Final Essay

South Africa has many tourist attractions, one being, many wildlife preserves where they claim to be “protecting” the animals. In these preserves they offer safaris, and allow you to interact with the wild life all for a fee. It all seems so harmless, but in reality it’s just a hunting ground in disguise. Canned hunting grounds of all type should have operations shut down due to the disturbing treatment of wildlife that solely rely on the funds from the wealthy who want to bring a souvenir home, and the lies sold to visiting individuals, completely clueless of what is really occurring. 

Canned hunting is when people pay thousands of dollars to come to a game ranch or preserve where the wildlife roams about in a fenced in area. With nowhere to escape, this guarantees the hunter a trophy kill. In other words, it’s the lazy way to hunt.  It’s ridiculous that something that was once all about hunting for food to live is now about who can kill a bigger animal to hang its head in their den. On the website for Africa Hunt Lodge, a canned hunting range in South Africa, they offer a wide range of wild life to be hunted and various hunting packages. These wealthy individuals pay thousands of dollars to hunt anything from baboons and deer native to Africa, to big cats and even white rhinos. Even more shocking to see find was that some of the animals on the hunt list are endangered species.

These fenced in grounds where canned hunts are available are known by many different names such as hunting preserves, game ranches, shooting preserves, etc., but the actual names often don’t advertise that they offer hunting because they want to appeal to the non-hunters also. An example that lives up to this is Moreson Ranch in South Africa. For the hunters, they charge a daily fee of a few hundred dollars just to be on the ground and another fee for the animal they want to kill. Prices for a kill range between $90 to hundreds of thousands of dollars depending on the animal. As for the non-hunters, the people who are just there to see and interact with the wild life, they offer game viewing where you can drive through the grounds for a fee of and observe the wildlife for $270 or play with the lion cubs for $60 per person. These fees are vital to the game ranches staying in business, the only reason the government allows them to operate is because of the income they bring to the country.

These facilities take cubs from their mothers by blowing a horn so the lioness is scared away so fast she leaves her cubs. The average time the cubs stay with their mother is six months before they get weaned away, so when they are taken so early they miss out on missing out on the vital first milk from the mother, which can cause frequent ill-health. Many of those who volunteer at these hunt grounds are there because they think that they are helping the cubs to be released into the wild again once they grow up. This is because the malicious owners of the game ranches, that believe there is nothing wrong with taking an animal from its mother hours after birth, tell the volunteers that the cubs were rejected by their mother at birth rather than the truth. They don’t tell the volunteers that because if the cubs are raised by humans they will have little fear of them when they are released into the range, so that when a hunter comes close the animal won’t run and the hunter will get his kill.

Another cruel factor to the canned hunting industry is the risk of disease for the animals. The most common disease among many of the animals being transported and held at the ranches is Chronic Wasting Disease (aka Mad Cow Disease). This disease becomes extremely difficult to control and attempting to cure the animals of it can cost taxpayers millions. When an animal escapes one of the ranches environmental contamination becomes a huge threat. These ranches aren't only putting the animals kept at the ranch at risk, but also animals in the wild and animals that are pets.

 At one point five years ago, South American Environmental Affairs and Tourism Minister Marthinus Van Schalkwyk, tried to forbid people to participate in canned hunting by stating an animal couldn’t be hunted unless it had spent two years in the wild. They thought this would be successful because it was going against breeders and hunters, the two groups that depend on the outcome of canned hunting. Sadly, the breeders challenged the government and they caved because the breeders were bringing in over $450 million. It soon became quite clear who was running the show, because soon after a high court judge ruled the restrictions were not rational. Mac McDaniel, writer and environmentalist for Care2, spoke on this saying, “Minister Van Schalkwyk’s mistake was to trying to regulate canned hunting instead of abolishing it outright. A mistake that we see all too often in animal advocacy. “

              After the new regulations on canned hunting failed to stick, the number of exotic trophy hunted animals skyrocketed. The lion species has been the most sought after in South Africa and between 2001 and 2006 there were 1,830 lion trophies shipped out of the country. In the following five years that number became 4,062, which was a 122% increase in lions killed for a trophy, and for what? Most likely to be shown off in someone’s home so they can brag about what brilliant hunters they are.

