So 745 lions last year were imported into the US as hunting trophies. How many of those were pen raised lions from put and take high fenced operations?

Their inclusion will work against us as it will appear to be a number that is far too high for the estimated wild lion population numbers bandied about in the media. What we are seeing I believe, is that the wild lion population number estimates being tossed out to the general public will be wild lions, not including the lions being raised on lion farms. But I bet the import numbers being quoted will include the canned lion kills.............. and THAT will be used as yet another item to bludgeon us with.

Tell me again how this pen raised stuff is going to help the wild lions in the long run?! It could well be the ammo that is used to uplist lions and shut hunting for them down or increase import bans around the globe......... which ultimately will seriously harm the wild lion populations and kick the local communities in the teeth as well.

We might differentiate between pen raised and real wild lions, but those that are conducting the frontal assault will use it however it plays out best for them in the fight. Forget whether we are individually for or against penned lion hunting.......... it is going to be used as a club, a very large one.

Excellent point Skyline. Either there is a sustainable quota or there is not, but to say canned lion hunting takes "the pressure of wild lions" (how many famous writers have said that???) is just pure BS.

Agreed. What I have been saying for a while now, often against the grain.

There are a few of us that have been repeating it over and over both on this forum and any other hunting platform that : Captive Bred Lion killing is the archillies heel of sustainable sport hunting in Southern Africa .

How often do you open a SCI or DSC magazine and there are dozens of ads for Captive Lion killing , these two clubs have contributed to strangle hold the anti hunters have on our industry by not condemning the practice.

One cannot repeat it often enough - we have been told clean up or clear out . We need to stop thinking we can do what we want with no thought to the sensitive anti hunters - those days are gone - we dont have to apologize or hide the fact we are hunters but we certainly need to be more aware of what is considered not acceptable by the vast majority of society.

Agreed.

quote:

Originally posted by Safaris Botswana Bound:
There are a few of us that have been repeating it over and over both on this forum and any other hunting platform that : Captive Bred Lion killing is the archillies heel of sustainable sport hunting in Southern Africa .

How often do you open a SCI or DSC magazine and there are dozens of ads for Captive Lion killing , these two clubs have contributed to strangle hold the anti hunters have on our industry by not condemning the practice.

One cannot repeat it often enough - we have been told clean up or clear out . We need to stop thinking we can do what we want with no thought to the sensitive anti hunters - those days are gone - we dont have to apologize or hide the fact we are hunters but we certainly need to be more aware of what is considered not acceptable by the vast majority of society.

Especially when you consider that these nutters can'e distinguish between poaching and hunting.

Jeff

quote:

Originally posted by Bwana Bunduki:
Especially when you consider that these nutters can'e distinguish between poaching and hunting.

Jeff

I find it common for even the USA MSM to lump poaching and legal hunting together.

Stranglehold? Hardly, I'm not a fan of lots of activities (jogging), but I don't want to make them illegal, that's the anti's rhetoric. Vocal anti's are a very small number, those in between are more pragmatic than we give them credit for. Millions of animals are raised that never set foot outside a barn. They are useful, delicious, and efficient. Stick a microphone in the face of Jane citizen and she'll say she is against such practices. Bullshit. Dollars spent says different. Inform and educate the masses and they get it. This PC culture is why she says she's against it. Are you for animal rights? Say no and you look like an asshole. Say yes and its a victory for warm fuzzy feelings. Raise rhinos to harvest horn, makes sense to me. We raise and kill more cattle in one year than there has ever been rhino and lion. Raise horses to ride around on and pull heavy shit, I'm in. Raise a lion to be gawked at and admired, and at the end "hunted" for a fee, I get it. I don't want to do that, but you "can".

Agreed,

If we lose the battle over captive hunting, we will lose every hunting battle after.

The World Health Organization recently published a document claiming that processed meat is bad for you. Ok, maybe it is not super healthy but what they are really doing is setting up for another article claiming that red meat is bad for you, and then fish, then chicken and pretty soon we are the ones eating soy beans and grass like cattle watching wild game populations plummet when Mother nature feels like it.

