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ALBERT
AGAINST LION BREEDING
AND ECOLOGICAL RE-INTRODUCTION TOURISM
A CON-CONSERVATION CAUSE?
African lion encounters: a bloody con
By Chris Haslam, The Sunday Times, February 10, 2008
Chris Haslam reveals the gruesome truth behind big-cat conservation projects that are championed by British tour operators
It’s the latest attraction for tourists visiting southern Africa, but conservationists are warning that walking with lions is – quite literally – a bloody con.
Dozens of private game parks across South Africa and Zimbabwe offer, or have offered, tourists the opportunity to walk with, handle and be photographed with lion cubs.
Excursions to some, such as the Aquila Private Game Reserve, outside Cape Town, and the Seaview Game and Lion Park, in Port Elizabeth, are offered by tour operators such as Kuoni, Virgin Holidays and the Holland America cruise line.
Antelope Park, in Zimbabwe, charges about £20 for a 90-minute lion encounter it describes as “not just a very privileged photo opportunity, [but] the chance for you to become a conservationist”. The park’s African Lion Environmental Research Trust (Alert) programme is enthusiastically supported by Sir Ranulph Fiennes, who, on his www.7summits.com website, praises its efforts “to help steadily increase the number of lions into areas carefully protected from poachers”.
The Sunday Times, however, has learnt that, far from being released into the wild, as many as 59 lion cubs raised at Antelope Park have been sold to big-game-hunting operations to be shot for sport.
So-called 'canned hunting', where rich trophy-hunters pay thousands of pounds to shoot big game in fenced enclosures, is big business in southern Africa. The price of shooting a lion bred in captivity ranges from about £9,000 to £16,000, and the breeders who supply the trade are struggling to keep up with demand.
While some estimates suggest that there are less than 20,000 wild lions remaining in Africa, the International Fund for Animal Welfare reports that another 3,000 languish in captivity, bred as targets for trophy-hunters. But breeders have found a lucrative sideline to the bloody business of feeding canned hunts. By removing cubs from mothers after about four days – to induce another breeding cycle – they can rent them out to tourist parks to participate in lion-walking attractions.
Tourists and the gap-year students employed as guides – many of whom have paid up to £2,000 for conservation placements with agencies such as Real Gap and All Africa Volunteers – are told that the lion cubs are being raised for release in the wild, but big-cat expert Dr Sarel van der Merwe, of the African Lion Working Group, says this is impossible.
“Captive-bred lions can be released only into relatively small areas, such as fenced-off game farms and private nature reserves. Invasive management will always be necessary, such as removing the breeding males to prevent inbreeding,” he says. “In such cases, the older males will have to be placed elsewhere – and where will that be? I’m of the opinion that such males will have to be hunted for trophy purposes.”
In fact, there’s not much else you can do with a hand-reared lion. “Hand-rearing of lion cubs will ensure that these animals are imprinted to humans, and that they will thereafter lack natural avoidance behaviours,” warns Dr Luke Hunter of the Wildlife Conservation Society. Put another way, captive-bred, hand-reared lions have the potential to become man-eaters, and thus can never be allowed to roam free.
Daniel Turner, of the animal-welfare group the Born Free Foundation, says that captive-bred lion cubs often have their teeth and claws removed, and are drugged before meeting tourists. “These animals are bred entirely for entertainment and derive no benefit whatsoever from these operations,” he said. “We urge people not to participate in any form of interaction with lions or other big cats.”
Neither the Alert programme nor Sir Ranulph Fiennes could be reached for comment, but the Aquila game reserve, in South Africa, said that, following complaints from tour operators, it had now ceased offering lion-cub petting. In an e-mail to The Sunday Times, the park said: “We do not have lion cubs at the moment, but we do have cheetahs you could interact with.”
Kuoni said that it works with the Born Free Foundation to ensure that the excursions it offered were ethical, but that it is sometimes impossible to stop customers being offered unapproved products by suppliers.
“Kuoni currently features Aquila as an overnight excursion from Cape Town, as a safari experience,” it added. “Given the allegations regarding cub petting, which is condemned by Born Free, Kuoni has withdrawn Aquila from sale until further notice while investigations are being carried out.”