While South Africa is increasing dramatically in these one-sided hunts, other African countries are losing their canned hunting business. Before South Africa was the biggest canned hunting country, Tanzania and Zimbabwe thrived in the business. One of the reasons south Africa is on the incline is because most of the animals in their canned hunts are bread or bought for it, whereas in Tanzania and Zimbabwe they were using lions straight out of the wild and catching them or luring them in. However, that method of acquiring animals for trophy hunting is no longer “allowed” by the government because the population of wild lions and other big cats were decreasing at an unsustainable rate. In Wildlife Conservation by Sustainable Use, Robin Hurt and Pauline Ravn inform, “Wildlife is plentiful in some country locations but is being poached mercilessly in others. Only through effective regulation will it be preserved and turned to the benefit of the countries and their communities. If local communities and landowners on whose land wildlife feeds do not benefit from wildlife, they will not conserve it.”

To my surprise I found out that the second largest area for canned hunting is in our very own back yards. That’s right, there are an estimated 1,000 ranches that offer canned hunting in the US, and 28 states participate in the business. Texas alone is home to 500 ranches where canned hunting is available. I was appalled to see this information and have had no idea about it until now. At first I figured the canned hunts going on in the US would have animals only found native to here like deer, elk, moose, boar, etc., but I was surprised yet again. In the US you can hunt almost all of the same animals found in the South Africa hunting ranches. The ranch owners often purchase these animals from breeders, dealers, auctions, even zoos or circuses. While they claim to offer only species that are non-endangered, illicit dealers in the exotic "pet” trade often permit the sale of endangered animals knowing the intention is for them to be hunted.

One would think there would already be a ban on these kinds of actions in the United States, but astonishingly there is no law that bans these activities. The only federal laws that somewhat touch on canned hunting is the Endangered Species Act. The Endangered Species Act prohibits taking, importing, exporting, selling or offering to sell any listed endangered or threatened species. What the Act defines as “taking” is harassing, harming, pursuing, hunting, shooting, wounding, killing, trapping, capturing, or collecting, or attempting to engage in any behavior of the sort. However, it is stated that, “An exception is made by allowing the issuance of a permit authorizing otherwise-prohibited activities for scientific purposes. Often, canned hunt owners or operators will have a permit for importation, captivity, breeding, and hunting of these endangered species.”

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service gladly issues these permits, and allows the ranches to kill as many endangered species as they please all because of "the propagation of the survival of the species" exception. These decisions are left to the state wildlife agencies because canned hunts mostly take place on game reserves and ranches, which are private property. Since they are private property wildlife laws are loose and vague, for example there are no caps on numbers of kills made. Hunters on these grounds also aren’t required to carry hunting or firearm licenses which is obscene and a safety hazard. The owners of the ranches don’t care though, as long as they’re getting their money they don’t care how experienced someone is, or what animals are being killed.

Recently, in April 2015, Senator of New York Tony Avella presented a bill that will ban the sale and transportation of 5 exotic animals that are popular amongst canned hunts. The species being protected by this bill are lions, leopards, elephants, and black and white rhinos. When Senator Avella announced this bill on the steps of city hall before many animal rights advocates, he stated, “There’s a huge number of animal rights advocates in New York and throughout the country and the world who want to preserve these animals. If we don’t take steps now, they will be extinct. And future generations will not know that they ever existed.” If the rest of the states in the US were to pass this bill then our country would be a better place.

Not only is New York participating in the ban of exotic animals and their trophies coming across the borders, but Australia is taking part in the actions too. In March, 2015, Environment Minister Greg Hunt announced at the Global March for Lions in Melbourne there will be a ban on the import and export of trophies made from lions. The reasoning for this is that lions were recently categorized as vulnerable to extinction by the IUCN Red List of threatened Species. Minister Hunt spoke on canned hunting at the march and educated many on the truth behind it. Hunt addressed the new ban informing, “These new rules mean that if you go overseas and engage in the appalling act of canned hunting, you can forget about bringing your lion trophies back to Australia. You don’t deserve the right to celebrate the slaughter of these amazing creatures.”

The barbaric tendencies of human beings will never cease to amaze me. As an animal lover, it pained me to read about people finding happiness and fun in poor defenseless animals being raised just to get murdered and they never even get a chance at life. I wish there were a way to get the same reaction out of the ranch owners and hunters that I have about canned hunting. Maybe then it would make them think twice about harming the future of our wildlife, and less about pointless ways to blow their thousands of dollars and waste their free time. I pray that one day all 50 states of the US will pass laws and bills banning these cruel activities and follow in the footsteps of what Senator Avilla and Minister Hunt are trying to do for the endangered wildlife. I will never understand why someone would want to harm an innocent animal for fun, all I wish for is that it ends soon before some of these species end up gone forever.