Game farm lions do take the pressure off wild lions. Just like my local livestock farms take the pressure off of wild game populations.

Unless I get lucky and happen to be in Namibia during a problem lion hunt, I doubt I'll ever take a wild lion. At $18,000-30,000 and daily rate I could shoot a game farm lion soon if it was a priority.

I see this had digressed into the pro or anti canned lion hunt posts. That was not the intent of my original post (although it was sure to go there). Perhaps it could address the issues I was pointing out with respect to numbers.

You guys can talk all you want about next is whitetail and yada, yada............. the other 99% of society is going to decide this issue. My point was having a large number of pen raised lion kills lumped in with wild lion imports and how it makes the lion kill numbers look in comparison to the wild lion population estimates and what is a reasonable take off.

Surely even those who are pro-kill what you want as long as it is legal can see that the numbers could be getting used against actual conservation based wild lion hunting. Sometimes we need to look at the truth of how things are perceived and how it is going to impact us. It often has nothing to do with how we think things should be.

Time to get a grip on it!

quote:

Just like my local livestock farms take the pressure off of wild game populations.

Really. So if you couldn't purchase meat where would you get it?

I would have to imagine you would resort to wild game if you wanted meat.....

Is there a CITES permit required for captive bred lions? If not, how would anybody know how many are imported?

quote:

Originally posted by Big Wonderful Wyoming:

If we lose the battle over captive hunting, we will lose every hunting battle after.

In my view that statement is absolutely incorrect and 180 degrees off the mark. It seems that many hunters have concluded that we have to fight every battle otherwise the war will be lost. Winning will depend on picking and choosing the battles we fight and fighting them on our terms. The notion that you can convince John Q. Public that raising lion cubs from birth in a little pen, then releasing them for a day or two in a bigger pen so that some middle aged white guy from Des Moines can pay big money to whack it, is anything other than disgusting is a fallacy. The longer we defend such practices, the less credibility we enjoy on issues where we really do command the moral high ground. I would say the sentence above would be more accurate if it said, "If we continue to fight the battle over captive hunting, we will lose every hunting battle after."

quote:

Originally posted by Big Wonderful Wyoming:

Game farm lions do take the pressure off wild lions. Just like my local livestock farms take the pressure off of wild game populations.

No, BWW, either you have a sustainable quota on lions or you don't. You just said you won't ever be able to afford a wild lion hunt, so how in the world does letting you shoot one in an enclosure reduce the pressure on wild lions?

The same goes for game populations. Arizona has a set number of tags for all of the species it manages; the price of beef or pork has no bearing on the sustainable harvest.

quote:

Originally posted by JTEX:
Is there a CITES permit required for captive bred lions? If not, how would anybody know how many are imported?

Let me be the first to say that I could have this wrong.......... and if so I am sure someone more knowledgeable than I on CITES will jump in....... but I believe a CITES is required for all trade in lion or lion parts. This would include pen raised lions that are shot and live lions that are shipped for zoos or whatnot.

When you think about it, how could it not be that way. If you did not need to get a CITES permit for a pen raised lion skin and skull........ how would prove its origin and prevent the illegal trade in wild lion parts???

http://www.traffic.org/home/20...lion-bone-trade.html



Lions are listed in Appendix II of CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora), which means international trade in live animals or body parts can only take place under a strictly controlled permit system. Prior to 2008, the only record of South Africa issuing CITES permits to export Lion skeletons was for three units to Denmark in 2001.

However, Lion bone exports from South Africa have increased dramatically in recent years. From 2008 to 2011, the official number of skeletons legally exported with CITES permits totalled 1160 skeletons (about 10.8 tonnes on bones), 573 of them in 2011 alone, with 91% of them destined for Lao PDR. The North West, Free State and Eastern Cape, all home almost exclusively to captive-bred Lions, were the only provinces to issue export permits. Not all Lion bone trade in South Africa has been legal, however. In 2009, a Vietnamese national was arrested and later deported for being in possession of Lion parts without permits, while in June 2011 two Thai men were arrested after being found with 59 Lions bones.

