Just a plaything: Marius Prinsloo (left) and a friend, Patrick Shannon, share a meal with lion cub Beethoven, one of four bought by Prinsloo in 1996

Shoot a lion
for R25 000

HUNTING

A Free State farmer starts a row when he offers hunters the chance to shoot a captive lioness on his farm, saying he needs the money to maintain 12 more lions he keeps in pens. FIONA MACLEOD reports

EIGHT MONTHS after The Cook Report blew the lid off the "canned" lion-hunting industry, a row has erupted over the hunting of a lioness near Bethlehem in the Free State.

Marius Prinsloo, owner of Camorhi farm, is advertising the eight-year-old lioness for hunting for R25 000. His lions -- there are 12 on the farm -- are kept in pens of one hectare. If the lioness is "hunted", she will probably be released into a larger area, though the client should be told she was bred in captivity.

Prinsloo's adverts drew a heated response this week from other big-cat breeders and from organisations which have been pressing for a review of hunting legisation since The Cook Report, a British TV documentary, shocked both local and international viewers with its gruesome footage of lions being baited, drugged and "hunted" in tiny enlosures.

Dr Peter Rogers, a veterinarian attached to the Hoedspruit Cheetah Project in Mpumalanga, sold four cubs to Prinsloo for R40 000 in 1996. The cheetah project is part of Kapama Game Reserve, owned by Johan Roode, a board member of the South African National Parks and a founder trustee of the Endangered Species Protection Unit.

Rogers is furious about Prinsloo's adverts. Though the lioness Prinsloo is offering as a trophy is not related to his four cubs, "this is the last thing we need right now", he says.

"My cubs were from an abandoned litter. The Prinsloos promised they would only be used for tourism, they would be kept in a big pen and they would never be resold. They seemed to be on the level."

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One of the first indications Rogers had that things were not "on the level" was when, shortly after he had sold the cubs, a Pretoria newspaper featured photographs of Prinsloo sharing a meal with one of them and a friend of his sharing a bed with the same cub. Rogers threatened to take the cubs back, but was persuaded not to by Prinsloo's wife and secretary.

Prinsloo says he is selling the lioness because she has "feline herpes" and she is aggressive. He needs the money because "nobody can conserve lions without money.

"I love my lions and I don't want to shoot her, but the reality is she is costing me more than R17 000 a year to keep. All these people who tell us we shouldn't shoot our lions should give us some support, put their money where their mouths are."

Prinsloo says shooting lions in the wild is worse than shooting those bred in captivity. "And if people breed lions for hunting, it takes the pressure off the wild lion populations."

It is exactly this situation -- the breeding of big cats for hunting profits -- that Dillon Hale is investigating for the International Fund for Animal Welfare (Ifaw). Hale has produced a 150-page report that will form the basis of a submission to Parliament.

"We're calling for a national Act to regulate the industry," he says. "All we have now are administrative orders issued within the different provincial departments. The internal criteria are not open and freely available to the public, which is unconstitutional."

Ifaw collected 55 000 petitions protesting against "canned" lion hunting in the wake of The Cook Report. "But it's almost as if the reaction of the public means nothing to the politicians and the scientists," says Ifaw's Chris Styles.

"The provincial departments concerned have been tardy in getting their act together, to say the least, and the only province that has even attempted to address the issue is Mpumalanga." -- Mail&Guardian, February 2, 1998.