Australians Can't Bring Home Their Trophies From Canned Hunts

This is a nice story in one way and the foul story in another way.  You may have heard about canned hunts. They take place quite commonly in South Africa.  What they do is they breed lions for sample and put them in an enclosure which severely restricts their movements making it very easy for a high fee paying individual to shoot the animal with a weapon of his choice. It sounds completely mad to me but obviously they enjoy it. I suppose they want to take the trophy home to show it off to their friends and family as some sort of pseudo-macho statement.

Well, now they can't, not in Australia in any case. Australians who go on canned hunting trips will be banned from bringing their trophies home.

Greg Hunt, Australia's environment minister, recently announced that he would ban imports of all lion body parts and rhino body parts into Australia.

Gradually, it appears to have dawned upon the Australian government that it is immoral to participate in canned hunts and this directive by the government is intended, I presume, to put Australians off from going to South Africa to shoot lions and rhinos in an enclosure.

Greg Hunt makes a sensible observation that it is not right at this time in history to allow their citizens to bring back the stuffed carcasses of endangered species as trophies.

Apparently, more than 100 lion parts, including entire stuffed bodies, paws and skulls have been imported by Australians into Australia over the past 4 years.

Good news but the bad news is that it will go on taking place in South Africa ad nauseam until the South African government do something about it, which they won't of course because it rakes in too much money.  The hunters will pay anything from £5000-£25,000 to shoot animals with shotguns, pistols or crossbows!