“The trophy hunting industry…is the main source of carcasses once the trophy hunter has taken the skin and skull,” say the report’s authors. Numbers of Lions at breeding facilities in South Africa almost doubled from 2005 to 2013 when around 6188 animals, some 68% of the national total, were in captivity, many destined for the lucrative trophy hunting industry, which generates around USD10.9 million per year. However, the report finds: “there is no economic incentive to farm Lions solely for their bones, especially given the costs involved in raising Lions and the current prices paid for skeletons.”

So raised lion bones go to place that want them.I know my sons lioness bones did. Then I guess not as many lions get poached.I wonder if that is helping the wild lions. They kill elephants for ivory and lions for bones one of those has had poaching numbers come down from what I can see as you dont here that much about lion poaching anymore.But I am sure if we stop raised lions from being hunted the people wanting the bones will understand and leave the wild lions alone after all they play by the rules and will surely get the permits needed to hunt them.

I know if we give up pen raised lion hunts the anti will just leave us alone. Silly me thinking wanting the right to hunt how I want is not proper thing to do since a few just cant understand the real problems dealing with anti hunters. They hate hunting period.

quote:

Originally posted by bcap:

I know if we give up pen raised lion hunts the anti will just leave us alone.

Please show us where anyone said that or even suggested that notion.

quote:

The trophy hunting industry…is the main source of carcasses once the trophy hunter has taken the skin and skull,” say the report’s authors. Numbers of Lions at breeding facilities in South Africa almost doubled from 2005 to 2013 when around 6188 animals, some 68% of the national total, were in captivity, many destined for the lucrative trophy hunting industry, which generates around USD10.9 million per year. However, the report finds: “there is no economic incentive to farm Lions solely for their bones, especially given the costs involved in raising Lions and the current prices paid for skeletons.”

So after the hunter takes the skin and or skull, the bones are sold buy the farm owner/outfitter to supply the Asian market? So in fact they are perpetuating the need/use for lion bones in Asian medicines?

quote:

Originally posted by Bakes:
So in fact they are perpetuating the need/use for lion bones in Asian medicines?

Or they are satiating a demand that is never really going to go away...and doing so with legal lions and thus discouraging poaching. In economics we call that efficiently using one's resources! Frankly, the trade in legally harvested lion bones, legally harvested Rhino horn, and legally shot ivory should be made 100% legal by CITES tomorrow. Think about why a White Rhino hunt costs about a third what the black market horn value is of the average Rhino. If ANY hunter were allowed to trade in the horn that was harvested, the hunt price and black market horn price would converge thus reducing the financial incentive to poach. Further, as available legal horn pushed the black market value of horn down, landowners would simultaneously receive an increase in their income to better protect Rhino (and set aside more habitat) as their hunt prices increased toward the black market price. Same thing with lion. I would rather have ranchers making more money than less...no matter how much I might find the "canned lion" practice distasteful, simply because I firmly believe that they are satisfying a demand that would become one for wild lions to bear in either hunt form or in illegal bone trafficking.

quote:

Wyoming:

If we lose the battle over captive hunting, we will lose every hunting battle after.

In my view that statement is absolutely incorrect and 180 degrees off the mark. "If we continue to fight the battle over captive hunting, we will lose every hunting battle after."[/QUOTE]


100% = The fact we have taken so long to respond to the canned lion killing has already tarnished our credibility with most conservation based organizations and research institutions.

My main issue with canned lion killing is that it is constantly blurred with wild lion hunting and conservation.

It should be placed under a seperate land use in one of the agriculture sectors - it is no different to planting a cabbage seed - watering it and then harvesting it - but is not hunting nor is it conservation.

