Harry Donde, a resident of Glen Athol Extension 1 writes:
After watching the Carte Blanche programme on canned lion hunting, I was appalled at the senseless shooting of lions specially bred for cowardly hunters.
The lions remain in a confined area and have no chance to get away from these cowards, who only wish to bring back a trophy so they can brag that they hunted and shot a lion. The hunters are the ones who should be shot.
Well done to the United States of America which banned the bringing back of animal trophies. This came after the American public threatened the life of the dentist who shot Cecil the lion. Apparently, Americans are involved in 70 percent of the canned lion hunting industry, and now the industry wants to open up hunting to South Africans and the rest of the world.
Any South African who participates in this sort of slaughter for the sake of a trophy should be branded a coward.
Finally, I ask every consulate general in Johannesburg and Pretoria representing their countries to please urge their governments to ban bringing back animal trophies to their countries; we should love them, not hunt them.
On a related matter, the canned lion industry now also wants to export lion bones for medicine, a practice that should also be banned as the bones of an animal have no medicinal value that I know of. Those who think they have should ask game parks to collect dead animal bones on their behalf and not shoot them.
