journalism and criminology, consultant to the Mandela government, a professional yachtsman, explorer, travel and environmental writer, photographer and a cable-car operator on the Rock of Gibraltar. His passions are species conservation in Africa and the relationship between early social and biological trauma and high-risk adolescent behaviour. Don has written 17 books covering history, politics, the environment, gangs and science, including Gang Town, Winner of the City Press Non-Fiction Award and more recently the compilation of The Last Elephants.

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Facilitator and Rapporteur – Ross Harvey

Ross Harvey is a freelance economist who consults to the EMS Foundation. He is currently working on a paper which demonstrates that elephant trophy hunting is susceptible to a free-rider problem and is therefore unsustainable. Ross studied a B.Com. in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) at UCT from 2002 to 2005, followed by an M.Phil. in Public Policy. He will graduate with a PhD in Economics in December 2019, also from UCT. Ross has worked on environmental economics issues since 2007, lectured on the political economy of the ‘resource curse’ and written extensively on wildlife economics while working at the South African Institute of International Affairs until earlier this year. He started writing specifically about elephant conservation in 2015 and has published 2 journal articles on the subject, along with 1 book chapter and 2 working papers.

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EMS Foundation – Michele Pickover

Michele as an Honours in History a Diploma in Archival Science and a Masters in Environmental Sociology. She is the author of Animal Rights in South Africa, a pioneering book published in 2005 and nominated for the 2006 Alan Paton Award for Non-Fiction. She has also recently contributed a chapter entitled “Wild Animals” as Goods, Chattel, and Perpetual Victims in Post-Apartheid South Africa, in a 2 volume publication entitled Animal Oppression and Capitalism, 2017. Michele has been campaigning on behalf of animals for the past 20 years and is a campaigner for inclusive justice. Much of her contribution has been through lobbying, campaigning, research and investigative work as well national and international networking and liaison. Michele played a key role in the successful lobbying for the suspension of the “culling” of elephants in the Kruger National Park. Michele is currently the Director of the EMS Foundation, an NGO which focuses on the commonalities of oppression working for the advancement and protection of the rights and general welfare of, children, elderly persons, wild animals other vulnerable groups, for the purpose of alleviating suffering, disrupting inequality in all of its forms, raising public awareness, empowering and providing dignity. From 1986 – 2016 Michele worked at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg where, as Principal Curator, she headed up the Historical Papers Research Archive.