And within the context of this thread - it is harming wild lion conservation in that it is causing the trophy off take to be blurred for African Lions, it play's into the hands of anti hunting groups who have scientific papers indicating lion sub populations are under going drastic declines. The anti hunters are experts at misinformation and African Lion trophy off take statistics are going to harm the future of lion conservation in Africa

quote:

Originally posted by Big Wonderful Wyoming:
Agreed,

If we lose the battle over captive hunting, we will lose every hunting battle after.

The World Health Organization recently published a document claiming that processed meat is bad for you. Ok, maybe it is not super healthy but what they are really doing is setting up for another article claiming that red meat is bad for you, and then fish, then chicken and pretty soon we are the ones eating soy beans and grass like cattle watching wild game populations plummet when Mother nature feels like it.

Game farm lions do take the pressure off wild lions. Just like my local livestock farms take the pressure off of wild game populations.

Unless I get lucky and happen to be in Namibia during a problem lion hunt, I doubt I'll ever take a wild lion. At $18,000-30,000 and daily rate I could shoot a game farm lion soon if it was a priority.

Hmm? Apparently we have a few fans of the late President Dwight D. Eisenhower:

***
Quote:

DOMINO THEORY
Finally, you have broader considerations that might follow what you would call the "falling domino" principle. You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you could have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences. (Introducing the domino theory, that if Vietnam fell to communism, the rest of Southeast Asia would soon follow. Press conference, April 7, 1954.)
***

To all of our AR veterans, a big thanks for your service! Cheers and keep well!

Do you also believe that the old woman who swallowed a fly is going to die because she swallowed a spider to catch the fly, and swallowed a bird to catch the spider, and swallowed a cat to catch the bird, . . . ?

Why don't we pick a fight worth fighting and a fight we stand a chance of winning? Canned lion hunting is not it. Not only is it a fight we cannot win, just fighting the fight makes us look ridiculous and destroys our credibility on issues where we are right.

For the defenders of canned lion hunting, pretend I am one of the those folks that is neither anti-hunting nor pro-hunting . . . just hanging out in the mushy middle. I have heard about this practice of raising lion cubs in pens, exposing them to human interaction, then when they get to be a certain age, taking them to a hunting property, turning them loose without having ever lived in the wild or learning how to hunt to feed themselves and then after a few days of being released, some hunter who is paying big money comes in and shoots the lion for a trophy. I am a skeptic, it sounds so off base, how can it be right. Now I meet you, please explain to me why someone like me, someone that is neither pro- nor anti-hunting, should be supportive of this practice. I am all ears . . .

Hey, any "canned lion" hunting advocates interested in providing startup money for a "canned grizzly" operation just across the border in Mexico? We can lease a couple of thousand acres, purchase a few grizzly from zoos, conduct "cub walks" for a fee, sell the hunts for $10,000, and then sell the resulting gallbladders to the Chinese. My understanding is that the black market price for bear gall bladders is approximately $10,000. An added benefit is that we will take the pressure off of the threatened grizzly population here in North America. Anyone interested?

quote:

Originally posted by MJines:
Now I meet you, please explain to me why someone like me, someone that is neither pro- nor anti-hunting, should be supportive of this practice.

Because they are livestock just like any other. I would never hunt one under those conditions, but for the same reason I am happy to see fenced Addax and Dama Gazelle hunted in Texas rather than go globally extinct, I am happy to see lion hunted in this way because it means financial incentives to keep a reservoir of the species, it probably takes pressure off wild populations from hunters, and it supplies bones to the Asian market that probably reduces poaching by depressing the price of bones. Not all that complicated. It looks bad, sure...but plenty of things will always look bad to the people who refuse to think it through. Hunters being divided and condemning each other for this and other things only makes us look worse. The anti-hunters never see "good hunters" and "bad hunters"....we are all bad. The "undecideds" are not ideologues and can theoretically then be reasoned with...so why not do so?

