A prize hunter’s other half paid £1,500 for her to eliminate an old giraffe and cut its heart out for Valentine’s Day.
Merelize Van Der Merwe, 32, published a picture of her holding the giraffe’s heart with the caption: ‘Ever wondered how big a giraffe’s heart is? I’m definitely over the moon with my BIG valentines present!!!’
The post exasperated activists however the mum declared sustainable searching assists save wildlife in South Africa, develops tasks and adds to the tourist market.
She informed The Mirror that she calls animal rights groups ‘the mafia’ who she has ‘no respect for’.
Ms Van Der Merwe, who runs a citrus farm in northern South Africa, declares the death of the 17-year-old giraffe bull will produce a chance for a brand-new bull to ‘take over and provide new strong genetics for the herd’.
She was set to invest Valentine’s Day at a resort with her other half however they ‘quickly’ altered their strategies when Ms Van Der Merwe heard she had the chance to shoot a giraffe.
She stated: ‘I’d waited years for my own best bull – the older a bull gets the darker he gets. I enjoy the skin and the reality it’s such a renowned animal for Africa.’
She prepares to utilize the animal’s skin for a carpet and declares the hunt ‘created work for 11 people that day’ and offered ‘meat for the locals’.
She believes that prohibiting searching would make animals ‘worthless’ triggering them to vanish.
‘Hunting has helped bring back a lot of species from the brink of extinction,’ she declared.
Hunters have long argued that they are assisting to keep wildlife alive by producing earnings for preservation efforts.
But anti-trophy searching organisation Born Free ‘strongly refutes claims by trophy hunting proponents that their activities support conservation or local communities’.
It argues the sport is not comprised of humanitarian contributions to preservation or residents however is a company.
It states hunters pay ‘large amounts of money for the privilege’ of eliminating wildlife and will pay more ‘the rarer and more impressive the animal’.
This incentivises searching companies to intensively reproduce and produce more prize animals ‘to the detriment of the wider environment’, the charity stated.
‘Trophy hunting is a cruel throwback to a colonial past, and the targeting of particular animals (usually those with the most impressive traits such as the biggest tusks or the darkest manes) disrupts animal societies and has knock-on effects for populations and ecosystems that we are only just beginning to understand,’ Born Free included.
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