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P R E S S S T A T E M E N T
14 FEBRUARY 2008
ISSUED JOINTLY BY ANTELOPE PARK, ALERT, AND SIR RANULPH FIENNES IN RESPONSE TO THE SUNDAY TIMES ARTICLE “AFRICAN LION ENCOUNTERS: A BLOODY CON,” PUBLISHED ON FEBRUARY 10, 2008
Contact:
Marleen Lammers, PR Manager, Antelope Park, Gweru, Zimbabwe
Email: [email protected]
David Youldon, Chief Operating Officer, ALERT, Gweru, Zimbabwe
Email: [email protected]
Sarah Raine, PR Manager, Real Gap, Kent, United Kingdom
Email: [email protected]
The article 'African Lion Encounters: A Bloody Con,' which was written by Chris Haslam, and published in the Sunday Times on Sunday February 10, is full of inaccuracies. We feel that this article strongly misrepresents ALERT, a trust that is dedicated to ensuring the future of the African Lion, and Antelope Park, where the programme is based.
The article claims that “as many as 59 lion cubs raised at Antelope Park have been sold to big-game-hunting operations to be shot for sport.” No lion from Antelope Park has ever been, and never will be, intentionally sold for canned hunting. African Encounter is completely against canned hunting. Our freely available information clearly states this. A total of 39 lions have been sold by Antelope Park since the current owners acquired the property in 1987. 37 of those lions were sold, in two groups, one in 1999 and the majority in 2002 to a captive centre in South Africa. There was a pre-condition on the provision of an export permit by the Zimbabwe Wildlife Authority that those lions could not be used for canned hunting.
Furthermore, the lions that were exported were to be monitored by the relevant wildlife authorities within South Africa to ensure that the provisions of the sale were upheld. Two further lions were sold to a private breeder within Zimbabwe, not associated in any way with hunting, in 2005. No other sales of lions have ever taken place.
The article also states that tourists and volunteers “are told that the lion cubs are being raised for release in the wild,” and that “captive-bred, hand-reared lions have the potential to become man-eaters, and thus can never be allowed to roam free.” At no time are any visitors to the project informed that the captive bred lions will be released into an unfenced area. We are fully aware of the fact that captive bred lions without a natural fear of humans can become man-eaters, and this is why this form of release has never formed part of the release programme. All the information provided by Antelope Park and ALERT clearly states that the captive lions are rehabilitated into a fenced, managed eco-system, free of humans, where they will have offspring. These cubs are raised by the pride (stage 3 of the programme), in a natural environment free of any human contact. They will therefore be able to be released into the wild with the same avoidance behaviours towards humans as any wild born lion.
Furthermore, the article states that Antelope Park employs tourists and gap-year students as guides. Antelope Park does not use fee-paying tourists or gap-year students as guides. These self-funded eco-tourists pay for the opportunity to work alongside our guides and lion handlers to further the conservation, research and community work that we undertake.
As a specific example of these eco-tourists, the article mentions “agencies such as Real Gap.” David Stitt, Managing Director of Real Gap comments: "As market leaders in the gap break market, Real Gap's policy is to endorse responsible conservation programmes. Antelope Park is an ethical, well-managed programme. It is clear in all our correspondence with our volunteers that the lions that they work with are part of a captive programme. Our volunteers do not have physical contact with those lions in the stages of the programme where the aim is eventual release into the reserves and national parks."
In addition, the Sunday Times article quotes two scientists, Dr Sarel van der Merwe and Dr Luke Hunter of the Wildlife Conservation Society, on the pitfalls of releasing lions into the wild. Antelope Park has actually received a letter from Dr van der Merwe advising us and supporting us on the work and research that we were doing. In an email that was sent on June 12, 2004, he told us the following: "Generally speaking, the feeling amongst scientists is that captive bred lions cannot survive in a natural environment. I beg to differ. I have reviewed too many reports to the contrary…I believe one can rehabilitate the lions." Additionally, we have also received the following from Dr Pieter Kat, a senior lion expert, in June 2005:
"…we can begin programmes of lion reintroduction in a wide variety of depopulated areas. Such programmes will not only be immediately positive, but will also place lions squarely in the category of animals like rhinos whose plight seems to be better appreciated by the international conservation community. This is why I am appreciative and excited to be involved by the initiatives taken by Antelope Park. Through years of self-funded and determined effort, they have developed a program of re-introduction that has a very good chance of success. Predators of any description are notoriously difficult to reintroduce, but now we have at least a workable plan. As I said, the future of African lions is in African hands. Let us salute those who have been steadfast to ensure this future, and recognize that any action is better than the currently looming extinction of an African icon if we do nothing."