The difference between Lion and Grizzly in light of the comment directly above is that the US does not have a long tradition of privatized wildlife. RSA does and it has worked quite well for them. Why would we not want the same principles we apply (very effectively I might add) to Reedbuck, Eland, Black Wildebeest, Rhino, or Buffalo in RSA to also apply to Lion? Are we as hunters contradicting ourselves? Perhaps we are getting soft? Are we buying into the "glamour species" concept that the antis have fed us? Buying their arguments that some creatures are just too noble or rare or big or easily anthropomorphized to be hunted or even captive? Well, if we do buy into that, it will be the eventual end of not just hunting, but those species as well.

quote:

The difference between Lion and Grizzly in light of the comment above is that the US does not have a tradition of privatized wildlife. RSA does and has worked quite well for them.

The U.S. does not have a long tradition of privatized wildlife? Hmm? I take it that you are not interested in providing the startup funds.

quote:

Originally posted by tendrams:


Why would we not want the same principles we apply (very effectively I might add) to Reedbuck, Eland, Black Wildebeest, Rhino, or Buffalo in RSA to also apply to Lion?

Not even close to a valid comparison . . . therefore I will not even dignify it by calling it apples and oranges since it insults fruit. Animals on game fenced ranches are allowed to freely range those ranches, they breed and give birth on those ranches, they graze and browse those ranches in many cases for years, often even dying on those ranches. Captive bred lions are born and raised in a pen never surviving as a wild animal, then when of sufficient age they are relocated to a hunting ranch where they are released for some minimal amount of time until they are hunted and shot. The contrast between species like impala, kudu, eland and reedbuck on a high fenced ranch and a captive-bred lion could not be more stark.

quote:

Originally posted by MJines:

quote:

Originally posted by tendrams:


Why would we not want the same principles we apply (very effectively I might add) to Reedbuck, Eland, Black Wildebeest, Rhino, or Buffalo in RSA to also apply to Lion?

Not even close to a valid comparison . . . therefore I will not even dignify it by calling it apples and oranges since it insults fruit. Animals on game fenced ranches are allowed to freely range those ranches, they breed and give birth on those ranches, they graze and browse those ranches in many cases for years, often even dying on those ranches. Captive bred lions are born and raised in a pen never surviving as a wild animal, then when of sufficient age they are relocated to a hunting ranch where they are released for some minimal amount of time until they are hunted and shot. The contrast between species like impala, kudu, eland and reedbuck on a high fenced ranch and a captive-bred lion could not be more stark.

quote:

Originally posted by MJines:
Animals on game fenced ranches are allowed to freely range those ranches, they breed and give birth on those ranches, they graze and browse those ranches in many cases for years, often even dying on those ranches.

If you think this is true all or even MOST of the time, you are deluding yourself. Lion just happen to be the species that shows hunters the uncomfortable truth of "how the sausage is made" in the South African game industry. Even we hunters, in spite of how well we know it works, are made uncomfortable. Mark my words now, once the antis taste blood in the water with success on the "canned lion" front, you will see all of RSA attacked as providing only "canned hunts" and then that will be that.

quote:

Originally posted by tendrams:

quote:

Originally posted by MJines:
Animals on game fenced ranches are allowed to freely range those ranches, they breed and give birth on those ranches, they graze and browse those ranches in many cases for years, often even dying on those ranches.

If you think this is true all or even MOST of the time, you are deluding yourself. Lion just happen to be the species that shows hunters the uncomfortable truth of "how the sausage is made" in the South African game industry. Even we hunters, in spite of how well we know it works, are made uncomfortable. Mark my words now, once the antis taste blood in the water with success on the "canned lion" front, you will see all of RSA attacked as providing only "canned hunts" and then that will be that.

Yeah, I am sure you are right. Probably 70-80%+ of the plainsgame shot in South Africa on high fence ranches is shot within less than a week, in most cases just a matter of days, of being released on the ranch.

I am starting to appreciate why you post using a pseudonym . . .

And I am beginning to appreciate why it might be better for your practice if you did. Your reading comprehension is for shit.

quote:

Originally posted by Cajun1956:

quote:

The difference between Lion and Grizzly in light of the comment above is that the US does not have a tradition of privatized wildlife. RSA does and has worked quite well for them.

