US TV hunter draws scorn over South Africa lion kill
WASHINGTON - A blue-eyed American hunter with her own specialty TV show found herself Wednesday in the crosshairs of animal lovers outraged by her safari exploits in South Africa.
More than 375,000 people signed an online petition on Change.org calling on the South African government to no longer let Melissa Bachman, host of "Winchester Deadly Passion," into the country.
I really wish people like Melissa Bachman would stay in the USA. I guess on the most part they probably do, but anyone who deliberately kills a critically endangered species is a fucking idiot. I have absolutely no doubt Bachman fits this criteria.
"Melissa Bachman has made a career out of hunting wildlife, for pure sport," read the petition launched by Cape Town resident Elan Burman.
I am in no way anti hunting and have killed my share of fish, rabbits, possums etc. If you are going to kill you should have a good reason and a trophy just doesn't make the good reason standard regardless of the species and its conservation status.
"She is an absolute contradiction to the culture of conservation (that) this country prides itself on," it said.
In a statement, Change.org said it was the biggest animal-related petition it had ever hosted, gathering 150,000 new signatures since Monday.
I don't doubt it. Bachman is an environmental menace.
A "Stop Melissa Bachman" page on Facebook meanwhile racked up more than 230,000 likes -- almost nine times the number of followers of Bachman's own Facebook account.
Triggering the outrage was a photo that Bachman posted on social media on November 1 of her kneeling and smiling, rifle in hand, behind a lion she had apparently just shot and killed.
"An incredible day hunting in South Africa! Stalked inside 60-yards on this beautiful male lion...what a hunt!" she wrote on her @MelissaBachman Twitter account.
"The UK-based conservation group LionAid says as few as 645 lions remain in the wild in western and central Africa. It says lions are extinct in 25 African nations and virtually extinct in 10, and it estimates that 15,000 wild lions remain on the continent as a whole, compared with about 200,000 30 years ago.
"There has been a catastrophic decline in the populations of lions in Africa, and particularly west Africa," said Dr Pieter Kat, trustee of LionAid. "These lions have been neglected for a very long time and do not have adequate protection programs. They are in real danger of extinction."
The Minnesota native, who shoots with both firearms and bows and grew up in a family that went hunting every weekend, wrote on her Facebook account that she had earlier bagged "a beautiful Nyala and a Duiker" -- two species of antelopes.
The Maroi Conservancy defended her on social media, saying it would not apologize for facilitating her lion shoot in South Africa's North West Province.
Sponsored by Winchester, a major American firearms manufacturer, Bachman's show is carried on the Pursuit Channel, a relatively small Alabama-based channel dedicated to outdoor activites such as hunting.
The American gun culture insanity is something I really wish America wouldn't attempt to export. Make no mistake this lion died to sell Americans guns so they can kill each other. That is a bloody awful reason to die.
" The annual toll from firearms in the US is running at 32,000 deaths and climbing, even though the general crime rate is on a downward path (it is 40% lower than in 1980). If this perennial slaughter doesn't qualify for intercession by the UN and all relevant NGOs, it is hard to know what does."
"The more people that can hunt, the more people that can enjoy the lifestyle, the better," she said in October in a report on Minnesota TV station KSTP about the state's growing number of licensed female hunters.
Last year the US Fish and Wildlife Service, a federal agency, released a survey indicating a rebound in the popularity of hunting in the United States after many years of decline.
I really hope that something very horrible happens to Bachman. Soon.
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