Tourism and Arts Minister Jean Kapata has charged that Zambia will not bow down to pressure and reverse the decision to allow hunting of Big Cats.
Mrs Kapata said threats by international charity Lions Aid to report Zambia to the EU and the US for a possible ban of its tourism products are nonsensical.She said Zambia is a sovereign state that will make its own decisions in the best interest of its people.
Mrs Kapata said the decision is final and no amount of pressure from anyone will force the PF government to change its stance on the matter.
In an interview, Mrs Kapata wondered why people are putting pressure on Zambia when other countries have continued Big Cats hunting.
‘Zambia is a sovereign nation and our neighbouring nations have been doing Cat hunting and they are not talking about those countries. As Minister of Tourism, I know that those that are talking too much are the ones that lost the bid for hunting blocks and they have now gone to lobby NGOs so that hunting is stopped.I will not listen to such,’ she said.
She maintained that hunting of Big Cats has always been done in Zambia adding that the reason it was lifted was because there were no regulations.
‘Now we have the regulations, we are saying only hunt two and no hunting of young ones. So please, we are not going to be bow down to pressure from NGOs, we are doing it for the communities so that people can benefit from the resources.’
She said it is nonsensical to threaten that Zambian tourism products will be banned from the EU and US markets.
‘’Let them go ahead and report, that is all I can say, let them go ahead and petition us. We have nothing to do with that ourselves.’
She added, ‘We are not saying we are going to kill all Lions and Leopards. We did an aerial survey and we have more Lions and Leopards and we are only hunting those that are old that are out of the pride.’
source
No comments:
Post a Comment