Worldwide, animals are being exploited left, right and centre. Not only are their natural habitats being demolished, but they are being hunted, killed for bushmeat, orphaned baby animals are being sold into the illegal pet trade and there is worse still.

Canned Hunting

There is an even more barbaric type of hunting going on these days, called Canned Hunting.

It has been big business in South Africa for well over fifteen years, but has now spread to several other countries. It is where egotistic hunters pay large sums of money to shoot captive animals inside an enclosure, the animals are sometimes even drugged first.

Canned Lion Hunting involves breeding Lions "like rabbits". They are encouraged to breed as many cubs as possible to be killed by hunters with big wallets. When the Lions give birth, the cubs are taken away from a very upset and distressed Lioness to be bottle fed by humans. The mother Lioness will then straight away come back into oestrus and become pregnant again to replace the cubs she lost. This will be done time and time again with the poor Lioness.

The hand reared Lion cubs become totally imprinted on the people who bottle fed them. This is because when they first opened their eyes, the first thing they see is a human, whom they trust consider to be their mum.

When they are about two to three years old, they are "released" one at a time into an enclosure that is usually about two acres in size. The Lion is then shot at close range by several high paying hunters, usually from a four wheel drive vehicle. The purely innocent Lion has no chance. As the Lions have been hand reared by humans, they actually go up to people anyway as they think of us humans as their own kind and trust us.

Another trick that the organisers use is to shoot a Lioness who is still caring for her litter of cubs. What they do is snatch her cubs away from her and use them as bait. The Lioness is then released and will do anything to get back to caring for her precious cubs, therefore making this distraught mother a very easy target for a hunter's bullet. It is not just Lions being killed in this horrible style of canned hunting, many species are, even critically endangered African Hunting Dogs, Rhinos, Elephants and Giraffe.

Mobile Phones!

Something that is causing severe damage to many species of African fauna and flora is mobile phones believe it or not!

African rainforest is being destroyed at an alarming rate, not only due to deforestation, but also due to the mining of a very precious metal called Coltan.

This catastrophic destruction is being done for anyone who has ever owned a mobile phone. Coltan is used in the manufacture of Tanatalum, which is used in all mobile technology. Coltan occurs in soft rock and is dug using shovels, picks and crowbars. Miners who populate the area are eating several critically endangered animals including Drill (Mandrillus Leucophaeus), one of the world's rarest primate species. This stunning primate will become extinct in the wild within ten years if the deforestation and hunting for bushmeat carry on at the current rate.