IT’S EASY to spot Columbus. He’s not only the biggest and strongest wildebeest among the dozens grazing on a plain, he also sports a golden-hued coat, a stunning contrast to the grey and black ones around him.
Finding Columbus in the wild would be a stroke of amazing luck. More than 99.9% of wildebeest have dark coats. But this three-year-old golden bull and his many offspring are not an accident. They have been bred specially for their unusual colouring, which is coveted by big game hunters.
These flaxen creatures are the latest craze in SA’s $1bn ultrahigh-end big-game hunting industry. Well-heeled marksmen pay nearly $50,000 to take a shot at a golden wildebeest — more than 100 times what they pay to shoot a common one.
Breeders are also engineering white lions with pale blue eyes, black impala, white kudu and coffee-coloured springbok, all of which are exceedingly rare in the wild.
"We breed them because they’re different," says Barry York, who owns a 1,000ha farm about 200km east of Johannesburg. There, he expertly mates big game for optimal — read: unusual — results. "There’ll always be a premium paid for highly adapted, unique, rare animals."
The practice has raised howls from conservationists and more traditional hunters, who dismiss it as little more than creating mutants for profit.
"These animals are Frankenstein freaks of nature," says Peter Flack, a hunter and conservationist and former chairman of gold mining company Randgold Resources. "This has nothing to do with conservation and everything to do with profit."
No one disputes there is money to be made in rare big game. Africa Hunt Lodge, a US-based tour operator, advertises "hunt packages" to international clients travelling to SA that include killing a golden wildebeest for $49,500, a black impala for $45,000, and a white lion for $30,000.
For the money, hunting tourists typically get a seven-to 14-night stay in a luxury lodge, gourmet food with an emphasis on meat dishes, and hunting permits. (Taxidermy costs extra.)
Operators don’t guarantee kills, yet to leave hunters disappointed is generally seen as bad business, says Peet van der Merwe, a professor of tourism and leisure studies at North West University. Killing lions was the biggest revenue generator for the country’s hunting industry in 2013, followed by buffalo, kudu and white rhinos.
As the industry has grown, so have the numbers of large game animals that populate SA’s grasslands. In other parts of Africa, including Kenya and Tanzania, the opposite has been true: large mammal populations have been decimated as farms and other human activities encroached on wild areas.
But SA is one of only two countries on the continent to allow ownership of wild animals, giving farmers such as York an incentive to switch from raising cattle to breeding big game. ‘‘My first priority is to generate an income from the animals on my land, but conservation is a by-product of what I do," he says.
AT 66, York has been involved in breeding and hunting for decades. After he emigrated from his native Zimbabwe in 1980, he bred prize cattle for beef in SA’s northern grasslands. He also organised hunts, which gave him the chance to see his first golden wildebeest in 1986, when a client killed one. "It was the most beautiful animal I had ever seen," he says.
In 2007, he bought a farm in Limpopo that had been used for crops. His plan was to raise beef cattle. That turned out to be a costly mistake. The cows languished, unable to gain weight and poorly adapted to the ticks and other pests on the hot plains.
York found himself shelling out a steady stream of cash for expensive vaccines and veterinary fees. At that rate, "I’d be broke in a year or two," he says.
He recalled the beautiful golden wildebeest he had seen more than 20 years earlier and hatched a plan. He figured that, as a native species, wildebeest were better adapted to the South African grassland than cattle. He would be able to sell them for both hunting and meat, and if he could breed some with exotic colouring, they would command a premium.
His timing was good. The switch coincided with a rise in popularity of big game hunting, and prices for rare variants were soaring. Since 2005, the average price at auction for a golden wildebeest has more than quadrupled to R404,000.
Today, York has roughly 600 wildebeest. He keeps the best — the most fertile and beautiful, with the biggest horns — for breeding. The next tier goes to auction, mostly for sale to other breeders.
The rest are sold to hunting ranches, typically bigger and more scenic than York’s, giving hunters the feel of the wild African bush. York allows the least desirable animals to be shot by local hunters for food.
"Previously this was cropland, with pesticides, chemicals, very few trees, no wildlife," he says. "Now there are hundreds of wildebeest where there were none for 100 years. The colour variants are paying for it."
Breeding exotic big game is also attracting SA’s wealthy, including billionaire Johann Rupert, Norman Adami, the former chairman of SABMiller in SA, and Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa.
