I wouldn't say "twisted." One huge aspect you're missing is these sort of places are actually doing some good. They do increase the gene pool of the animals, and more importantly they are saving large tracts of viable habitat. What you are calling a "twisted personality" I'm calling a preservationist. The landowners have found a way to put value on wild animals, and I think in the broad picture they are better off because of that. The local Sioux Indians here have done something similar. They have decent sized herds of buffalo on their reservations, and offer "hunts" for them. While I personally don't see much difference in going out with a .30-06 and shooting a cow out in a field and one of these buffalo "hunts," the Indians I've talked to said they get $5,000 to $7,000 for each critter. Don't tell anyone from out of state, but I think you could just buy a buffalo for about $1,500, take it back to your farm and shoot it, and save a lot of money. Neither of these hunts have any appeal to me, but I applaud the Indians for coming up with a clever way to make some needed income, and landowners in Africa for finding a way to preserve habitat. As for lions, I'd never go out and shoot one, including the wild mountain lions we have in my state. I'm a cat lover. 
Kent in SD
This is unbelievable nonsense!
There are hundreds of examples in South Africa (and other countries within Africa where landowners have found a way to give value to wildlife - they are called game reserves!
In South Arica, at least, most of the land set aside for conservation is private. It is not government owned.
Those reserves, by and large, are massive money spinners.
The wildlife on these reserves lives and dies naturally.
Those canned hunting safaris are nothing like this at all.
Animals are bred in captivity - and in the case of lions and other large cats, in particular - are actually caged. For a hunt they are released into what could be termed a large field. At this point they are shot.
This is NOT conservation. It is not even hunting... (see below)
Ask anyone in South Africa who is actually invested in conservation in that country and one will discover that those people who run canned hunting concerns are, to put it diplomatically, seriously on the nose!
Furthermore, these conservationists are not citified lefty-loony types. The owners of these private game reserves, by and large, were once cattlemen, who were themselves avid hunters, but realised that the real value of wildlife was in a live animal, who could be viewed and photographed on multiple occasions, rather than a dead animal hanging on a wall.
Many of the private game reserves in South Africa are within a couple of hundred kilometres of the property referred to in the OP. In the early 1980's a massive drought destroyed the cattle industry in this area. Despite several years of drought the wildlife survived. Many of the former cattle farmers got the hint. They started game farming, but quickly realised that much more money could be made from tourism. Although private conservation was alive and well prior to this time in South Africa that drought finally killed off many of the unsustainable and silly land-use practices then in operation in South Africa and gave a huge boost to private conservation. Many individual farms were consolidated into single land tracts that made much more sense from a conservation perspective. Large game, such as elephants and rhino, could be introduced along with large predators.
Nothing in the above description of 'canned' hunting ever even classifies as the SPORT of hunting. Sport hunting requires the on-foot tracking and hunting of WILD animals in their own habitat that are free to act as they see fit. In Africa, it is not unknown for these actions to result in the death of the hunter. The term 'Big Five' comes from the experience of hunting where the animals so designated were responsible for the overwhelming percentage of hunters killed while hunting. However, forward-looking countries in Africa (see below) are banning even sport hunting...
Fundamentally, the argument for hunting, sport or canned, as a necessary component of conservation is spurious, misinformed, and often downright disingenuous. Botswana, once home to a massive hunting industry, has recently banned all hunting. Firstly, compared to tourists using a camera on safari, the income was relatively small. Secondly, global attitudes toward hunting have changed over the decades, and Botswana, seeing the writing on the wall, correctly decided to ban hunting.
Conservation means just that - to conserve; not to kill or destroy.
BTW culling is not hunting. A cull may become necessary to protect that species and others and to maintain the ecological viability of the land. Culling of predators is never necessary in this equation since they represent such small numbers in the overall ecology and their numbers rise and fall depending on prey availability. Furthermore the best solution to preventing culling is to have larger tracts of land set aside for conservation. This allows wildlife to move to where water and food is located. This process of consolidation of conservation land is still in progress in South Africa (and other countries in Southern Africa for that matter), both from a government and private perspective, but may not ever be satisfactorily completed.
Hunting, especially the 'canned' variety, mentioned in the OP runs hopelessly counter to any of the principles of conservation and the only effect is that of harm...
Please do not confuse the selfish outdated views of a few South African businessmen peddling 'canned' hunting as the 'real thing' to equally selfish and deluded clients with more money than sense as representing conservation in any sense of the word!
Also, it would be unrealistic to expect the South African government to act decisively on the matter. Currently the ruling party, the ANC, is currently hopelessly mired in its own party politics and the urgent business of the country is currently relegated to irrelevancy. On a related topic the huge disaster of an out-of-control poaching epidemic in the country (a problem exponentially bigger than the admittedly stinky canned hunting industry) is directly related to the out-of-control corruption that has infected every government agency in the country.
Disclaimer: If you are wondering how I could know about all this, I was born and raised in South Africa. I always had a keen interest in nature and conservation and so staying informed about issues such as those raised in this thread are second nature.
Tony Jay
