British trophy hunters are showing off online with the ‘at risk’ zebras they’ve slain, with one saying they’ve ‘never had so much fun with their pants on’.
The tourists’ grinning photos have been shared on social media, posing next to the dead animals.
One hunter, Andy Denson – who the Mirror Online report to be a tour operator – posted a picture to his Facebook account with a zebra he appears to have shot and killed.
Andy Denson/FacebookAs well as social media, safari operators’ websites have sections filled to the brim with hunters – almost like a shooting gallery of dead zebras, lions and other wild animals.
Another British tourist, Peter Livesey, can be seen on the Huntershill Safaris website with his prey – one hand on the carcass, another on his rifle.
Taking to the website’s guestbook to comment on the hunting experience, Livesey wrote:
Never had so much fun with my pants on!!!
On another safari website, Umlilo Safaris, a further six British people – including a woman – can be found grinning with pride next to their ‘trophy’.
On the Huntershill Safari website, the plains zebra is not officially listed as a buck available for hunting – however, it does outline that ‘tailor-made’ packages are available.
For the pleasure of taking the lives of innocent animals, tourists can be expected to pay anywhere between £4,340 and £7,730, with safari trips lasting as long as 10 days and a number of kills on a 55,000 acre game farm ‘guaranteed’.
After the population fell by 24 per cent over 14 years, zebras were added to the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) ‘red list’ of endangered species.
PAEduardo Goncalves of the Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting, branded the industry ‘vile’, calling for action to curb the killing of endangered animals.
As reported by the Mirror Online, Goncalves said:
So many of Africa’s greatest wild animals are already suffering thanks to the vile trophy hunting industry.
Now zebras have joined the list. In April last year zebras were officially listed as vulnerable. The Grévy’s zebra species is listed as endangered. What is it going to take to stop these killers from wiping out our wildlife completely?
According to the Mirror Online, the IUCN estimate that the global population of plains zebras has fallen from between 150,000 and 250,000 to as low as 34,979 over the past three years.
PADespite their threatened status, hunting plains zebra in South Africa is not illegal – body parts are regularly exported back to the UK, with taxidermy often being the end result of the hunts.
The UK government are now attempting to ban this practice to see an end to exotic, and unnecessary, imports like rugs and body parts coming into the country.
As reported by the MailOnline, Minister for International Wildlife Zac Goldsmith said: ‘I look at the photos and it turns my stomach.’
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After graduating from Glasgow Caledonian University with an NCTJ and BCTJ-accredited Multimedia Journalism degree, Cameron ventured into the world of print journalism at The National, while also working as a freelance film journalist on the side, becoming an accredited Rotten Tomatoes critic in the process. He’s now left his Scottish homelands and took up residence at UNILAD as a journalist.