Vivienne L. Williams

University of the Witwatersrand | wits · School of Animal, Plant and Environmental Sciences

Commercial captive breeding and trade in body parts of threatened wild carnivores is an issue of significant concern to conservation scientists and policy-makers. Following a 2016 decision by Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, South Africa must establish an annual export quota for lion sk...

From 2008 to 2018, South Africa permitted the export of captive-bred African lion ( Panthera leo ) skeletons to Southeast Asia under CITES Appendix II. Legal exports rose from approximately 50 individuals in 2008 to a maximum of 1,771 skeletons in 2016, and has led to ongoing concerns over possible laundering of non-lion, multiple-source and wild-s...

Conservation translocations have become an important management tool, particularly for large wildlife species such as the lion (Panthera leo). When planning translocations, the genetic background of populations needs to be taken into account; failure to do so risks disrupting existing patterns of genetic variation, ultimately leading to genetic hom...

South Africa has a large captive lion (Panthera leo) sector, but detailed knowledge on the origin of individuals and any potential genetic value to conservation targets is lacking. In 2021, the South African government committed to closing the sector and have since appointed a Ministerial Lion Task Team (2022) to initiate this process. Some have su...

Trade in lion parts associated with cultural and traditional use is poorly understood. Here we sought to better understand the role and use of lion body parts in the commercial traditional medicine (muthi) trade of South Africa. In 2019 we conducted a semi-structured questionnaire survey of muthi traders (n = 10) and traditional healers (n = 20) wh...

My research work is on the evolutionary biology of African lions, with focus on behavioral ecology mechanisms for coexistance. Current projects include longterm ecological studies on Serengeti lions, Conflict mitigation through conservation translocation to foster coexistence at the interface and trophy harvest monitoring and evaluation of hunted p...

As the top predator in African ecosystems, lions have lost more than 90% of their historical range, and few countries possess strong evidence for stable populations. Translocations (broadly defined here as the capture and movement of lions for various management purposes) have become an increasingly popular action for this species, but the wide arr...

South Africa hosts >1.2 million immigrants, 75% from Africa. The inter- and intra-continental diaspora of immigrant groups, and the movement of biological commodities, effects a parallel biological diaspora of plants, animals, and pathogens to regions where they are non-native, and an allied diaspora of traditional practices associated with commodi...

Cultivation of medicinal plant species has been recommended as a conservation intervention to reduce the pressure on wild populations that are under threat of extirpation due to overexploitation, but there have been reports of resistance among some traditional healers and muthi traders to such initiatives. This resistance raises questions of whethe...

This dataset is a an inventory of 475 alien plant taxa (447 identified to species), including a photo-guide to 96 plants, mostly sold as traditional medicines in three South African cities by traders of South African, West African, East African, Indian and Chinese origin (Williams et al., 2021). The dataset also incorporates species documented in a...

South Africa’s colonial past has shaped its environmental history, including introductions of alien plants. Indentured Indian labourers, mainly from Tamil Nadu, that were brought to South Africa in the 1860s, acquired knowledge of Zulu healing practices and plants. This translocation of traditional medical knowledge (mostly Ayurvedic), and the adop...

In recent years lion bones have been legally traded internationally to Asian markets from captive-bred sources in South Africa. There are also indications of increasing instances of illegal international trade in wild lion bones. The existence of parallel captive and wild supplies of lion bone are a cause of law enforcement concern regarding the po...

Sustainable management strategies for trees are informed by research on growth rates and regeneration. In a 1998 study of bark thickness and tree size, six species (all used for traditional medicine) were sampled by removing 5 cm-diameter bark disks at four height intervals on 210 stems at 15 sites in South Africa. An impromptu revisit to one site...

This Commentary is a response to a Commentary published in the May/June 2020 issue: Nattrass N. Why are black South African students less likely to consider studying biological sciences? S Afr J Sci. 2020;116(5/6), Art. #7864, 2 pages. https://doi.org/10.17159/sajs.2020/7864 Responses to the Commentary in the May/June 2020 issue have been publish...

Alien taxa have been introduced to South Africa through a wide variety of pathways, and have subsequently been intentionally or accidentally dispersed across the country. While many introductions to South Africa have been intentional, alien taxa have also been accidentally introduced, or have spread unaided into the country from neighbouring countr...

