Cabinet approved the Policy Position on 28 March 2024 and DFFE published it in the Government Gazette on 24 April 2024. The Policy Position establishes Policy Objective 1 with associated implementation actions including: stakeholder engagement; development of a strategy to halt domestication of lions, end exploitation and captive breeding, and close captive facilities; development of an exit process for existing facilities; development of regulatory tools for ending keeping, breeding, handling, trade, hunting, and new facility establishment; monitoring impacts on other cat species; and improving security for wild lions. A Ministerial Task Team produced a report on voluntary exit options in early April 2024. A draft Notice Prohibiting Certain Activities Involving African Lion under NEMBA section 9A was originally published for public comment on 29 September 2023 and an amended draft was republished in Government Gazette 51581, Notice 5555; as of the amended draft, existing permit holders are stated as not affected, with closure of existing facilities addressed through separate exit processes. Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks Agency’s February 2026 measures operationalised aspects of the national direction at provincial level. Secondary reporting through 2024–2026 confirms captive lion breeding operations continue while policy and regulatory transition processes are underway.

Anticipated Effects

If the regulatory tools mandated by the Policy Position are developed and enacted, keeping, breeding, handling, and trade in captive lions and their parts and derivatives would no longer be legally authorised in South Africa, and commercial canned hunting of captive-bred lions would cease.

If the sterilisation programme is implemented in existing facilities, captive-bred lion populations would not reproduce further, and the captive lion population would decline over time as existing animals age or are relocated.

If exit processes are developed and implemented as directed, existing captive lion facilities would transition out of the commercial sector; the ultimate fate of lions in those facilities — relocation to sanctuaries, extensive wildlife systems, or other outcomes — depends on options assessed during the exit process, which are not fully defined in available sources.

Whether eliminating the commercial captive lion sector reduces demand for wild lion derivatives (by removing a legal source that could mask illegal trade) or increases poaching risk (by removing the captive supply) is identified in the Policy Position as a monitoring concern; the net effect is not established in available sources.

Significance Rationale

Assigned Reduces Exploitation (impact direction) because Policy Objective 1 explicitly states the intent to end commercial captive keeping, intensive breeding, and commercial exploitation of captive and captive-bred lions, and to close captive lion facilities. If implemented as written, this eliminates the commercial captive lion sector — the world’s largest — in its entirety within South Africa.

Assigned Modifies Conditions (impact type) because the Policy Position is a policy instrument directing future regulatory development, not itself a statutory prohibition. The primary mechanism is the establishment of a national policy objective and the mandate for DFFE to develop regulatory tools that will alter the legal basis. The legal basis change occurs through those subsequent instruments; the Policy Position modifies the conditions and direction for the captive lion industry while that legislation is developed.

Assigned High significance because the Policy Position targets the entire commercial captive lion sector in South Africa nationally, with an explicit objective of complete closure. South Africa hosts the world’s largest captive lion industry; the external estimates of several thousand captive lions and 200+ facilities represent a major system scale. The policy constitutes a Cabinet-endorsed direction for system-level elimination within its scope.

The scale change is transitional: the Policy Position establishes a definitive closure direction but regulatory implementation — statutory prohibition instruments, exit processes, and sterilisation programmes — remains in development. Captive lion facilities continue to operate during this period, and the trajectory from policy adoption to operational cessation has not yet been completed in available sources.