It brings in thousands of dollars to South Africa’s tourist industry, but the ‘canned hunting’ of lions is also raising increased controversy.
The animals are bred and raised in animal parks, where tourists are encouraged to visit and tame them.
But when they reach adulthood, some are released into large enclosures, where unused to living in the wild and unable to escape, they become easy prey.
On tonight’s Dateline at 9.30pm on SBS ONE, Evan Williams reveals more about the controversial practice, and speaks to the very vocal lobby on both sides of the argument.
“All the cubs who are petted will end up being shot by hunters,” says Chris Mercer, who’s one of canned hunting’s most outspoken critics.
Tourist hunters pay around $30,000 to kill the animals in canned hunts.
“Your canned hunter is not really a hunter, all he is is a trophy collector… he executes the animal and then he will pick up his family at the five star lodge he’s staying at and they’ll go off to the casino for an evening,” Chris tells Dateline.
One high profile hunter who’s hit the headlines is US TV personality and self-styled ‘hardcore huntress’ Melissa Bachman.
She posed smiling with a lion she’d shot in a canned hunt, turning her into a global hate figure on social media.
But those behind the trade defend it as the equivalent of traditional farming.
“It is a pure farming operation, same as what we’ve got with cattle and sheep and even sable and buffalo,” says Koos Erasmus, who runs a breeding facility and small game reserve.
He doesn’t allow petting of the animals to tame them, but the animals he raises are then hunted or used to breed more lions.
“They are not being abused, they are not being mishandled, they are not being mistreated,” he tells Dateline.
There’s also fierce debate over whether canned hunting helps with lion conservation, with the hunting lobby claiming that conservation reduces the motivation for killing lions in the wild.
“In the last 20 years, the wild lion populations have declined by 80 per cent,” says Fiona Miles, who runs a lkion rescue charity. “So there’s no argument for that, because the canned hunting industry has increased in the last 20 years dramatically.”
Conservationists estimate as many as 1,200 trophy lions are exported from South Africa every year, with some of the killings also being filmed.
“I’ve seen a lot of such footage and every single time it makes me feel completely sick,” she says.
