SICKENING: Briton charges trophy hunters thousands to kill farm-bred lions
EXPOSED: HORROR OF LION FARMS
A BRITISH safari boss is charging callous trophy hunters thousands of pounds to kill lions that have been bred in captivity, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Gruesome photographs show Alex Goss posing beside the bodies of two lions after they were slaughtered during hunts in South Africa.
He is believed to be the only British operator openly organising what campaigners call ‘canned hunts’ – where lions bred in captivity are pursued and shot in fenced enclosures.
Earlier this year, this newspaper published extraordinary details of a year-long investigation by the former Tory peer Lord Ashcroft which exposed the cruelty and horror of lion farms in South Africa.
It revealed how up to 12,000 lions bred in captivity are destined to either be shot by wealthy hunters or killed in squalid slaughterhouses, with their bones then exported to the Far East.
Goss, from Oswestry, Shropshire, owns and manages Blackthorn Safaris, dividing his time between bird-shooting and deer hunts in the UK and big-game hunts in South Africa and Zimbabwe.
In a series of photographs on his website, he is pictured posing beside a dead crocodile, a hippo, a buffalo, a pair of zebras, a huge male lion and a lioness. He also offers leopard and elephant hunts.
It is understood that he first experienced hunting in South Africa when he was five and has subsequently ‘hunted all over the world’. Until three years ago, his father is believed to have owned a safari lodge near Kimberley.
Blackthorn is believed to charge clients up to £13,000 for a five-day lion hunt. Guests are based at a five-star lodge described as a ‘slice of paradise in the bush’ on the edge of the Kalahari desert.
Similar to other operators, Goss is understood to woo prospective clients by sending them pictures of the type of lions that are available to be killed.
‘Famous for is [sic] lion hunting, the Kalahari is the perfect place to hunt these cats,’ his website said, before suddenly being taken down last week. ‘The views are absolutely breathtaking and with vast numbers of wildlife, it is an adventurers’ paradise.’
Experts said last night that they believed the lions that Goss is pictured with were bred in captivity and later shot on heavily fenced game ranches.
‘Wild male lions have scars all over because they have to constantly fight to take over a pride and to maintain their position,’ said Dr Pieter Kat, director of conservation charity LionAid.
‘But the mane is perfect and this is not typical of any wild lion, whose mane will be scruffy. It is only in a captive-raised environment
‘The mane is perfect and not typical of a wild lion’
that a male can develop a mane of this size.’
South Africa is the only country that allows large-scale lion-breeding, with animals kept in fenced enclosures at more than 200 farms and compounds. The most impressive males are supplied for canned hunts, from which where there is little or no chance of escape.
The skeletons of dead lions are often sold in South East Asia and China, where they are turned into ‘traditional medicines’ in a trade worth millions of pounds. While there is no suggestion Goss has broken any laws, campaigners voiced disgust at the involvement of a British operator in the grisly lion trophy hunting industry.
‘For a British company apparently to be actively organising canned lion hunts will make people sick to the stomach,’ said Eduardo Goncalves, founder of the Campaign To Ban Trophy Hunting. ‘It’s general practice in this industry for lion cubs to be ripped from their mothers a few days or hours after birth. They are then reared in captivity to be shot for entertainment.’
Lord Ashcroft said: ‘I am appalled but not surprised by your latest disclosures.’ The peer also renewed his call for the Environment Secretary Michael Gove to ban the import into the UK of the heads and skins of captive lions killed by hunters.
‘The UK may not be able to stop this form of hunting in another country, but we can stop these people bringing back their trophies to show off to their friends,’ he said.
Goss did not respond to requests for comment but his website had claimed that ‘hunting is conservation’, adding: ‘Habitat, research and wildlife law enforcement work, all paid for by hunters, help countless non-hunted species.’