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 'I shot a lion in Africa'
    Derek Taylor
    July 19 2009 at 10:09AM
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The international scandal of South Africa's "canned" lion hunting - which allowed more than 740 cage-bred lions to be shot by tourists while waiting to be fed last year - is not over.

Last year's total has doubled since 2005 and is increasing exponentially, conservationists claim.

Another 4 000 caged lions are in the 123 breeders' supply line, according to the International Big Cats Rescue movement - and more are available over the borders in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Namibia.

Many of those borders are porous and rarely policed, except at stolen-car-smuggling points. Locals move whatever they want across the Limpopo.

'They just want the skin, the head and the boast'
Tourists have been paying fees of between $22 000 (R181 500) and $60 000 (R495 000) for the trophy killing of a lion.
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Most are not hunters, an industry insider said. "I had one of them who thought he would be allowed to shoot the beast in his feeding cage between the bars. Some don't like to get out of the vehicle to shoot. They just want the skin, the head and the boast - 'I shot a lion in Africa'."

Three years ago new legislation was passed to ameliorate this lucrative tourist attraction. Now cage-bred lions must first be freed to adapt to the wild within legal hunting properties "in an extensive wildlife system" for at least two years before being sold as easy targets.

The new law aimed at introducing the principle of a hunting "fair chase" to killing animals that had been fed by humans all their lives and kept in restricted compounds.

The SA Predator Breeders' Association and two independent breeders brought a high court action to dismiss the new legislation, pleading that it would ruin their industry and cost 4 000 people their jobs.

Even the Kruger National Park has problems
They lost the case. But now concerned conservationists and action groups that worked to establish the new two-years-in-the-wild clause fear it is too easy to ignore.


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