Two years ago, Rupert led a group that paid R40m for a buffalo named Mystery, specifically bred for his large horns.
Ramaphosa, one of SA’s wealthiest men, sold impala with white flanks — they are normally copper coloured — for R27.3m last September. The same year, York sold a male golden wildebeest named General Rommel for R1.83m.
...
SA NOW has about 22-million large mammals, including lions, buffalo and many species of antelope, three-quarters of which live on private wildlife farms. These farms have been widely credited with saving the rhinoceros from extinction in the 1960s, when there were just an estimated 575,000 large wild animals in the country.
No country has seen such a large increase in animal numbers over the last 50 years, says Wouter van Hoven, an emeritus professor at the University of Pretoria. "It’s an incredible success story."
But conservationists deride the methods used by York and fellow breeders. "What’s happening now is farming," says Ainsley Hay, manager of the wildlife protection unit of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (NSPCA). "It’s not conservation. It doesn’t matter if you’re farming cows or impala, it’s a damaging form of land use."
And growing numbers of animals don’t indicate conservation. "A white springbok will not contribute to the springbok population because it’s a mutant." Most colour variants would not survive in the wild. White lions get skin diseases, cancers, foot problems, and corkscrew tails. Their faces turn inward, Hay says, and "white springbok variants are very prone to skin cancer. It’s been scientifically proven that black impala are more susceptible to heat stroke."
Local hunters have a different critique. Flack, the former Randgold chairman, and others claim that breeders are domesticating wildlife, which could threaten the long-term viability of the hunting industry.
The South African Hunters and Game Association last month published a stinging indictment, saying it amounts to "unnatural manipulation of wildlife" and causes "outrageous prices of huntable animals".
York dismisses the hunters’ objections, saying they simply want to be able to hunt cheaply. To the NSPCA, he says he avoids inbreeding by keeping herds separate and that his land is much healthier than when he bought it. As to Flack’s charges, York says: "They say these are Frankenstein animals, but where’s the test tube, where’s the lab? Sure, the golden colour is a rare characteristic, but it occurs in nature."
Bloomberg
Named Churchill by its owners, a golden specimen of wildebeest, also known as a the gnu among foreign hunters, grazes with a herd of ordinary wildebeest on farmland operated by Golden Breeders, in Bela Bela, Limpopo, last month. As the hunting industry has grown, so have the numbers of large game animals that populate SA’s grasslands. Picture: BLOOMBERG
IT’S EASY to spot Columbus. He’s not only the biggest and strongest wildebeest among the dozens grazing on a plain, he also sports a golden-hued coat, a stunning contrast to the grey and black ones around him.
Finding Columbus in the wild would be a stroke of amazing luck. More than 99.9% of wildebeest have dark coats. But this three-year-old golden bull and his many offspring are not an accident. They have been bred specially for their unusual colouring, which is coveted by big game hunters.
These flaxen creatures are the latest craze in SA’s $1bn ultrahigh-end big-game hunting industry. Well-heeled marksmen pay nearly $50,000 to take a shot at a golden wildebeest — more than 100 times what they pay to shoot a common one.
Breeders are also engineering white lions with pale blue eyes, black impala, white kudu and coffee-coloured springbok, all of which are exceedingly rare in the wild.
"We breed them because they’re different," says Barry York, who owns a 1,000ha farm about 200km east of Johannesburg. There, he expertly mates big game for optimal — read: unusual — results. "There’ll always be a premium paid for highly adapted, unique, rare animals."
The practice has raised howls from conservationists and more traditional hunters, who dismiss it as little more than creating mutants for profit.
"These animals are Frankenstein freaks of nature," says Peter Flack, a hunter and conservationist and former chairman of gold mining company Randgold Resources. "This has nothing to do with conservation and everything to do with profit."
No one disputes there is money to be made in rare big game. Africa Hunt Lodge, a US-based tour operator, advertises "hunt packages" to international clients travelling to SA that include killing a golden wildebeest for $49,500, a black impala for $45,000, and a white lion for $30,000.
For the money, hunting tourists typically get a seven-to 14-night stay in a luxury lodge, gourmet food with an emphasis on meat dishes, and hunting permits. (Taxidermy costs extra.)
Operators don’t guarantee kills, yet to leave hunters disappointed is generally seen as bad business, says Peet van der Merwe, a professor of tourism and leisure studies at North West University. Killing lions was the biggest revenue generator for the country’s hunting industry in 2013, followed by buffalo, kudu and white rhinos.
