Trophy hunters banned from bringing home rhino parts/lions In Australia

Updated 2 July 2014

By Mark Simkin and Latika Bourke
 

Australians who travel overseas to hunt large animals like rhinoceroses and big cats could be banned from bringing home their slaughter. The federal government is considering banning hunters from importing trophies from their kills. (Credit: ABC)

Australians who travel overseas to hunt rhinoceroses will no longer be allowed to bring home their slaughter.
The Federal Government has issued a ban on all rhino body parts being imported into the country in response to a backbencher's campaign against canned hunting.

Canned hunting is a legal practice where animals like lions and rhinos are bred and farmed overseas for the sole purpose of being hunted in captivity.

Environment Minister Greg Hunt has told the ABC the Government does not believe animal trophies killed in canned hunts should be allowed into Australia. "It's just not right at this time in history that we are allowing endangered species to be brought back as trophies into Australia," he said. "I've signed an order, we're taking action - it's going to stop."

Mr Hunt says he has started a process to have the ban applied to African lions. More than 100 lion parts including entire stuffed bodies, paws and skulls have been imported since 2010. Mr Hunt says canned hunting is a practice that would not sit comfortably with most Australians. "The process of really capturing or raising animals and then having them in a compound where they can't run they can't hide, they don't have a fair chance, doesn't really fit with the fair go ethos of this country let alone the broader issues of humane treatment of animals," he said.

The move is in response to a campaign mounted by Federal Government backbencher Jason Wood, who says canned hunting is "cruel and barbaric". Mr Wood says he had no idea what canned hunting even was until he was told about it by one of his constituents. "In Australia we probably don't know much about it, overseas it's huge," Mr Wood told the ABC:

"You go to the websites and you can actually just find an animal of your choosing and arrange to go over and kill it. And they have these packages... father and son killing sprees. Don't even call it hunting, most of the time they have bait there. There's this very graphic video I've seen where you have a lion just lying under its food and it just gets shot. And the very distressing thing is the lion is perplexed as to what is going on – why, because it is used to interaction with humans."

Mr Wood says he lobbied Mr Hunt for the bans because depriving Australians of the ability to bring home their dead souvenirs to display in their homes could help reduce the trade:

"They can be cougars, they can be panthers, they can be bears, you name it," Mr Wood said, describing it as "a smorgasbord of wildlife" being killed for "mantelpieces. If you take away the incentive, if an Australian is going overseas, paying $40,000 for a lion and then they can't bring it back to Australia to put above their mantelpiece that takes the incentive away and that's why it's so important to change the laws."

The MP also warned Australians against becoming unwittingly complicit in the practice by paying to help rear lion cubs in so-called "conservation parks", which were actually run by the gamed hunting industry. "We have young Australians inadvertently supporting lions to be killed," he said.

  source