Louis Theroux’s African Hunting Holiday is Louis Theroux’s latest documentary and adventure where he visits private game reserves (hunting farms) in South Africa.
Louis Theroux is a popular journalist, probably best known for his faux-naif (marked by a false show of innocent simplicity) interviewing style. He has created a number of documentaries for BBC on marginal subcultures, including Nazi skinheads, survivalists, wrestlers, Indian gurus, and body builders. He won a BAFTA for his interview series with different British celebrities in When Louis Met…
In Louis Theroux’s African Hunting Holiday, Louis Theroux visits hunting farms, where exotic species are bred solely to be hunted by tourists (mostly Americans). All of the species have varying price tags, starting with a porcupine for $250 and a warthog for $300, all the way up to a rhinoceros somewhere in between $50,000 to $100,000.
Louis Theroux visits with various private game reserve owners and workers, some who are defensive (and even angry) with his questions. He meets clients at one of the game reserves, from Ohio, who are there to kill what was in their budget.
Despite the exotic species being hunted (and in pretty much every case, killed) in Louis Theroux’s African Hunting Holiday, the exotic species are growing in population, as a result of these hunting farms. If they weren’t being hunted, nobody would care about their species.
The private game reserve owners can be far from heartless, with many expressing concern for the animals being hunted on their reserve. They don’t want to see their animals be shot at and injured. They only want clean kills, so that their animals don’t have to suffer.
The hunting farms are not an easy situation to find a solution for. Allow the hunting, and people can pay money to kill exotic species. Stop the hunting, and the exotic species will be neglected and die.
related links
BBC description of
Louis Theroux’s African Hunting Holiday
article about documentary by Louis Theroux:
The price of a rhino’s life? $100,000
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