In August 2007, we released our first pride of lions into stage two; a managed ecosystem where the lions have been successfully hunting for six months now. They have brought down prey from warthog to adult giraffe, which is a remarkable achievement from the captive cubs that they were. The ALERT and Antelope Park programme is also involved in conservation of other species, research and community development in order to provide sustainable programs to the benefit of Africa's wildlife and its people.
With regards to the treatment of our lions, a letter we received from WWF Southern Africa Regional office (written on January 10, 2005) following visits by independent ecologists, Zimbabwe Park And Wildlife Authority, and Society for the Protection of Animals, states that the Antelope Park programme is "highly ethical and extremely well managed." Keith Dutlow BVSc, MRCVS and Lisa Marabini BVSc, MRCVS, two vets we have been working with during the past two years, complied to this in a reaction to the article, stating that “as independent consultant vets to Antelope Park since February 2006, we can attest that since that time, no animal has ever been de-clawed, de-fanged, or drugged for entertainment purposes. Also, every lion at Antelope Park has been micro-chipped and no lions have been sold to other operators nor removed from the program under suspicious circumstances since our involvement.”
Furthermore, according to the article, “neither the Alert programme nor Sir Ranulph Fiennes could be reached for comment.” Neither Antelope Park nor ALERT are aware of any attempts of the Sunday Times to contact them for information. In fact, the email below sent to us by Sacha Lehrfreund from the Sunday Times Picture Desk, on 6th February, requesting photographs was responded to immediately with an offer of furnishing The Times with details of our lion rehabilitation and release programme, but no such offer was accepted. When no response was received, our marketing department placed a call to the picture desk on Thursday February 7th, but this was rudely dismissed. The paper’s representative claimed to have no time to talk to us, and refused to transfer us to any of her colleagues.
Contrary to the article’s claims, Sir Ranulph Fiennes was never contacted by the Sunday Times either. His response to the article is as follows: “I am proud to be a small part of ALERT and I am ashamed of the uninformed Sunday Times article 'African lion encounters: a bloody con' as an example of the worst type of libelous, inaccurate writing. This by a journalist bent on thrashing ALERT, a highly worthwhile body of individuals, black and white, in Zimbabwe whose sterling non profit efforts to protect the endangered African lion deserve praise not lies.”
Anyone is free to visit Antelope Park to see for themselves how we operate, and how our various conservation, research and community programmes are benefiting Africa. We feel that anyone wanting to make comment about the voracity of our aims should at least make an effort to find out about the programme and read the freely available literature.
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A tangled web of statements indeed! The first thing to note is that Dr P Kat, whose statement is used in the above defence of the ALERT project, is a paid consultant to the project. The second point to note is that we know full well that Dr van der Merwe is strongly opposed to the project, and that ALERT are yet again miss-representing his views.
The original article by Chris Haslam does not claim that Antelope Park 'de-clawed' or 'de-fanged' their lions - it is a statement about captive lions in general, and the statement of their paid consultant vets that no lions have been removed from the project under 'suspicious circumstances' since 2006, is a non-statement - what matters is how many lions have been removed from the project, and where did they end up? Whether they find the circumstances suspicious or not is irrelevant.
On ALERT's Facebook support group, David Youldon, ALERT Chief Operating Officer, has admitted (in a statement now deleted) that:-
"It is possible that some of the lions that we sold to South African breeders were sold on a number of times and ended up in the canned hunting industry and this is entirely regrettable."
He also stated :
"We are in the process of providing the Sunday Times will all relevant documents to confirm the content of our press statement, including letters from the buyers of those lions, from vets, the WWF etc. Those documents will be made available for anyone that wants to view them at our offices in Harare, please contact +263 (0)4 702814-7 to arrange to view these documents."
The Sunday Times never did get to see these documents, but we doubt that they are the documents which we really want to see anyway.
To me the case is clear - Antelope Park sold 39 of their lions, with no control over their final destination or end fate. I elieve it is highly likely that the owners of Antelope Park knew full well that these animals would end up in canned hunts, despite their claims otherwise.
David Youdlon posted the following statement on 5th April:
"An article 'African lion encounters: a bloody con' printed in the Travel Section of the Sunday Times newspaper on 10 February 10 2008 said that as many as 59 lion cubs raised at Antelope Park had been sold to big game hunting operations to be shot for sport.
Antelope Park filed a complaint with the newspaper as well as with the Press Complaints Commission as well as publishing a press release refuting these claims. Evidence to corroborate our position was provided to both the newspaper and the commission and also made available to other interested parties.
