When you watch films about the African bush this is what you normally see
a great wilderness with animals living free But there is a growing dark side to this picture
Behind the splendour of these wild images lurks a new horror
farming wild animals for the gun!
And topping the hit list are predators in particular lions.
In South Africa today the king of the jungle is king no more
as they are now being virtually factory farmed and killed for money!
And lions are not alone in this relentless treadmill
there are predators from all over the world being farmed in South Africa.
Tigers, jaguars, panthers, wolves and of course all the local cats
like cheetah, leopard and the smaller ones like servals and lynxes.
Canned hunting is South Africa's dirty little secret.
And because of the money involved in the industry they are very good at keeping it quiet.
Canned breeders and canned lion hunters have become
very wise to not letting any new footage get out there
and to prevent film people from filming on their farms.
It’s a secret world where
the general public is not welcome at all. And looking at the images in this video
it becomes clear why they want this to remain hidden.
Canned hunting is not just a single event where an animal is hunted it's an entire process
where lion cubs are literally factory farmed. At birth they are ripped away from their mothers
which is extremely traumatic for the mothers and the cubs
they are kept in wholly inadequate conditions obviously it's all about the bottom line
so space and good nutrition is not high on the list of priorities for a lion breeder
Their entire lives are spent in anguish where they are physically and psychologically
abused and treated as commodities
as opposed to living sentient beings.
Lions are bred and raised on these farms until they old enough
to be killed by trophy hunters. Some of these lions are quite tame
having lost their fear of humans completely.
When they are grown enough to be shot
they are drugged and ripped from their enclosures and transported just a few kilometres away
to one of hundreds of hunting farms where they are let loose
and then shot.
This lion is a prime example of what trophy hunters line up for.
A large male with a fully grown mane this poor animal is destined to end up on some
trophy wall thousand of miles from where he was born.
And this is how it happens.
Food is usually put out for the lion that is to be shot.
That helps the hunters because they all know where the lion will be.
At the food.
Notice the meat strung from the tree next to where the lion is lying.
The body parts of these lions being killed get shipped halfway around the world
either as hunting trophies or more recently also for traditional medicines.
People are now farming lions in captivity in South Africa to kill them at a young age
to harvest their bones. The bones are sent to Asia
where they are used for traditional Asian medicine
because of their similarity to tiger bones nobody can really tell the difference.
So the whole captive breeding and canned hunting industry
in South Africa has mushroomed out of control and is now really becoming an animal welfare nightmare.
Wildlife breeders claim that their farms contribute to conservation by increasing the numbers
of animals however nothing is further from the truth
because there is no attempt at maintaining genetic integrity
of any animal populations the breeding is quite indiscriminate
because the animals are all bred simply to be killed!
In South Africa at the moment we probably have
less than a thousand truly wild lions
we have eight thousand captive lions on breeding farms
The obvious and most logical solution would be
to ban captive breeding because of the risk that captive breeding poses to wild populations.
It poses genetic risks, it poses disease risks and there are serious safety issues that need
to be considered with all of these breeding farms.
The solution is to ban captive breeding fullstop.
The King of the Jungle is the king no more in South Africa his wild splendour
has been reduced to the status of a commodity
the African lion has joined the ranks
of the millions of other animals all over the world
who are raised simply for slaughter.