News

                                                 Copyright 2013 Liz Clark Mad Bush Farm

Liz Clark is a writer, journalist and artist living in New Zealand. She is passionate about saving wildlife and is a great supporter of our work to save lions. Thank you Liz for all you do!

She also loves cartooning and I wanted to share with you her latest drawing called “The Life Cycle of a Canned Hunt Lion” which you can see at the top of this blog.

We have been working hard to expose the full horrors of the canned hunting industry in South Africa for some time now. To force change is going to take substantial public pressure and, in this respect, Melissa Bachman has this week helped us put the spotlight on this hideous industry.

This Industry starts with the 160 odd lion breeding farms that force breed lion cubs (like the puppy mills everyone knows about). The lioness is impregnated up to three times a year and the resulting cubs are taken off her at birth or soon after. In the wild, a lioness has one litter every 2-3 years so this is intensive breeding. When her body is exhausted and she can no longer do this, she is sold to the hunters and shot as a trophy. 

Her cubs are always marketed as orphans and UK, European and US recruitment agencies put out glossy “conservation” adverts to attract paying volunteers to pay up to £1200-£1500 for two weeks (plus their airfares) to work on these farms as conservation volunteers, bottle feeding, petting and generally looking after these cubs. They erroneously believe that these cubs will be put back in the wild when fully grown. Tourists are also encouraged to pay to come and pet these cubs and have photographs with them.

Once grown, the human-habituated lions are sold to the hunting farms to be shot in an enclosed space by people like Melissa who pay $$$ to partake in a canned trophy hunt. The tourist hunter then takes the skin, and the carcass is sold to Asia for the Traditional Chinese Medicine market. There are currently up to 8,000 captive lions in South Africa. 

One of our recent news blogs lays out what we believe needs to be done to bring this cruel industry to a close and we will work together with other like-minded organisations to bring pressure to bear to force change.

Please help us spread the message far and wide about the horrors of the canned hunting trade, let your voice be heard by lobbying your Member of Parliament  in whatever country you reside to encourage making the import of these canned lion hunting trophies illegal,  and support us in our work to bring canned  ( and wild) lion hunting to an end.

Your voice matters – let it be heard now!!