BRITISH SAFARI BOSSES SELLING DEATH
Firms offer a ‘menu’ of big game to be gunned down ... for a price
HUNDREDS of British hunters are fuelling a grisly industry of trophy animal killing, it was revealed yesterday.
The so-called trophy hunters travel the world on shooting safaris, which can cost £30,000 per person, to hunt species including lions, leopards and cheetahs.
Outrage over the American dentist who paid to shoot Cecil the lion in Zimbabwe has thrown a spotlight on the legal trophy hunting industry in countries including South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia.
Several British firms offer the trips and advertise price lists of animals to kill, alongside macabre picture galleries of their grinning clients posing next to bloodied animal corpses.
British hunting enthusiast Adrian Sailor advertises trips to South Africa and Namibia offering hunting enthusiasts the chance to kill big game. And a £29,000 expedition offered by British firm Shavesgreen Safaris, run by hunting enthusiast Charly Green, is described as ‘the ultimate dangerous game safari’.
The company’s website says: ‘Lion, leopard, buffalo, elephant, hippo and crocodile are all on the priority list.’ The firm, based in Lyndhurst in Hampshire, also offers a 16day lion hunt in Tanzania with the boast: ‘There’s only one priority – a grand, old, maned lion.’
Pictures on Mr Green’s Facebook page showed the 34-year-old posing with an array of dead animals, including a beaver in Sweden and horned ibex in Spain. Approached by the Daily Mail, he refused to speak about his firm, or say if he thought killing lions was acceptable.
And on the Safari Hunter website, Mr Sailor, 48, stresses that he runs the site as a hobby, not as a business, although he is listed as the UK agent for Settlers Safaris.
He says he offers impartial advice as a free service, adding: ‘I will only send clients to professional hunters that I have had the experience of hunting with so I know what is available and what to expect.
‘Hunting has been my passion for many years. Nobody until now is offering the complete service of organising the hunting, taxidermy and trophy shipment. Whatever type of hunting you require, trophy hunting, management or cull hunts or even the Big Five, I can offer.’
The Big Five refers to lions, elephants, leopards, buffalo and rhinos, prized as the ultimate targets for hunters. Another company, The Hunting Agency, offers ‘dangerous game hunting opportunities’ on its website including a £26,000 14-day bull elephant trip to Namibia.
Its 2014 price list for Namibia has ‘trophy fees’ starting at £65 for a jackal and rising to £3,450 for a leop- ard or £2,200 for a cheetah, although it stresses that a cheetah could only be killed ‘ by chance’. Prices for South Africa start at £65 for a baboon, porcupine or warthog, rising to £2,350 for a giraffe.
The firm, which also offers black bear hunts in Canada and puma hunts in Argentina, was started by big game hunter Rupert Ellis, 51, of Stroud, Gloucestershire.
Mr Ellis, who now lives in Texas, claims he wants to provide ‘ethical, sustainable hunting opportunities for international sportsmen and women’ and has condemned the illegal hunting of Cecil in Zimbabwe by dentist Walter Palmer.
He told The Times: ‘While I have hunted the world over, I believe I have done so ethically. I cannot express the depths of my loathing for this intrepid dentist.’ Yesterday protests intensified yesterday outside Mr Palmer’s closed surgery in the town of Bloomington. And there was still no sign yesterday of the dentist at his large suburban home in Eden Prairie, Minnesota.
Although Mr Palmer could be extradited to Zimbabwe, Minnesota congresswoman Betty McCollum has asked federal officials to consider whether he broke tough US laws covering conspiracy and the bribing of foreign officials.
However despite calls for Mr Palmer to be brought to justice, US legal experts say the chances of him being prosecuted are slim.
They argue that extradition would be complicated, and that there is no evidence any Zimbabwean officials were bribed to allow the hunt to go ahead. Last night federal officials at the US Fish and Wildlife Service confirmed that they were investigating Mr Palmer, and said they ‘will go where the facts lead’.
They said they had made ‘multiple efforts’ to reach the 55-year-old big game hunter and called on him to contact them immediately. The US Justice Department said it was also ‘aware of the situation’ and ‘looking into the facts’.
And the White House said it would respond to a petition calling on the US government to cooperating in any Zimbabwean request to extradite Mr Palmer. The petition needed to get 100,000 signatures to trigger a White House response and it has so far received 140,000.
It also emerged that the American dentist wanted his head and skin as trophies – but they have now been handed over to police in Zimbabwe.
Theo Bronkhorst, who arranged the hunting safari, said he had been keeping Cecil’s head in his home in Bulawayo to mature it before it was sent to a taxidermist for curing.
It is thought Mr Palmer intended to mount the dead lion’s head, although he could have paid a taxidermist to stitch it back to the rest
‘Hunting is my passion’ ‘They want to bring the trophy home’
of its skin and produce a stuffed lion. Importing African lion heads to the Us is not illegal as the species is not listed as either threatened or endangered.
However with 52- year- old Mr Bronkhorst facing a 20-year jail term if convicted of poaching, his lawyers said they had advised him to hand Cecil’s remains to the police.
Yesterday Liberal Democrat MeP Catherine Bearder t abled an urgent parliamentary question to the european Commission calling for a ban on lion skins and bones from three countries in West Africa to be extended to include Zimbabwe and Zambia.
And Christine Macsween, of the charity LionAid, claimed an import ban would lead to a significant reduc- tion in lion hunting. she added: ‘Hunters want to bring the trophy home to prove what they have done and to put it on display. They will lose interest in hunting lions pretty rapidly if this is blocked.’
Big game hunting is said to generate £130million each year for the African countries which allow it, although conservationists stress that the income generated is less than 2 per cent of overall tourism revenue in Africa.
Yesterday David Cameron said Britain would play a leading role in protecting wildlife from illegal hunts and poaching, but refused to comment on calls for a ban on importing trophies to europe.
Mr sailor was yesterday unavailable for comment.