Public reason is a formal concept in political theory. There is a need to better understand how public reason might be elicited in making public decisions that involve deep uncertainty, which arises from pernicious and gross ignorance about how a system works, the boundaries of a system, and the relative value (or disvalue) of various possible outc...

Conservation and natural resource management are increasingly attending the ethical elements of public decisions. Ethical considerations are challenging, in part, because they typically require accounting for the moral consideration of various human and nonhuman forms of life, whose interests sometimes conflict (or seem to conflict). A valuable too...

The African lion is in decline across its range, and consumptive utilisation and trade of their body parts and skins has been postulated as a cause for concern. We undertook a pan-African questionnaire and literature survey to document informed opinion and evidence for the occurrence of domestic and international trade and consumption in African li...

Sub-regional summaries for Southern, East, West, Central and South Africa (13 pages) (PDF)

Number of years respondents had been involved in lion conservation or allied wildlife matters (PDF)

The perceived impact of the international trade in lion (A) body parts (sub-regional), (B) bones (sub-regional), (C) body parts (per nominated range state), (D) bones (per nominated range state). (PDF)

Sub-regions in which respondents worked, and for which they had information on lions (answers include multiple responses). (PDF)

Respondents’ area of expertise and/or occupation and/or type of employment (PDF)

Records of intra-African trade in lion body parts, with symbols indicating whether trade between two African countries has been recorded as legal only, illegal only, or both legal and illegal. (HTM)

Summary of the information on lion trade, utilisation, population size and illegal activities, obtained from the literature and questionnaire surveys for current and former lion range states in Africa. (PDF)

Survey questionnaire on the trade and use in lion body parts distributed to respondents and administered using SurveyMonkey® (PDF)

The perceived impact of the domestic trade in lion (A) body parts (sub-regional), (B) bones (sub-regional), (C) body parts (per nominated range state), (D) bones (per nominated range state). (PDF)

Informant opinion on which African Lion range states are the most important in which to conduct studies vis-à-vis the trade in body parts. (PDF)

The African lion is the only big cat listed on CITES Appendix II, and the only one for which international commercial trade is legal under CITES. The trade in lion body parts, and especially the contentious trade in bones from South Africa to Asia, has raised concerns spanning continents and cultures. Debates were amplified at the 2016 CITES Confer...

Purpose codes on CITES permits issued for skeletons destined for Laos, Vietnam, Thailand and China. (TIFF)

South African provincial exporters of lion bodies to East-Southeast Asia from 2008–2015. (PDF)

Invasive alien species are routinely moved around the world as horticultural specimens. An additional route through the traditional medicine trade may exist, especially where cultures from different continents coalesce. South African traditional medicine, for example, has a long history of association with its Indian Ayurvedic equivalent via migrat...

In a megadiverse country such as South Africa, plant locality data are routinely sourced from the South African National Herbarium (PRE). Evidence suggests that large areas of the country remain poorly collected and that locality records are not always adequately represented in PRE. Our aim was to assess whether distribution information obtained ex...

Malawi is one of the world’s 48 least developed countries and the population are alleged to be mostly reliant on traditional medicines. Approximately 90% of Malawians are forced by circumstances of low income to depend on the natural resource base for a living and to trade-off long-term sustainable resource use for short-term consumption of stocks....

Zootherapy plays a role in healing practices in Mozambican society. Although several studies have focused on ethnobotany and traditional medicine in the country, little research has been conducted on the use of reptiles in zootherapy. The aim of this study was therefore to fill this gap by assessing the reptile species traded for traditional medici...

South Africa has legally exported substantial quantities of lion bones to Southeast Asia and China since 2008, apparently as part of the multinational trade substituting bones and body parts of other large cats for those of the tiger in wine and other health tonics. The legal sale of lion bones may mask an illegal trade, the size of which is only p...

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v523/n7560/full/523290a.html#supplementary-information

http://wildcru.org/news/bones-of-contention-lion-bone-trade-report-released/#more-8927

Few regional or continent-wide assessments of bird use for traditional medicine have been attempted anywhere in the world. Africa has the highest known diversity of bird species used for this purpose. This study assesses the vulnerability of 354 bird species used for traditional medicine in 25 African countries, from 205 genera, 70 families, and 25...

There is an active trade in South African Encephalartos species in traditional medicine (muthi) outlets throughout the country. No attempt has been made to date to estimate the number of individual stems damaged by harvesters supplying stem fragments (including bark strips) to the markets. To progress from stem fragments to stem figures, a plausibl...