As the industry has grown, so have the numbers of large game animals that populate SA’s grasslands. In other parts of Africa, including Kenya and Tanzania, the opposite has been true: large mammal populations have been decimated as farms and other human activities encroached on wild areas.
But SA is one of only two countries on the continent to allow ownership of wild animals, giving farmers such as York an incentive to switch from raising cattle to breeding big game. ‘‘My first priority is to generate an income from the animals on my land, but conservation is a by-product of what I do," he says.
AT 66, York has been involved in breeding and hunting for decades. After he emigrated from his native Zimbabwe in 1980, he bred prize cattle for beef in SA’s northern grasslands. He also organised hunts, which gave him the chance to see his first golden wildebeest in 1986, when a client killed one. "It was the most beautiful animal I had ever seen," he says.
In 2007, he bought a farm in Limpopo that had been used for crops. His plan was to raise beef cattle. That turned out to be a costly mistake. The cows languished, unable to gain weight and poorly adapted to the ticks and other pests on the hot plains.
York found himself shelling out a steady stream of cash for expensive vaccines and veterinary fees. At that rate, "I’d be broke in a year or two," he says.
He recalled the beautiful golden wildebeest he had seen more than 20 years earlier and hatched a plan. He figured that, as a native species, wildebeest were better adapted to the South African grassland than cattle. He would be able to sell them for both hunting and meat, and if he could breed some with exotic colouring, they would command a premium.
His timing was good. The switch coincided with a rise in popularity of big game hunting, and prices for rare variants were soaring. Since 2005, the average price at auction for a golden wildebeest has more than quadrupled to R404,000.
Today, York has roughly 600 wildebeest. He keeps the best — the most fertile and beautiful, with the biggest horns — for breeding. The next tier goes to auction, mostly for sale to other breeders.
The rest are sold to hunting ranches, typically bigger and more scenic than York’s, giving hunters the feel of the wild African bush. York allows the least desirable animals to be shot by local hunters for food.
"Previously this was cropland, with pesticides, chemicals, very few trees, no wildlife," he says. "Now there are hundreds of wildebeest where there were none for 100 years. The colour variants are paying for it."
Breeding exotic big game is also attracting SA’s wealthy, including billionaire Johann Rupert, Norman Adami, the former chairman of SABMiller in SA, and Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa.
Two years ago, Rupert led a group that paid R40m for a buffalo named Mystery, specifically bred for his large horns.
Ramaphosa, one of SA’s wealthiest men, sold impala with white flanks — they are normally copper coloured — for R27.3m last September. The same year, York sold a male golden wildebeest named General Rommel for R1.83m.
...
SA NOW has about 22-million large mammals, including lions, buffalo and many species of antelope, three-quarters of which live on private wildlife farms. These farms have been widely credited with saving the rhinoceros from extinction in the 1960s, when there were just an estimated 575,000 large wild animals in the country.
No country has seen such a large increase in animal numbers over the last 50 years, says Wouter van Hoven, an emeritus professor at the University of Pretoria. "It’s an incredible success story."
But conservationists deride the methods used by York and fellow breeders. "What’s happening now is farming," says Ainsley Hay, manager of the wildlife protection unit of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (NSPCA). "It’s not conservation. It doesn’t matter if you’re farming cows or impala, it’s a damaging form of land use."
And growing numbers of animals don’t indicate conservation. "A white springbok will not contribute to the springbok population because it’s a mutant." Most colour variants would not survive in the wild. White lions get skin diseases, cancers, foot problems, and corkscrew tails. Their faces turn inward, Hay says, and "white springbok variants are very prone to skin cancer. It’s been scientifically proven that black impala are more susceptible to heat stroke."
Local hunters have a different critique. Flack, the former Randgold chairman, and others claim that breeders are domesticating wildlife, which could threaten the long-term viability of the hunting industry.
The South African Hunters and Game Association last month published a stinging indictment, saying it amounts to "unnatural manipulation of wildlife" and causes "outrageous prices of huntable animals".
York dismisses the hunters’ objections, saying they simply want to be able to hunt cheaply. To the NSPCA, he says he avoids inbreeding by keeping herds separate and that his land is much healthier than when he bought it. As to Flack’s charges, York says: "They say these are Frankenstein animals, but where’s the test tube, where’s the lab? Sure, the golden colour is a rare characteristic, but it occurs in nature."
Bloomberg
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