Today, the newspaper has printed a retraction of that allegation:
"We accept that the owners of the park never have and never will intentionally sell lions for 'canned' hunting....We regret any impression that Antelope Park co-operated in the supply of animals for hunting."
Aparently therefore the complaint was upheld due to the lack of evidence to indicate that Antelope Park had knowledge of the likely fate of the lions, despite their acknowledgement of the exports and David Youldon's own statment (above).
We believe that for Andrew Conelly, a captive lion breeder and the owner of Antelope Park since 1987, to defend his actions on the basis that he was unaware of the prevalence of canned hunting in South Africa and the likely fate of these lions, indicates that he is either ignorant - as he claims - or a con-man as we claim - or quite possibly both. Why did he think his lions where worth so much value to a captive facility in South Africa if it was not for hunting? South Africa is and was awash with captive lions, yet it is demand for canned hunts which still maintains a high market price of each animal.
We further believe that many more lions from Antelope Park have ended up being killed in canned hunts than the 39 already admitted, and not all of them in South Africa. We believe that 'canned hunts' of lions bred at Antelop Park have even happened in Zimbabwe itself, and on more than one occassion...
Antelope Park and ALERTs over-vigerous defence of their own actions in exporting lions to South Africa yet again gives legitimacy to an industry which exploits animals and tourists. Captive lion breeders, with direct associations to the canned hunting industry in South Africa, use tourism interactions such as 'cub petting', 'lion walks' and proposed 'conservation rehabilitation and reintroduction' programmes, to support their business operations and as cover for their true purpose - to profit from the exploitation of animals. The retraction of this article, which made no errors in its specific alligations in relation to Antelope Park, has given legitimacy to an industry whose double standards desperately need to be exposed. African lion encounters are, without doubt, a bloody con!
The most likely reason this story was retracted by The Sunday Times and ALERTs complaint upheld by the Press Commission is in relation to Aquila Private Game Reserve, which we understand has never bred or sold lions into canned hunting. Their statement follows below.
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Statement by Aquila Private Game Reserve
Chris Haslam African Lion Encounters : A bloody con (ST 10 February) wants to link the 4500 hectare Aquila Private Game Reserve conservancy (in the Karoo, near Cape Town) with a lion park nearly 1000 miles away in Zimbabwe in the practice of selling lion cubs for canned hunting.
The truth is that Aquila does no such thing. In fact, Aquila has never sold a single lion or cheetah cub – let alone for canned hunting.
This was confirmed prior to the release of the article by the internationally-regarded Campaign Against Canned Lions. Its Chris Mercer wrote to us : "We accept that you have no links with canned hunting; that you have not sold any animals into that dreadful industry, and that the lions you have purchased have been placed into a 120 hectare sanctuary where they will not be hunted".
Haslam was copied with this letter. Yet he does not disclose that in his article.
It’s true that Aquila once allowed visitors to assist feeding the rescued lion cubs as they still had to be bottle fed-and were too defenceless to be released. This practice ceased several years ago but not because of any complaints as implied by your article. Nor were visitors ever charged for the experience as was also implied by the article. These cubs moreover were saved from a captive breeding facility and not 'born free' as the article insinuates.
As part of our conservation function, we offer a (free) educational interaction with our cheetahs. They were also captive bred, not 'born free' as the article insinuates. The experience is strictly controlled and in the interest of cheetah survival worldwide.
Note from Chris Mercer of the CACH:
Dear Sir,
We wish to place on record that we have no quarrel with the ethics of your eco-tourism resort. We accept that you have no links at all with canned hunting; that you have not sold any animals into that dreadful industry, and that the lions you purchased have been placed into a 120 hectare sanctuary where they will not be hunted.
The confusion all stems from the fact that for a time, Aquila offered lion cub-petting to its visitors, which we know has been stopped.
We did receive an email from the Sunday Times enquiring whether you still offered cub petting, and we replied saying that you no longer do so.
We congratulate you on the excellent facility you have established at Aquila Game Park as well as your conservation ethics, and hope that you will continue to receive good support from the eco-tourism industry.
Kind regards
Chris Mercer
Campaign against Canned Hunting (CACH)
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So it appears that Chris Halsam had been given false information relating to the Aquila Game Reserve. We are not sure where he obtained this information, but accept the statement of Chris Mercer, of the CACH, who is also an adivsor to this site.
To date we have recieved no statement from Seaview Lion Park, who are also named in the article. See our section 'SA Lion Park Exposed'.
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