South African Ranchers Are Breeding Mutant Animals to Hunt

Let's breed strange, beautiful animals just to shoot them, because that's not depressing at all

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You could put $50,000 toward the downpayment for a house, but why throw your money away like that when you could plunk it down to hunt a specially bred mutant animal on a ranch in South Africa?

Yes, you read that correctly. According to a Bloomberg report, ranchers like Barry York find animals with different-than-normal appearances, capture them, and breed them, with the hopes that their variations will pass on to offspring. The result? White lions, golden gnu, white impalas ... animals rarely seen in nature but available to hunt on these South African ranches. For a price, that is. It costs $30,000 to $50,000 for the chance to go trophy hunting.

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Conservationists are worried, and not just because this trend sounds totally crazy and wrong. Besides the problems associated with large scale farming, there's the problem of re-introducing any of the animals out into the wild, where their rare mutations could make them stick out more to predators. In the case of animals bred to be darker, their modified coloration could put them more at risk for heat stroke.

Bloomberg also reported that some hunters aren't big fans, either, worrying that domesticating the wild animals will drive other areas of the hunting industry into decline.

Also, let's just repeat it: high dollar mutant hunting in South Africa.

Source: Bloomberg

UPDATE: York responds:

Wildlife Ranching South Africa (WRSA) gives the following defintion for a colour variant. "A colour variant is a functionally efficient wild animal that occurs naturally. It is phenotypically different (colour and/or pattern) and is genetically similar to the more common variant of that species."
WRSA supports the breeding and conservation of colour variants in line with the International Convention of Biodiversity (ICB) which states that biodiversity also includes genetic differences within each species - for example, between varieties of crops and animals. Genetic variation is the stuff of life and evolution.
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