Hunting, Canned hunting and volunteering at wildlife reserves

People generally fall into two camps when the topic of hunting is raised: those who are for it and those who are against, and, certainly where us Brits are concerned, when we love animals, we really love them. As anyone who’s ever been on safari will testify, it’s never going to be pleasant contemplating that an animal you have just spotted, photographed and will remember forever, might then be hunted by humans. That said, hunting is a big way of life in many African nations, and very often it plays an incredibly important part in conservation strategies.

Our stance on hunting and canned hunting

While we do not promote hunting trips, at Responsible Travel we do understand that well-managed hunting can encourage the protection of large swathes of land for wildlife which may otherwise be built upon, mined or farmed. To really benefit wildlife population, there must be strictly enforced quotas in place that have been advised by independent experts (not by the reserve owners or tour operators themselves) and these quotas must ensure viable populations as well as a considerable reinvestment in community projects and conservation. We do, of course, hope that responsible tourism will one day emerge as a far more sustainable – and ethical – alternative, proving that wildlife is worth far more alive than dead.

Aside from hunting vacations we do not promote any vacations which involve walking with lions and interacting with lion and tiger cubs. These are activities which are often sought out by well meaning volunteers but feeding, cuddling and playing with lion and tiger cubs which have supposedly been rescued is usually a ploy of the canned hunting industry. Habituated lions are unlikely ever to be released – instead they are sold to canned hunting facilities where they can be shot by trophy hunters for a high fee. Worse, the volunteers have virtually cuddled their fear of humans out of them, making them an even easier target. And tiger cubs in Africa should ring alarm bells regardless: they are not native to any African country.

What is canned hunting?

Canned hunts, on the other hand, are those that involve lions born and raised in cages on private breeding farms and hunting reserves. When the lions reach about four years old, they’re let loose into a confined area to become easy targets for hunters using rifles or bows. With the animals fenced in, canned hunting guarantees a kill; not only is it an unskilled pursuit, it’s also a deeply one-sided one.

Unsurprisingly, what a canned hunt also guarantees is money, and lots of it too – hunt fees can easily hit $50,000. South African journalist and conservation advocate, Ian Michler’s 2015 film ‘Blood Lions’ is a brilliant, hard-hitting documentary that exposes the dark underbelly of South Africa’s captive breeding and canned hunting industries. In it he reveals that in 1999 there were about 1,000 lions caged on farms, by 2005, this figure had jumped to 3,500, and it now stands at between 8,000 and 10,000 – sadly, the captive breeding of lions is proving increasingly lucrative for the individuals involved.

Cuddling lions makes them an easy canned hunting trophy

More pertinent than the shameless greed though is the outright abuse of human trust these farms are happy to employ to fill their coffers further. Advertising themselves as ethical ‘conservation reserves’ and ‘sanctuaries’, some private farms advertise for animal-loving volunteers to come and help look after their baby cubs. Volunteers – having paid upwards of £1,500 for the apparent privilege – are asked to bottle feed lions, hug them, walk them and play with them as if they were kittens – this isn’t because they’re cute and they like to play, it’s so that they become habituated. The inherent fear that a wild lion would have of a hunter is effectively cuddled out of them, making them easy pickings for rich hunters on the prowl for a distasteful picture to prove their abject manliness; how tragically ironic.

The ethics of walking with lions

Once captive lion cubs become too big to cuddle safely, they graduate to walking experiences. Unwitting tourists are invited to take a stroll with the big cats through the bush, not realising that this is another stage in the ‘production line’ which begins with captive breeding and ends with the lion being shot for sport. Walking with lions happens in South Africa and in Mauritius. Give these experiences a wide berth if you want to travel ethically.

However, now more than ever, the world is finally asking questions about the ethics of canned hunting and the rose-tinted specs are firmly off – volunteers are coming forward exposing organisations who favour profit over protection; countries are banning the importation of lion trophies; and opinions from some of the world’s leading experts regarding the entirely unnecessary place of canned hunting in conserving endangered big cats are being sought out and heard. In the words of Luke Hunter, head of global big cat conservation organisation, Panthera, the idea that captive lions are part of a lion reintroduction initiative across South Africa are a “conservation myth.” He adds: “Any sincere effort to reestablish lions simply has no reason to resort to captive animals.”

Bird hunting in Malta

Of course hunting doesn’t only go on in Africa. In Malta every April countless thousands of migratory birds, some of them rare, are shot out of the skies by quail-hunters allowed indiscriminately to fill the skies with lead due to a loophole in EU law. The TV presenter, journalist and campaigner Chris Packham has put himself in physical danger protesting this slaughter We stand with him and all others campaigning to end this senseless slaughter. Follow BirdLife Malta to see how you can get involved.

Further reading

• World Animal Protection, the winner of our 2014 World Responsible Tourism Awards in the Best Animal Welfare Initiative category, are making huge strides in bringing the plight of Africa’s lions to light. Read more about their campaigns here.
• The winner of the Best Animal Welfare Initiative category in our 2015 World Responsible Tourism Awards was the Campaign Against Canned Hunting (CACH), who engage with tour operators, airlines and governments and also run public awareness campaigns with a view to putting an end to this practice. You can find out more on the CACH website.
• Read up on our stance on wildlife and tourism.
• More information on our stance on captive animals and animal welfare.