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The Bloemfontein SPCA found more than 70 illegally kept wild animals in the house of Marius Joubert in Hennenman.
Joubert, who was scheduled to appear in the Hennenman Magistrates’ Court on Friday, 5 April, on counts of house burglary and theft, was taking the police to show them evidence over the Easter Weekend when they took off the handcuffs and he stuck his hands in snake cages in his house. He eventually succumbed to snake bites in the Bongani Hospital in Welkom.
Reinet Meyer, chief inspector at the Bloemfontein SPCA, said they received an appeal for assistance from the local conservation authority concerning a large number of illegally kept indigenous and exotic animals, that were slowly starving to death in Joubert’s house.
Upon the SPCA team’s arrival at the house they found that a number of animals had already succumbed to starvation and dehydration, but that over 60 animals were still alive and would need rescuing. This rescue was complicated by the fact that the majority of the animals were highly venomous snakes.
Meyer said another concern raised was that people claiming to be representatives of a Springs-based wildlife rehabilitation centre had arrived at the house the day before and removed selected animals for the so-called purpose of rehabilitation.
These animals included a pair of ferrets, pregnant meerkats, exotic tarantulas and geckos, as well as rare, wild caught colour variants of rinkhals snakes.
All the animals in Joubert’s house were carefully caught and crated, and the snakes were handled by experienced snake handlers – whereafter all the animals were taken to the Johannesburg Wildlife Veterinary Hospital for emergency treatment. Inspector Werner Botha commented that it had been very sad to see how many of the monitors were suffering from a condition called metabolic bone disease, something common in lizards and monitors kept in captivity, and how much the animals suffered with this disease.
Meyer tracked down the animals removed illegally to a private individual in Johannesburg, and they were confiscated.
Meyer says reptiles are among the most inhumanely treated animals in the pet trade.
“There are very few facilities or individuals who can match the requirements a reptile needs, or fully mimic the life it would have in its natural environment. Environmental enrichment is critical for captive wildlife and is an often-neglected aspect of keeping.”
She says the international trade in reptiles, amphibians and arachnids is unregulated, often unlawful and an ever-growing industry in South Africa.
