July 18, 2013
Produced by Richelle Seton-Rogers
The lid was blown off the canned lion hunting industry in 1997 when footage of a mother lioness being shot in a small enclosure in front of her cubs, was broadcast on the British current affairs programme, The Cook Report. But a recent video which emerged on YouTube from the Free State showed a similar scene of what appears to be a tame lioness being shot with a bow, in a small enclosure, off the back of a vehicle. This is breaking a number of laws.
This incident begs the question: how much has changed in the captive lion breeding and hunting industry in the past sixteen years? We question whether the captive lion is being exploited right from birth to death and interrogate the ethics of hunting captive bred animals and whether this should be allowed.
Thursday SABC 3 9:30pm
In this episode we investigate the so-called “green con”, where volunteers are paying exorbitant amounts to come to South Africa to hand raise lion cubs under the impression that they are doing it for conservation. Activists allege that most of these cubs end up in a “canned” hunt or as breeding robots for farms.
We also focus on the alleged abuse of the permit system for the breeding and hunting of lion and ask whether the country needs to have standardised regulations across all provinces.
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