June 18, 2015 Animal conservationists and hunters have come into conflict regarding the growing trade in captive hunting.
Game reserves such as South Africa’s Iwamanzi game reserve hosts visitors eager to try their hands at hunting famous animal species in the company of skilled professional hunters.
While these visitors are often willing to part with between 500 and 4,000 US dollars, the sport has drawn considerable criticism from animal conservationists around the world. Campaign against Canned Hunting have held protests calling for a ban on captive breeding, saying it leads to various wild animals being sold to parks for trophy hunting.
Advocates of the activity argue however, that controlled hunting protects wildlife because owners of African hunting concessions have a financial incentive to deter poachers, conserve stock and cultivate a prey base that predators such as lion need.
Adri Kitshoff, chief executive of the Professional Hunters’ Association said “As far as international and local hunters are concerned it’s a economic contribution of about R10 billion and then you look at the wildlife industry with more than 10,000 game farms, it’s a huge contribution to our GDP,”
On the flip side, Linda Park, group director for Campaign against Canned Hunting, said “There has been so much awareness and people around the world have all said, “Enough”. In fact if you have picked Australia last Friday actually banned the importation of all trophy permits, lion trophy permits and body parts, that was a huge monumental decision, and we are working on getting the rest of the world to follow suit, which will actually cut down the whole canned hunting industry, because what is the point of hunting if you can’t take your bits and pieces out of the country,”