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During my 12 years travelling the world, clocking up nearly half a million miles and exposing corruption in every form, I have investigated many stories that left me angry.

I was shocked to uncover the trade in stolen babies, taken from hospitals in South America and sold to childless couples in the US.

And I’ll never forget the harrowing tale of child beggars in India being purposely maimed to encourage people to put more money into their begging bowls.

But one story has stuck with me: the hunting of endangered species just for fun.

Killing already endangered magnificent beasts of the jungle for sport.

Shooting a drugged, tied, helpless lion for fun. What sort of person does that?

Now, over 20 years after investigating canned hunting, it beggars belief that this illegal practice continues. After our programme Making a Killing, the world woke up to the horrors of animals being slaughtered as a trophy, a picture to hang on the wall, something to post and boast about on social media.

But despite all the fine words from politicians vowing to halt this iniquitous practice, I believe little has been done.

Shocking stories still emerge – such as the footage earlier this year of US trophy hunter Guy Gorney killing a sleeping lion, which caused widespread disgust.

I am delighted the Mirror is now leading the charge to save these species from an undignified end.

So, what is canned hunting? Simply, it is an animal, sometimes tranquillised, trapped in a small enclosure and ready to be shot by a trophy hunter off the back of a truck.

To expose the industry, we set up a hunting company in Spain looking to offer wealthy businessmen the chance to kill big game with impunity.

Within days someone took the bait, and we were off to South Africa to meet husband-and-wife team Sandy and Tracy McDonald.

Sandy boasted that his firm, McDonald Pro Hunting, had organised the killing of more animals than any other in South Africa – more than a thousand lions in the previous year alone.

Almost as soon as I had arrived on the remote Mokwalo Game Farm in Limpopo Province, McDonald was demonstrating what was expected of me with the help of a well-worn stuffed lion – pointing out where to shoot to kill.

He seemed to be running a production line. Secretly filmed, he had previously reassured one of our team, playing the part of a rich man’s fixer, that I would be in no danger whatsoever and that an easy kill would be guaranteed.

So we set off into the bush while the driver and tracker pretended to be following a lion’s trail.

I soon realised we were driving around in circles, but they wanted to make it look good, as if it was a real hunt.

We eventually came across our lion, apparently asleep under a tree. I had a professional cameraman with me, ostensibly making a vanity video.

The jeep was bristling with weapons – including the one I was supposed to use, a heavy calibre Remington hunting rifle.

When McDonald told me it was time to use it, I refused, telling him the canned hunting of such a helpless animal was at best immoral, and that I was not a rich businessman but a television reporter.

We were then driven at speed back to camp where a very angry McDonald and friends demanded that we hand over our tapes.

However, in the interim, we had taken the precaution of concealing our evidence in the upholstery of our mini-bus. We then palmed them off with blank tapes.

Had we not given up what they thought was our evidence, said one of McDonald’s men, we would have been involved in an unfortunate fatal shooting accident.

Our programme won the Brigitte Bardot International Award for the best wildlife investigation of 1997 at the Annual Ark Awards.

After it aired, the Mandela government banned canned hunting and prosecuted nearly 90 businesses that promoted it. Sadly, his successors Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma, allowed it to resume.

However, following a Cook Report challenge to South Africa’s delegate at a Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species conference in 2007, the government had second thoughts.

Canned hunting was finally outlawed in 2009 under rules issued by the Ministry of Environmental Affairs and Tourism.

But then the Predator Breeders Association challenged the move in the Supreme Court.

It was ruled that as lion breeders were farmers, not conservationists, it was beyond the minister’s jurisdiction and the ban was not enforceable.

The breeding-for-shooting programme went into overdrive – now assisted by unwitting European or American volunteers (often gap-year students) who had paid for the privilege of helping to raise lion clubs they had been falsely led to believe were to be released into the wild.

Now lions are bred like grouse, to be shot at close range by rich men on ego trips.

This is a multi-million-pound industry, founded on cruelty and fueled by money.

It is certainly not a sport. The South African government needs to be persuaded to close it down, once and for all.

And, if those trophy hunters were banned from bringing their kill home, there would be far less incentive to carry on this senseless slaughter.