All it takes is a few ethically illiterate fools with money to create a brutal industry based on routine cruelty. meet Mr Green, Mayor of Wellington, Texas.

                              Give Groupon SA your support

Groupon SA have contacted us to invoke the support of the animal welfare community in identifying unethical lion exploitation resorts or tourism facilities.  They should be applauded for adopting an ethical stance on which facilities they should not promote.

In response to emails from CEO Wayne Gosling and Western Cape account manager Carl Erasmus, we responded:
Thanks Carl and Wayne for your ethical concerns.
As I explained to Carl, drawing the line between good and bad facilities is not exact or easy; there are plenty of shades of grey between black and white.
The best list we know is our Canadian colleague Carmen Berdan's page Volunteers in Africa Beware.
https://www.facebook.com/notes/volunteers-in-africa-beware/the-good-bad-and-ugly-lists-for-volunteering-places-in-africa/849870441727120/
Hope this helps, but I cannot deny that you have a tough task and will never be able to keep everyone happy.
We'll help as much as we can.
Kind regards
Chris.

Carl had earlier written:
It is with great appreciation for your cause that we formally send you this letter of support. This is to insure we align our business to your cause by asking you for advice when it comes to us featuring any lion related services on our website.

His email was backed up by a letter from CEO Wayne Gosling, pledging to fully support our efforts and to use our website and advice to ensure that Groupon supports the right industries. ‘We hope to build a strong relationship with CACH in efforts to stop canned lion hunting.’

So, if you see Groupon advertising a facility which you believe is linked to the canned hunting industry, eg by breeding and offering cub petting, please don’t shout at Groupon.

Do your homework, and find out as much as you can from us and other sources so that you can give them convincing reasons to withdraw their support for that facility.
​
Let’s work with Groupon SA. We can help each other – for the lions’ sake.

                                                   Address 2016
Let’s talk about hunting as a form of entertainment.

Hunters intrude in to a natural environment in order to inflict suffering and death upon helpless animals – for fun.

1.      They claim to be doing it for conservation.  They lie. They do it for entertainment; because they enjoy stalking and killing. True conservation means protecting animals, not killing them.
2.      They claim that hunting is the only way to save Africa’s wildlife. They lie. That is like arguing that the only way to save whales is by whaling.
3.      They claim that hunting creates jobs.  They lie.  Hunting causes rural unemployment. When land is taken out of agricultural production in order to provide entertainment, jobs are lost. Ten thousand farms now provide entertainment, not food. Partly due to this change in land use, the rural labour force has dropped from 1,6 million to just over 600,000. SA has lost a million jobs in the rural economy.
4.      They claim to bring billions of dollars in to the country.  Again, look at the whole Balance Sheet on land use to see how misleading this claim is. Bring to account the loss of forex caused by the change from agriculture to entertainment. Last year, SA produced 4 million kgs less wool for export, owing to the change in land use.  And that is just wool!
5.      Hunters claim to have increased wildlife numbers from the point where some species (like rhino) were at risk of extinction. They lie. First, it was the hunting fraternity itself that wiped out our wildlife, bringing game numbers to an alarming low point. So now the hunters want credit for saving animals from themselves. A typical extortion racket!
6.      No, this is the true story.  Having all but wiped out our wildlife in the wild, the hunters had to turn to captive breeding on fenced game farms in order to provide a constant supply of living targets for their entertainment. Those animals may look wild but they are not.  They have become livestock, being bred like sheep or cattle for slaughter.  The hunters have taken the ‘wild’ out of our wildlife. 
7.      These animals no longer evolve against other species as they would in a natural functioning eco-system. They are being farmed as alternative livestock. And boasting about the increase in the numbers of fenced-in, captive-bred animals is as silly as boasting about the increased numbers of prisoners in SA prisons; as if that proves that we are a healthier society.
We know from studies published by IUCN that hunting is a wasteful use of land.  Vast tracts of national land – about 20% - are set aside to provide entertainment, mostly for wealthy foreigners.

Is this a necessary – or even desirable - land use?

So who is ignorant enough to swallow hunting propaganda hook, line and sinker?
Why, the SA government, of course. Edna Molewa and SA conservation structures all support hunting as if it were a tool of conservation, and not a major threat to it.

Any intelligent person can see that hunting is to conservation what pornography is to art – a ghastly parody of the real thing.

​And claiming that the only way to save our wildlife heritage is to kill majestic animals is as crazy as arguing that the only way to save art is by destroying the Mona Lisa.