South Africa has rather a problem. They have given over a large amount of their country to wildlife conservation, and many of the tourists who visit, come to see the wildlife.
However, South Africa also has an important hunting history. Now, if you go back 50 years the number of buffalo and similar was so high that they could sustain a certain amount of hunting (this cannot be claimed to be sustainable as it reduced populations to their current depressed state, and indeed there are species that it eradicated – for instance the Quagga a type of zebra). However, nowadays there are not these huge populations.
Most hunting reserves are relatively small, and therefore the number of animals that can be naturally hunted each year is also small. It is true that many of these places can sell hunts of antelope and similar, but the majority of big game hunters want to shoot one of the big five (lion leopard elephant buffalo rhino).
The result of this is the hideous industry of canned lion hunts.
Continue reading “Did I miss the start of the end of the canned lion hunt?”