A recent South African television programme, Carte Blanche, once again revealed how sordid canned hunting is in at least South Africa’s North West Province. Captive raised lions were set out for the hunters and shot out of trees, against fences and down an Aardvark hole where a female attempted to hide. No real surprise there, standard practices.
This hunt occurred in 2012 and it was then still permitted via the US Fish and Wildlife Service to import the trophies by the US trophy hunters. Everything you see on the Carte Blanche video was legal in South Africa.
Now things have changed. The US will no longer allow such trophy imports under new regulations. As the Carte Blanche programme states, this will cause hardship to the lion breeders, the operators, and the Professional Hunters who will now lose income. Meanwhile and strangely, the EU will continue to allow such trophy imports by European hunters. Except those living in France, the Netherlands and hopefully soon other nations like the UK, Finland and Sweden?
As with Blood Lions, Carte Blanche shows exactly what canned lion hunting is all about – a slaughter of captive raised animals. South Africa is unwilling to make changes in this practice so meanwhile all of us living in importing countries must work diligently to shut the doors.
