The Minister’s High Level Panel of Experts
As I understand it, the Minister (Mrs Barbara Creecy) established her (so-called) “High Level Panel of Experts” to obtain first-hand information about the management of elephants, rhinos, lions and leopards in South Africa.
This would have been an understandable, acceptable and welcome development for everybody in the wildlife industry IF these so-called ‘experts’ were people who had really been involved in the Minister’s panel for the purpose of advising the minister, or if they were capable of advising the Minister, in specific non-scientific wildlife management matters .
I say this because the Minister has clearly no personal knowledge about the management of elephant, rhinos, lions or leopards. It would have been an understandable, acceptable and welcome development, however, ONLY if the Minister’s HLP advisers had been “true experts” in one or another of the sciences of wildlife management; or if they had been non-scientists but were still ‘experts’ in some other technical or administration aspect of South Africa’s wildlife industry.
As the panel was developed and constructed, however, no qualifying parameters were ever laid down by the minister and she seems to have chosen her own preference personalities as members of her so-called expert team.
This is my first objection to the HLP of “experts”.
Participants were chosen by the minister on her own personal preference whim. And I personally would declare the construction of the panel to be grossly inexpert and highly unprofessional.
And I believe many of those who were chosen as being “experts” should not have been allowed anywhere near a wildlife management panel of this magnitude and importance. I am, therefore, left with the notion but to say that the Minister personally hand-picked many of her so-called ‘experts’ for personal and biased reasons of her own.
The final outcome of the operation was that the minister’s hand-picked team of so-called experts came to several consensus conclusions that have determined the final outcome of the HLP.
And, because this was a scientific forum I have to state the obvious which is, scientific answers cannot be determined by “consensus” because ‘consensus’ has no part to play in any scientific deliberation.
This alone should leave the whole operation in a null and void condition.
The HLP should be declared a “hung jury”. And the operation should – in necessary – be replayed under strict scientific management rules.
Ron Thomson. CEO- TGA
