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ALBERT
AGAINST LION BREEDING
AND ECOLOGICAL RE-INTRODUCTION TOURISM
A CON-CONSERVATION CAUSE?
South African Lion Park Exposesd:
And the Volunteer Agents who still support it...
Seaview Lion Park – A (very) dubious captive cat breeder
Here’s a story which I hope you have the time to read, and also check at the links… copy and paste them into your browser. (First posted on my ALBERT Facebook group.)
About a year ago I found the following website:
Travellers Worldwide
Travellers Worldwide is a voluntourism agent, offering paying ‘volunteers’ the chance to support what they believe to be worthy causes. One of their causes (was) a lion breeding project in South Africa.
The statement on their website was as follows:
“LION BREEDING PROJECT
PLEASE NOTE THAT DUE TO ETHICAL AND HUMANE REASONS, WE HAVE DISCONTINUED THIS PROJECT. HOWEVER, WE HAVE THREE SIMILAR, WORTHWHILE AND EXCELLENT PROJECTS YOU CAN PARTICIPATE IN, ALL HANDS-ON WITH THE ANIMALS AND WHERE THEY GENUINELY NEED YOUR HELP…”
I wanted to know more details, so I wrote to Travellers Worldwide asking for clarification. They replied with the following statement:
“I am extremely sorry to tell you that Travellers Worldwide has had to withdraw from the Lion Breeding Project in Port Elizabeth in South Africa. This decision was finally made after a lot of soul-searching on our part and follows a sequence of failures on behalf of the Lion Breeding Centre to comply with Travellers’ code of ethical practice.
Since Travellers began working with this Breeding Park , we have insisted on certain standards being met in terms of the welfare of the animals held in captivity there. Travellers agreed to instigate and maintain a voluntary work programme at the Park on condition that efforts would be made by the Park to pursue a successful release programme for the lions held in captivity. Despite Travellers frequently offering help and advice in how to set about initiating a release programme, and all our efforts to encourage the Park to avail themselves of advice from expert conservationists which we offered to try to provide, no steps have been taken by the Park to release the rapidly growing number of cubs and fully grown lions. Instead, more and more lions are being born and are left in enclosures in the heat. In our opinion, these animals have a very low quality of life. Despite our best and continued efforts to enforce positive change on behalf of the lions, the park has been uncooperative and in our opinion the best interests of the animals and adequate standards of care are still sadly lacking.
It appears to us that the lions are now being kept purely for the sake of monetary gain, with a seeming lack of concern for their mental and physical wellbeing.
Travellers believed that we could make a difference here, but we now feel that the ideology of the Park is simply too far removed from our own and that we have no option but to discontinue our working relationship.”
So all well and good for Travellers Worldwide, who should be congratulated for their ethical stand on this issue (apart from the fact that they still offer the ALERT programme to their 'volunteers'!). But they would not name the specific Lion Park involved, and I was still worried by this project, and after a bit of research, I found the following first hand reports from volunteers (who obviously remain anonymous) at the park:
Volunteer ‘A’ :
“I have recently completed a month's volunteer work at Seaview Game and Lion Park in Seaview, near Port Elizabeth (South Africa). I was one of 6 volunteers, all of whom have serious doubts as to the standards of the park... We tried to address many of the issues with the owners while there - especially the conditions in which their three youngest cubs (14 weeks) were kept - they were penned in to a 5mx2m enclosure from 9am to 5pm and subjected to constant handling by the public throughout that time every day with no breaks. They were clearly distressed however when we addressed this issue, the lion 'expert' there told us we were not qualified to judge whether the animals were under stress or not. Needless to say, when you spend 6 days a week for 4 weeks with three cubs you know them well enough to see that they are happy and calm in the mornings and stressed out, scratching and biting even us, by 3pm after untold numbers of members of the public have been prodding, stroking and trying to pick them up - despite us telling them they are too big at over 20 kilos each. When we addressed the issue with the owner she told us that the cubs were there to make money, that all the adult lions in their park were subjected to the same handling as youngsters and that they are all fine from it, and that most importantly the cubs are there to make money for the park by charging for handling and that their welfare is a secondary concern.”
