A British safari boss is charging callous trophy hunters thousands of kilos to kill lions that have been bred in captivity, The Mail on Sunday can screen.
Gruesome images display Alex Goss posing beside the bodies of lions once they had been slaughtered for the duration of hunts in South Africa.
He is thought to be the most effective British operator openly setting up what campaigners name ‘canned hunts’ – wherein lions bred in captivity are pursued and shot in fenced enclosures.
Earlier this yr, this newspaper posted high-quality information of a yr-long investigation by the previous Tory peer Lord Ashcroft which uncovered the cruelty and horror of lion farms in South Africa.
It revealed how as many as 12,000 lions bred in captivity are destined to be shot via rich hunters or killed in squalid slaughterhouses, with their bones then exported to the Far East.
Goss, from Oswestry, Shropshire, owns and manages Blackthorn Safaris, dividing his time among bird-taking pictures and deer hunts within the UK and big-recreation hunts in South Africa and Zimbabwe.
In a series of photographs on his internet site, he’s pictured posing beside a dead crocodile, a hippo, a buffalo, a pair of zebras, a large male lion, and a lioness.
He also gives leopard and elephant hunts.
It is thought that he first skilled looking in South Africa while he becomes five and has eventually ‘hunted all over the world.’
Until 3 years ago, his father is thought to have owned a safari lodge near Kimberley.
Blackthorn is assumed to rate customers up to £13,000 for a 5-day lion hunt. Guests are primarily based at a five-megastar inn defined as a ‘slice of paradise in the bush’ on the edge of the Kalahari wasteland.
Like other operators, Goss is thought to woo prospective clients by using sending them pix of the form of lions that are available to be killed.
‘Famous for is [sic] lion looking, the Kalahari is the precise vicinity to seek these cats,’ his website said, earlier than being taken down final week.
‘The perspectives are definitely breathtaking, and with significant numbers of the natural world, it’s miles an adventurers’ paradise.’
Experts said ultimate night time that they believed the lions that Goss is pictured with have been bred in captivity and later shot on closely fenced sport ranches.
‘Wild male lions have scars throughout because they should constantly combat to take over satisfaction and preserve their position,’ said Dr. Pieter Kat, director of conservation charity LionAid.
‘But the mane is perfect, and this is not regular of any wild lion, whose mane could be scruffy. It is handiest in captive-raised surroundings that a male can broaden a mane of this size.’
South Africa is the only country that allows huge-scale lion-breeding, with animals stored in fenced enclosures at greater than 2 hundred farms and compounds.
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