EU CAMPAIGN AGAINST CANNED HUNTING

In the last fifty years alone, approximately 50 percent of Africa’s lions have disappeared. What has happened to them all? In South Africa, many have fallen victim to poachers. Recently, lions have also faced the threat of canned hunting — hunts in which animals are confined in an area from which they cannot escape — to increasingly detrimental effect.

Not only is canned lion hunting legal in South Africa, it is a flourishing industry, popular especially amongst those who travel from outside the continent to shoot big game for trophy and sport. The industry is so popular, in fact, that in 2012, it generated approximately roughly 70 million US dollars. Canned hunting is not the hunting of wild lions, however, but rather captive ones, and whereas trophy hunters often claim “fair chase” as a key element in their hunting activities, canned hunters simply pay to kill a lion in an enclosure.

The canned hunting industry has thrived in South Africa in large part because it is under-regulated. The South African government, to protect the canned hunting industry, has adopted a strained and unrealistic definition, based on silly permit conditions. Essentially, anyone interested in bringing a lion trophy home through a canned hunt can do so, as long as they possess a permit, adhere to symbolic regulations, and have enough money to pay for the experience (some hunters pay as much as $ 38,000 to kill a lion).

Those in favor of hunting say that captive-bred lions are helping to ‘save’ the wild population.” In essence, pro-hunting propaganda claims that every tame lion killed is a wild lion saved. This is not the case, however, and this is based on the false assumption that, every hunter who is prevented from shooting a tame lion will automatically go out and kill a wild lion.

The lucrative and cruel business of canned hunting belies an even more sinister one: cub-petting. Cub-petting offers tourists and volunteers the opportunity to interact directly with lion cubs. Of course, tourists must pay to pet the cubs, and many do not realize that cubs are the product of widespread factory farming, a practice in which lionesses are bred to have two to three cub litters in a year. This reproduction rate is not only unnatural for lionesses, but is also unhealthy. It is also unnatural for the cubs, which are taken from their mothers at a young age and thrust into the hands of starry-eyes tourists.

What is not revealed to the general public is that these cubs are bred for slaughter: After supporting the cub-petting industry, they will be fed into the canned hunting industry. All lion farmers breed lions for slaughter. Wherever lions are being bred, that is a lion farm, however they try to pass themselves off as ‘sanctuaries.’" There are more than 160 such lion farms in South Africa.

Lions that grow up in the cub-petting industry do not end up back in the wild. Nor do the lions go to good homes, something that parks are quick to tell their tourists and volunteers to convince them to donate time and money to the so-called “sanctuaries".

Canned hunting and cub-petting are deeply intertwined, part of a cyclical process that turns lions into profit. South African conservation decisions are actually made by Safari Club International in the United States, which has aggressively occupied and now controls regulatory authorities in 'rangeland states' like South Africa or Tanzania. Breeding lions as living targets will continue but will gradually reduce in numbers owing to the ever-increasing costs of breeding lions, and the reduction in income from the cub petting spin off.

With 8,000 captive lions in South Africa — compared to just 4,000 in the wild — the issue of canned hunting must be addressed. Political action and government regulation are much needed. South Africa has to find the political will to protect wildlife and the EU must apply pressure to get it done!

EU Animal Advocacy

The EU needs to raise awareness using all media to expose the evils and the cruelty of canned hunting. Canned hunting only exists because of a failure of government policy, and then it is ferociously defended by wealthy vested interests. Canned hunting can only be abolished by a sustained campaign to raise awareness, and to change policy. Then, an informed public must persuade EU governments to ban the import of lion/predator trophies. Only that way can the supply of dollars be cut off, and the industry closed down. All sources of income need to be challenged, especially cub petting,  whereby lion farmers are able to externalise the costs of rearing their living targets. Also the extortionate fees charged to volunteers, who pay to work at lion farms in the naïve belief that they are assisting conservation.

About the Safari Club International (SCI)

Safary Club International is  the most ruthless trophy hunting organization. Clearly leading the list of voracious hunting clubs with an appalling callousness towards wild animals worldwide, the Safari Club International (SCI), promotes competitive trophy hunting throughout the world, even of rare species, and not shying away from canned hunts, through an elaborate awards program. The SCI continues to create and feed a culture glamorizing death and violence globally, across political lines, international borders, and against wildlife and even people. Fortunes are made on the back of millions of animals, whose lives are taken by trophy hunters for the sake of killing in an endless spiral of competition. Money is no object in the face of bragging rights for killing the biggest and the best of all species. SCI profits from the beginning to the end: from outfitting hunts to charging outlandish prices to enter its many circles of competition. Most people would be shocked to learn about the length these wildlife killers go to legally (and illegally) murder the largest, most beautiful and 'exotic’ animals – the rarer the animal, the better. And to this end, the SCI even supports canned hunts. SCI argues that captive breeding is necessary for the survival and rescue of the species in the wild, and that sport hunting of surplus, captive-bred animals generates revenue that supports these captive-breeding operations and may relieve hunting pressure on wild populations. With no remorse for brutally taking the lives of innocent wild animals already struggling to survive in human-dominated landscapes, members of SCI spend their wealth on killing-spree trips into remote areas and foreign countries to fulfill their lust to kill the largest animals, the most exotic animals and rack up SCI awards.