Volunteer ‘B’ :
“It's called Seaview Game and Lion Park , and it is right outside Port Elizabeth . I went there thinking it was a conservation park, but soon realized it was nothing of the sort. They had over 70 lions living there, and their main tourist 'draw' was that people could come in and ‘hug a cub’. When I was there, we had three 6-month old cubs, six 3-month olds, and three newborns. My job was to take care of the cubs, and supervise the tourists playing with them. I was there during the holiday period, which was the busiest time of the year for them. We had huge amounts of people everyday, and of course they all wanted to play with the cubs. The cubs would get so tired and upset from all these people, and I and my co-workers would try to give them a rest, only to have the owner come out and let more people in. The newborns were kept in the restaurant from the time they were 10 days old, and people got to play with them when they were 6 weeks old.
My co-workers and I became very frustrated with the situation, and also very suspicious about what they were going to do with all of their lions. We confronted the owners as a group, but only received the same spiel about how "they sell their lions to other game parks and reserves, and they would never sell them for hunting". We asked if they could tell us specifically where some of their lions went, and they just hemmed and hawed about this place or that, but could never give us a straight answer. When I was leaving, they were in the process of mating two white lions, as that is their big draw, and they tout them as rare.”
All of which adds up to a pretty clear picture… you would think. Seaview Lion Park is clearly not part of any internationally or nationally supported conservation rehabilitation or reintroduction project (for the simple reason being that there aren’t any!). The big question is where do there lions therefore end up? There is huge demand in South Africa for captive bred lions, which are used to restock private hunting reserves - so called 'canned hunting'. There is also big demand outside of South Africa for white lions for private collections, safari parks and zoos (see White Lion Myth section).
I did some more research and was surprised to find several other ‘voluntourism’ agents offering what looked like the same project. I even wrote to some and tried to warn them of the concerns relating to this ‘Lion Park’, but I am surprised to find that, nearly a year later, they are all STILL offering this as a suitable destination for their volunteers… so I think its time to put a bit more pressure on them by naming and shaming:
Wild at Heart
Global Crossroad
GoEco
All Africa Volunteers
Adventure Bookings South Africa
And you can find the website for Seaview Lion Park here:
Seaview Lion Park
Seaview Lion Park was also named in a recent Sunday Times article, 'African Lion Encounters: A bloody con' (see our section 'A Bloody Con' for details.)
For me this is just one example of why captive cats and tourism do not go together. There is no conservation need to bred lions in Africa. The only reason Lion Parks in South Africa breed so many lions (and believe me, there are many Lion Parks like this one) is to supply demand for canned hunting. That they can also exploit ‘conservation volunteers’ who are willing to pay for a once in a lifetime experience, is a sad reflection of the lack of regulation in this fast growing industry.
Please don’t take my word for it – do your own web-searches for lion parks and volunteer agents offering this type of animal interaction – there are too many to mention!
DON’T WALK WITH LIONS OR VOLUNTEER ON LION BREEDING PROJECTS!
See the following Facebook groups where you will find more information and links:
ALBERT – Against Lion Breeding and Ecological Reintroduction Tourism
The Campaign Against Canned Hunting
Conervation Volunteers
Please join these groups to show your support against captive lion breeders and canned hunting, and share this information with your friends – especially if the are thinking of visiting South Africa.
There are also a number of organisations you can support in their campaigns against canned hunting:
BORN FREE
IFAW
CAMPAIGN AGAINST CANNED HUNTING
Call to 'name and shame'
Please, if you have been to a ‘Lion Park’ or breeding facility which gave you cause for concern, contact me with the details.
Quentin Jones
emailquentinjones[at]yahoo.co.uk
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