This is Melissa Bachman. She is a TV presenter and an avid life-long hunter. She's hunted all over the world. In short, she's a pro.
Recently, she posted this photo on her Twitter feed.
“An incredible day hunting in South Africa! Stalked inside 60-yards on this beautiful male lion…what a hunt!" she wrote.
After posting, animal rights activists and general public ignoramuses freaked out and immediately started harassing her. The harassment became so insane, she shut down her Twitter profile.
Now, a petition has popped up on Change.org asking the government of South Africa to ban her from the country. Here's the description:
Melissa Bachman has made a career out of hunting wildlife, for pure sport. Her antics are captured extensively on her personal website: http://www.melissabachman.com/. She is an absolute contradiction to the culture of conservation, this country prides itself on. Her latest Facebook post features her with a lion she has just executed and murdered in our country.
And here's the petition to the government:
To:
Mkuseli Apleni, Director General, Department of Home Affairs
Ms Bomo Edna Molewa, Ministry of Water and Environmental Affairs
Ms Lakela Kaunda, Deputy Director General: Private Office of the President
Deny future entry to Melissa Bachman.
Melissa Bachman has made a career out of hunting wildlife, for pure sport. Her antics are captured extensively on her personal website: http://www.melissabachman.com/. She is an absolute contradiction to the culture of conservation, this country prides itself on. Her latest Facebook post features her with a lion she has just executed and murdered in our country.
As tax payers we demand she no longer be granted access to this country and its natural resources.
Sincerely,
[Your name]
First off, Bachman was doing something completely legal with a permit, not to mention paid thousands and thousands of dollars to hunt legally inside South Africa. The anti-hunting lynch mob has implied she did something illegal. She didn't. Second, the petition and description from Change.org are dishonest. Bachman wasn't hunting for "pure sport." All of the meat from the lion was donated to people in need, which is standard practice for a majority of Africa hunts. Third, hunting makes up a huge part of South Africa's economy, banning hunters is suicidal. Fourth, "executed and murdered"...? Drama much? The proper term is "hunting." Fifth, Change.org is grossly distorting the definition of conservation.
Hunting lions keeps the population in check so lions don't overeat prey, other lions or starve to death. It would be nice if anti-hunters did their research about how anti-hunting policies negatively effect animal populations of all kinds. If they did, they would know hunting bans only result in tainted gene pools and starvation. It's called sustainability.
Bachman's hunt was set up by the Maroi Conservancy, which is also receiving a ton of ignorant hate mail. They've released this statement on their Facebook page about the "controversy":
Maroi Conservancy is getting a lot of hate mail from all around the world regarding the Melissa Bachman lion hunt. If I can clarify a couple of facts:
Maroi Conservancy is based in the Limpopo Province, 30 km from Musina, right next to the Limpopo Border. We are operating on 8500 hectares. All the game on the conservancy is free roaming and occur here naturally.
Our motto is “conservation through sustainable hunting”.
We do ethical hunting and all meat from animals hunted is distrubuted to the local community. Funds generated from hunting goes towards fixing the border fence that was washed away in the 2013 floods; combating poaching which is excessive in this area due to close proximaty to ZImbabwe and running a sustainable conservancy. We have lost 2 eland, 4 giraffes and numerous other animals in the past 2 months that were killed by spears and dogs. We control our game numbers to prevent starvation of animals.
We have hunters from all over the world and all game hunting is done ethically on Maroi as per guidelines from Nature Conservation.
We had Melissa Bachman hunting plains game at Maroi in the past month. She was assisted by our PH Julious Heyneke. On her wish list was a lion. There are no lions on Maroi as they do not occur here naturallly. We contacted a outfitter in the North West Province and we faciltated the hunt for Melissa. We paid over the monies for the hunt to them and Melissa was tranported to Zeerust. We did not benefit financially by this hunt.
All documentation were in place for this hunt eg permits etc as required by Nature Conservation. The lion was not drugged or enclosed in a camp. It was free roaming on more than 2000 hectares. Melissa is a professional hunter and in no way is she involved in dubious practices.
We are not apologising for facilitating the hunt. As for all the negative commentary towards us, please consider how much you have contributed to conservation in the past 5 years. If you are not a game farmer and struggling with dying starving animals, poaching and no fences in place to protect your animals and crop, please refrain from making negative degoratory comments. It is so easy to judge if you are staying in cities and towns, buying your meat at ‘woolies’ and going to game reserves maybe once a year.
It is a fact, that due to the hunting industry and money generated out of this industry, there are more animals in South Africa than 100 years ago.
Any journalists are welcome to contact us to clarify facts.
Here's some more info about the positive impacts of hunting in South Africa:
South Africa’s government is strengthening relations with the multi-million dollar industry, which it says has increased populations of wild animals and is vital for conservation.
“Sustainable utilisation in the form of hunting, ecotourism, game sales, and translocations have resulted in an increase in a number of scarce game species, including bontebok, roan and sable antelope,” SA’s Minister for Environmental Affairs, Edna Molewa, said.
But perhaps hunting’s greatest success was encouraging the white rhinoceros population to increase by more than 10 times since hunting of the animals began in 1968, when only 1800 were left in SA. By 2010, there were 18,800.
“The generally positive role that sport hunting has played in the increase in white rhino numbers in South Africa is also recognised by the International Conservation Union,” Ms Molewa said.
“Hunting, together with live-sales and ecotourism, has assisted in giving the white rhino value that has generated incentives. This has played a critical and positive role in the successful conservation of this species in South Africa, and helped encourage the rapid expansion of range and numbers.
“Game farming and hunting contributes significantly to conservation, tourism development, job creation and sustainable development, especially in rural areas, and is part of the broader biodiversity economy,” she added.
Hunters have done more for animals than any animal rights group ever has. The healthy animal population and economy in places like South Africa, proves it.
UPDATE: This is breaking news, lions also hunt humans. Crazy!Lions have killed more than 560 Tanzanians since 1990, scientists announced today. The victims include children playing outside huts and people dragged from their beds, researchers say.
So Tanzanians are killing lions in increasing numbers, as you might expect.
"People in the United States often tend to think of lions, tigers, etc. as cute and cuddly because we don't know what it's like to live with predatory animals who threaten us and our families," said University of Minnesota ecologist Craig Packer, who led the study.