The U.S. does not have a long tradition of privatized wildlife? Hmm? I take it that you are not interested in providing the startup funds.

The U.S. does not have a long tradition of privatized wildlife?!?!?!?!

Hell, we (Texans) pioneered wildlife ranching back in the 1930's!

***
Excerpt from Texas Monthly magazine dated February 2002:

"The idea was not exactly new. High fences were already a signature of many South Texas and Hill Country ranches. They had first been erected in the thirties on spreads such as the YO Ranch near Kerrville to contain exotic game imported from Africa for the purpose of hunting—a lucrative means of supplementing ranching income. But the Risers and others like them wanted to use the same type of fence for what was already there—white-tailed deer—the one species of ungulate that is native to almost the entire state. The idea worked. The operation ultimately allowed Gene Riser to move his family back to the ranch."
***

quote:

Originally posted by tendrams:
And I am beginning to appreciate why it might be better for your practice if you did. Your reading comprehension is for shit.

Apparently the saying, those that can do and those that can't teach is true.

Really, to argue that canned lion hunting and sustainable game ranching are one and the same thing is frankly . . . embarrassing. This is the problem with anonymous posting. People are free to say any ridiculous thing they want and then hide behind their nom de plume and snicker.

Perhaps I should have said "a long and widespread tradition". Compared to RSA, the privatization of wildlife in the US is amateur hour.

quote:

Originally posted by MJines:
...to argue that canned lion hunting and sustainable game ranching are one and the same thing is frankly . . . embarrassing.

Straw man argument, counselor. Of course, that's what you are good at...really tearing down the arguments that people who disagree with you DO NOT offer.

quote:

Originally posted by tendrams:

Because they are livestock just like any other . . . [T]he US does not have a long tradition of privatized wildlife. RSA does and it has worked quite well for them. Why would we not want the same principles we apply (very effectively I might add) to Reedbuck, Eland, Black Wildebeest, Rhino, or Buffalo in RSA to also apply to Lion?

Let's just let your words speak for themselves.

quote:

Originally posted by Cajun1956:

quote:

Originally posted by Big Wonderful Wyoming:
Agreed,

If we lose the battle over captive hunting, we will lose every hunting battle after.

The World Health Organization recently published a document claiming that processed meat is bad for you. Ok, maybe it is not super healthy but what they are really doing is setting up for another article claiming that red meat is bad for you, and then fish, then chicken and pretty soon we are the ones eating soy beans and grass like cattle watching wild game populations plummet when Mother nature feels like it.

Game farm lions do take the pressure off wild lions. Just like my local livestock farms take the pressure off of wild game populations.

Unless I get lucky and happen to be in Namibia during a problem lion hunt, I doubt I'll ever take a wild lion. At $18,000-30,000 and daily rate I could shoot a game farm lion soon if it was a priority.

Hmm? Apparently we have a few fans of the late President Dwight D. Eisenhower:

***
Quote:

DOMINO THEORY
Finally, you have broader considerations that might follow what you would call the "falling domino" principle. You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly. So you could have a beginning of a disintegration that would have the most profound influences. (Introducing the domino theory, that if Vietnam fell to communism, the rest of Southeast Asia would soon follow. Press conference, April 7, 1954.)
***

To all of our AR veterans, a big thanks for your service! Cheers and keep well!

Not to steal the thread, but while he did give the famous "Domino Speech" Eisenhower DID NOT want to get involved in Vietnam. After Dien Bien Phu fell in 1954 the French pressured the US to get involved but he refused. Here a quote by Eisenhower given in a press conference in response to the French request for us to get involved militarily:

"I cannot conceive of a greater tragedy for America than to get heavily involved now in an all-out war in any of those regions."

While he did give aid to Diem, he avoided committing troops. JFK is the one who got us involved, not Ike.

quote:

Originally posted by tendrams:
Perhaps I should have said "a long and widespread tradition". Compared to RSA, the privatization of wildlife in the US is amateur hour.

Ouch! Sounds like I need to venture outside of Texas a little more often. Thanks for the additional clarification!