Conservation Influencers

Outraged SA Citizens Against Poaching (OSCAP)

Pretoria, South Africa

In 2011 Allison Thomson launched Outraged SA Citizens Against Poaching (OSCAP) as a facebook group opposed to rhino poaching. Encouraged by its rapid success online, OSCAP turned itself into a registered non-profit organisation in South Africa.

In 2014, OSCAP held an International Rhino Conference at which it laid out its core beliefs and objectives. One of these was that if the rhino horn trade was ever legalised, this ‘merely would inevitably create two parallel markets because the legal market could never be big enough to satisfy consumer demand’.

According to OSCAP, South Africa should abandon its desire to legalise the rhino horn trade and focus instead on bringing ‘khaki collar’ criminal networks to justice, and on supporting demand reduction programmes in rhino consumer states. The best way to protect rhino, says OSCAP, is ‘through effective wildlife law enforcement and field protection’. These include, in its words: ‘top notch security; dehorning – only where absolutely necessary when no other alternatives are available; education and awareness; increased sentences for people found guilty of Wildlife offences; no bail for suspects’.

Today, OSCAP has just under 20, 000 ‘members’ on Facebook, where it confirms that its mission is to maintain a moratorium on rhino trade both locally and internationally. OCAP’s patron is the musician Mark Knopfler.

Leaders

Directors Allison Louise Thomson, Anthony Alberts, Theresa Baber.

Spokesperson is Kim da Ribeira

Governance

Unknown.

Finances

Unknown.

About the directory

Conservation Influencers is a searchable directory of the animal activist, environmental and ecological lobby. It examines the history, mission, methodology and reputation of NGOs to assess their impact on the global conservation cause.

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Franz Weber Foundation

From 1990 until 2015, Franz Weber Foundation (FFW) managed the Fazao-Malfakassa National Park in Togo, which was, according to an in-depth investigation by Duke University, ‘established by forcing the local communities off their land and without taking into consideration their point of view’. That same study cited convincing evidence from reports published in 1990, confirming that competition for land use was already ‘creating conflict between the local communities and park managers’. In 2015 Togo refused to renew FFW’s contract because, the report says, ‘local communities were still excluded from the management of the natural resources of their land’ and FFW had ‘failed to fulfil its contract’. Franz Weber Foundation plays a major role within CITES because it funds and manages from Switzerland the African Elephant Coalition (AEC), which represents 32 African range states, some of which have barely any elephants and others none at all. Contrary to the wishes of the range states in Southern Africa, which manage most of the world’s wild elephant populations, the AEC at CITES’ CoPs repeatedly tables proposals to put all of the world’s elephants in appendix I. And the AEC uses its voting power to keep in place prohibitions on ivory sales and all other trade in elephant-related derivatives, including skins and hair, which Southern African nations wish to legalise.

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