‘Banned’ canned hunts offered for sale
Undercover investigators at Reno gathering request investigation into Safari Club International’s flouting of laws
ACCORDING to an undercover investigation by Humane Society of the United States and Humane Society International, the offer of African canned lion hunts, which Safari Club International (SCI) claimed to have banned last year, was among dozens of illegal wildlife items for sale in Reno, Nevada.
SCI was in Reno for its 47th annual convention at the Reno-Sparks Convention Center from January 9-12. The undercover investigators said they had found threatened wildlife parts for sale, which possibly violated Nevada law.
Investigators also found canned lion hunts for sale, in which customers could pay to shoot a captive-bred African lion in an enclosed area from which it cannot escape.
The society said canned hunts were internationally scorned, and SCI claimed it did not allow such lion hunts to be sold at its conventions.
Yet vendors, in an attempt to attract bookings of such hunts, showed investigators sample pictures of the types of lions that could be killed, priced according to the age and size of the animal and his mane, the society said.
The Humane Society International submitted its findings in writing to the Nevada Department of Wildlife on January 10, requesting an investigation and the enforcement of Nevada law.
SCI is said to be one of the world’s largest trophy-hunting advocacy groups.
Kitty Block, the acting president of the Humane Society of the United States and president of Humane Society International, said: “The world’s leading trophy-hunting industry group is apparently promoting, enabling and profiting from the illegal wildlife trade and unethical hunting practices. Conservation laws and hunting ethics are thrown out the window by SCI when financial profit is involved, driving iconic wildlife such as African elephants toward extinction.
Making money off the opportunity to kill these animals for bragging rights is something that most people around the world find appalling. It’s an elitist hobby and there is no place for trophy hunting in today’s world.”
The investigators found more than a dozen convention vendors offering for sale, and possessing with intent to sell, wildlife products that appeared to violate the law.
The items included paintings on elephant ears and skins; an elephant skin bench; elephant leather boots, shoes, chaps, belts, and saddles; bracelets made from elephant hair; an entire mammoth tusk; mammoth tusk carvings; stingray skin boots, shoes, belts and purses; boxes of hippo teeth; a hippo skull table; hippo leather belts and boots; shark skin belts; and a knife with a handle made of narwhal tusk.
One conference attendee told the investigators that he and his children participated in a canned hunt, killing “their” lion within 90 minutes. Canned hunt operators described baiting lions with meat, which they said they could do ahead of a trophy hunter’s arrival, to save time. One canned hunt operator told investigators that if they wanted to kill a really big lion, he could order one.