“Where can you find some of the best big game hunting in the world? It’s a place that may surprise you,” Lara Logan said last night before her 60 Minutes segment.
Well, it may surprise non-Texans: As Logan’s piece, “Can hunting endangered animals save the species?” reported, Texas is home to at least a quarter of a million exotic animals (representing at least 125 different species), many of which are originally from Africa, but became endangered and extinct there.
Logan visits with Charley Seale of Ingram’s Exotic Wildlife Association and Johnson City rancher David Bamberger, who tell her that the state’s exotic game ranches and trophy-hunting business have been a form of conservation, assuring Logan that the animals continue to be bred (only ten percent of the herd is is meant to be hunted each year). Logan reports that hunters can bag a scimitar horned oryx (a type of antelope) for $4,500, or the rarest of all animals, a cape buffalo, for $50,000.
“The money that I spend keeps these animals alive on these ranches,” says the hunter Logan joined on one ranch, “Paul” (he wouldn’t give his last name).
The clip also features critical comments from Priscilla Feral of Friends of Animals, which played a role in getting U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service—which has generally allowed exotic game ranches to exist thrive—to introduce new regulations that will put an end to hunting scimitar horned oryx and two other antelopes without a federal permit.
