Endangered Wildlife Trust Head Blames Meat Eaters for Corona Virus

South African society has, over the years, been led into believing that the much acclaimed NGO – The Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT) – headed by Yolan Friedmann – has been operating in the best interests of this country’s environment and its wildlife. Organisations and individuals who claim to ride on this high road are those who should be supporting the Minister of the Environment, Forestry and Fisheries in her endeavours to achieve the objectives of her department’s National Conservation Strategies. These are strategies originally based on the World Conservation Strategy ((WCS) (1980) that was acclaimed to be ‘the blue print’ that would take nature and mankind together, in symbiotic harmony, into posterity.

The WCS is based upon the principles and practices of science-based wildlife management and the wisdom of sustainably utilising (harvesting) the living resources of this planet (both wild and domestic) for the benefit of mankind. It, furthermore, supports the sustainable use of living resources for both subsistence and commercial purposes. It also supports hunting.

The TGA was astonished, therefore, to discover that Ms Friedman – who heads the EWT – is vehemently opposed to people in our society eating meat, hunting, and legally trading in our wildlife products.

Yolan Friedmann recently stated on her Facebook page:

“I hope that the world doesn’t lose sight of why and how COVID 19 came to bring a globe to its knees. The filthy act of trading, slaughtering and eating wild and domestic animals inhumanely and brutally has destroyed millions of livelihoods and crippled economies. Not to mention the impact on innocent people’s lives. Let’s not lose sight of that amongst our talk of sanitizing and social distancing”.

Yolan Friedman is , clearly, an animal rights activist. And the organisation she heads supports the animal rights doctrine. The TGA finds this state of affairs totally unacceptable. Indeed, we have already listed Ms Friedman and the EWT in the ‘TGA-Code Red’ category. This signals the TGA’s recommendation that Ms Friedmann and the EWT, should forever be excluded from any kind of access to official wildlife management debate.