Tourists lured to South Africa to take part in trophy hunts

By: Joanna Della-Ragione

THE lion cub in my arms is just two months old. His dappled yellow fur is cotton-wool soft and his long lashed eyes glow gold. He is calendar-cute, picture perfect, but when he scrambles out of my arms razor-sharp claws scrape my skin and I'm jolted back to reality, reminded that he's a wild animal. That I'm able to cradle him at all is paradoxical.

This isn't nature or the expansive wilderness of the Kruger National Park - if it were the pride would have torn me limb from limb by now - rather I'm standing in a large cage, home to eight cubs including two baby tigers and two white lions who playfully nip my ankles. The pungent scent of cat urine rising from the dusty ground permeates the air.

I've driven three hours from Johannesburg across vast expanses of bleak farmland which constitute South Africa's Orange Free State, down a nausea-inducing dirt track to the Moreson Ranch, which markets itself as a "holiday and game farm" where rich hunters both amateur and professional come to shoot animals for sport. It is just one of many lionbreeding farms in South Africa where tourists can pay a mere 50 rand (about $5.80) to cuddle a cub.

What the tourists aren't told is that these cubs have been snatched from their mothers at just an hour old and come adulthood they're likely to die at the hands of wealthy trophy hunters, just like the rest of the 5,000 captive bred lions in South Africa.

Read more . . . 

Where there's fire, critics will blow smoke

by E. J. Montini, columnist - Jun. 12, 2011 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic

To most of us, a monster wildfire is a tragedy. To others, it's an opportunity to score political points, something they do by following this simple strategy: Blame "radical environmentalists."

This is accomplished, first, by always referring to the people with whom you disagree on the protection of natural resources as "radical environmentalists." After all, if they disagree with you, they must be radical.

Second, tell the world that if only the radical environmentalists didn't use lawsuits to prevent forest-thinning operations, there would be no monster fires.

It's an easy argument to make and a difficult one for regular people to refute, mostly because news organizations haven't provided readers and viewers with the kind of coverage they need to make an informed judgment. And we know why.

The topic of forest management is (let's be honest) boring. It's entertaining when a politician appears on TV or writes an op-ed for the newspaper railing about how radical environmentalists want to prevent any tree from being cut. And it's fun when a member of the environmental community says that some politicians would allow their businessmen pals to cut down every tree.

Read more: http://goo.gl/7hgms