Trophy hunters pose next to a dead lion. After parts are removed, the bones of the lion are harvested and sold to be turned into tiger bone wine or lion bone cake. Picture for illustration: Unfair Game
Out of the 306 outfitter exhibitors, 104 offered hunts in South Africa, totalling 47 hunting packages, making our country top of the list at 29% of all exhibitors. SA’s closest competitor was Namibia, offering just 15 hunting packages.For HSI-Africa wildlife director Audrey Delsink, this is hardly a record to be proud of.
“Given the recent revelation that rhino numbers have dropped so dramatically in the Kruger National Park – and with most rhinos in the country and the continent facing a similar poaching pandemic – it’s all the more disgraceful that rhinos have targets on their heads by hunting outfitters.” Another award is the African Big Game Award, which requires one to hunt African elephant, buffalo, lion, rhino and leopard.
There is also a popular achievement among hunters called the Tiny Ten, which includes the blue duiker, which is just 30cm tall, and the dik-dik, which stands at 30cm to 40cm at the shoulder, and weighs between 3kg and 6kg. Trophy hunting forms part of this risk chain, and in Delsink’s mind, because trophy hunting is not needed by anyone to survive, “it is not worth the risk to human health”.not being adequately acknowledged by the SA governmentDelsink said it was also not known exactly when the trophy hunts took place either, as they had to have happened in 2020.
That lion is directly in front of the camera. That smooching couple is about 4m behind it in scale. Talk about vanity photographs....