The Faraday traditional healers' trading market is the hub of the medicinal plant trade in Johannesburg, South Africa. Modes of harvesting, transporting, storage and distribution of medicinal plants render them susceptible to microbial attack, and thereby make customers, especially patients with compromised immune systems, vul-nerable to infections...

Use of vultures is an important component of traditional medicine, particularly in South Africa and there is evidence to suggest that traditional use is at least partly responsible for the rapid decline of vulture populations in this country. Until very recently, little information on the extent of the trade in animal parts, particularly vultures,...

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This chapter reviews the richness of bird use for traditional medicines across Africa. At least 354 species from 205 genera, 70 families, and 25 orders are used for traditional medicine in 25 African countries. Most birds are in the order Passeriformes (108 species used and 82 species traded), with the starlings (Sturnidae) the most commonly used f...

Southern Ground-hornbill (Bucorvus cafer) is used in traditional medi-cine in Zimbabwe, and the trade of this species was investigated in an informal sector market in Bulawayo. The frequency of hunting for B. cafer was found to be currently insignificant, and could neither be causally linked to population decline nor proved to be a driver of the lo...

In 2009, South Africa completed the IUCN Red List assessments of 20,456 indigenous vascular plant taxa. During that process, medicinal plant species (especially those sold in informal muthi markets) were identified so that potential extinction risks posed to these species could be assessed. The present study examines and analyses the recently docume...

Sixty-three percent of the world's cycad taxa are threatened with extinction. In South Africa, 25 of the 38 in- digenous species are categorised as Threatened on the IUCN Red List, primarily due to illegal collecting. Three of the country's Encephalartos species are already Extinct in the Wild, while 10 Critically Endangered endemic Encephalartos s...

Background and aims: Afromontane forest ecosystems share a high similarity of plant and animal biodiversity, although they occur mainly on isolated mountain massifs throughout the continent. This resemblance has long provoked questions on former wider distribution of Afromontane forests. In this study Prunus africana (one of the character trees of...

In South Africa, animals and plants are commonly used as traditional medicine for both the healing of ailments and for symbolic purposes such as improving relationships and attaining good fortune. The aim of this study was twofold: to quantify the species richness and diversity of traded animal species and to assess the trade in species of conserva...

Prunus africana - an evergreen tree found in Afromontane forests - is used in traditional medicine to cure benign prostate hyperplasia. Different bioactive constituents derived from bark extracts from 20 tree populations sampled throughout the species' natural range in Africa were studied by means of GC-MSD. The average concentration [mg/kgw/w] in...

The bark and stems of Encephalartos species are used for traditional medicine across South Africa, and some species are traded in traditional medicine markets. The absence of characteristic plant parts such as leaves and cones in the chopped up market material presents a major challenge to the identification of the species traded. In this study, So...

Quantifying the Trade in Cycads ( Encephalartos Species) in the Traditional Medicine Markets of Johannesburg and Durban, South Africa. Cycads have been used for traditional purposes for centuries, mainly as a source of starch during droughts and famines. In South Africa, Encephalartos species are traded for traditional medicine (TM) in local TM mar...

Large quantities of plants are traded annually in South Africa's traditional medicine or ‘muthi’ markets. A resource in high demand in the Faraday (Johannesburg) and Warwick (Durban) markets is uMavumbuka, a root holoparasite usually identified as either Hydnora africana Thunb. or Sarcophyte sanguinea Sparrm. subsp. sanguinea. However, rhizomes reg...

Hydnora spp. are rarely collected root holoparasites due to the subterranean nature of the rhizomes and seasonal emergence of the flowers. Results from a recent study in South African traditional medicine markets positively identified Hydnora abyssinica A.Br. rhizomes in trade and indicated that there was a high probability of the species also occu...

In South Africa, animals and plants are commonly used as traditional medicine for both the healing of ailments and for symbolic purposes such as improving relationships and attaining good fortune. The aim of this study was twofold: to quantify the species richness and diversity of traded animal species and to assess the trade in species of conserva...

DRIMIA COOPERI IN KWAZULU-NATAL, AND THE ETHNOMEDICINAL TRADE

Scattered populations of the same tree species in montane forests through Africa have led to speculations on the origins of distributions. Here, we inferred the colonization history of the Afromontane tree Prunus africana using seven chloroplast DNA loci to study 582 individuals from 32 populations sampled in a range-wide survey from across Africa,...