A new documentary exposes the dark side of a growing South African wildlife business

Up to 7,000 lions are living behind bars in South Africa. Raised in captivity on private breeding farms and hunting “reserves,” some of these animals are petted as cubs by tourists, who can also walk alongside or even feed more mature lions.

Eventually, many are shot in “canned” hunts, in which lions are pursued and killed in confined areas that make them easy targets. Hunt fees can be as high as $50,000.

The hunters take lion skins and heads home as trophies. Lion bones and bodies are exported to Asia for traditional cures.

As new measures are put in place to clamp down on trade in the bones of endangered tigers, the lion bone trade grows. Substituting tiger with lion bone means that lionesses, as well as trophy males, now have commercial value.

The new documentary Blood Lions lays bare the dark underbelly of South Africa’s captive breeding and canned hunting industries. The film will be screened in Durban, South Africa on Wednesday at Africa’s leading film festival.

Owners of private breeding farms say that more hunting of captive-bred lions takes pressure off declining wild lion populations.

Not so, says Dr. Luke Hunter, president of Panthera, an organization dedicated to conserving endangered big cats. “This industry pumps out cats to be shot in cages or shipped to Asia to supply the demand for big cat parts. Blood Lions blows away the hollow ‘conservation’ arguments made by South Africa’s predator breeders to justify their grim trade.”

I hadn’t planned to write a blog post today, and I don’t normally use my blog as a soap box. But then I woke up this morning and heard about the #AnimalRightsInTourism campaign.

If you live in South Africa or the United States, you probably saw last month’s terrible story about an American tourist who was killed in the Lion Park. The Lion Park, about 30 minutes north of Johannesburg, is a zoo-like game reserve where tourists go for an up-close look at lions and other big cats. One of the biggest attractions at the Lion Park is lion-cub-petting, in which visitors enter enclosures with big cat cubs (up to six months old) and are invited to interact with them. (The tourist was mauled by a lioness in the drive-through section of the park. Despite warnings to keep car windows up, the woman had her window open.)

I confess that I’ve never been to the Lion Park. But about four years ago I went to the Rhino & Lion Nature Reserve, not far from the Lion Park, which offers similar activities. I knew nothing about these cub-petting programs at the time, but while I was in the reserve I saw a couple interacting with a tiger cub and felt really unnerved.

First, the cub looked way too big to be interacting with people. Second, the keeper in the enclosure was handling the cub very roughly, slapping it hard when it got too playful with the guests. And third, I couldn’t stop thinking about what kind of life that cub was going to face once it outgrew its babyhood job.

It’s been well documented that the cubs involved in these petting programs — which exist all over South Africa and are 100% legal — are frequently sold into the canned hunting industry. Canned hunting farms — which are also all over South Africa and totally legal — buy up captive-bred animals at auctions, or breed the animals themselves, and then charge big bucks for tourists to come to their farms and “hunt” the animals.

The Lion Park denies ever selling its lions into canned hunting, despite evidence to the contrary. (Since the tourist-mauling incident, the Lion Park has also announced that it will end its lion-cub-petting program in 2016. Let’s hope the park follows through on that commitment.) I’m not sure of the Rhino & Lion Nature Reserve’s official stance on canned hunting, but according to the reserve’s website its so-called “Animal Crèche” is still going strong. (Read more about cub-petting on my friend Meruschka’s blog.)

I’m not against hunting in general, although why people enjoy shooting animals and watching them die is beyond me. Many of my friends and colleagues will disagree, but I think hunting can be done ethically and I also believe that ethical hunting brings big financial and ecological benefits to local communities in South Africa.

But I am against canned hunting and cub-petting, as well as any tourism activity that puts human beings into physical contact with wild animals. This includes elephant-back safaris, which my friend Kate wrote about on her blog today. As far as I’m concerned, South Africa’s tourism industry would be better off without these activities and I believe they should be banned.

I have one more confession. A couple of years ago I was invited on a media trip to a high-end private reserve in South Africa’s Waterberg region. During that visit, I pet a pair of cheetahs. I justified my actions back then by telling myself that these cheetahs, who had been hand-reared by the couple who managed the reserve, were family pets and would probably never be sold to a canned hunting farm.

But I realize now that my justification was wrong. Those beautiful cheetahs were purchased at an animal auction that almost certainly catered to the canned hunting industry. By petting those cheetahs I was indirectly supporting that industry, and that was uncool.

Blood Lions, a documentary about the canned hunting industry in South Africa, is premiering this evening in Durban. I watched the two-minute trailer earlier today and couldn’t get through it without crying, so I don’t think I’ll watch the whole film. But the Blood Lions release is the main motivation behind today’s #AnimalRightsInTourism campaign. To show your support, please follow Blood Lions on Facebook and Twitter and voice your own opinions about unethical animal practices using the #AnimalRightsInTourism hashtag.

Also, please don’t pet cubs.

“A formal assessment of the South African trade in African Lion bones and other body parts is necessary and urgent says various wildlife organisations”

PRETORIA – The recent meeting between breeders and hunters regarding their role in the management of the lion industry, at which the minister of environmental affairs was also present, has been criticised by conservationists and activists, who say it was one-sided. Conservationists, wildlife organisations and activists were not invited to this meeting.

Only organisations supportive of lion breeding and hunting, including the Professional Hunters Association of South Africa and the South African Predator Association, appear to have been invited.

The minister’s office said the purpose of the meeting was “to address widespread and mounting public concern” about the controversial practice of canned-lion hunting.

It comes at a time when a new documentary called Blood Lions exposes some shocking practices of this industry, and a new international report by TRAFFIC sheds light on the growing trade in these animals’ bones, involving hundreds of South African lion carcasses exported annually to supply the traditional Asian medicine market.

The Department of Environmental Affairs’ official statement about the meeting reveals a fundamental disagreement over what constitutes canned hunting in South Africa.

Although the government and the breeding and hunting industry insist that hunting of captive-bred lions represents the legitimate and sustainable use of a wildlife species, they do acknowledge that “rogue elements” and criminals operating at the fringes of this industry, should be rooted out. They also believe that all that is necessary to rectify the poor public perception of the lion breeding business is to improve and clarify the regulations which govern it.

In stark contrast, opponents claim that factory farming of lions in stressful, unnatural and unhealthy breeding farms for the sole purpose of supplying the lucrative trophy hunting industry, and the secondary income stream from the trade in lion bones, represents a violation of wildlife conservation principles and animal welfare standards, and has no conservation value.

Around 6 000 lions are currently confined in about 150 South African breeding facilities.

While government appears intent on reforming and sanitising the business of breeding and hunting lions, critics want to see it dismantled altogether.  According to the Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks Agency, no lion breeding is allowed in the Mpumalanga Province, and no permits will be issued.

The President of the Born Free Foundation said earlier that “Blood Lions lays bare the truth behind the canned hunting industry that, far from contributing to the future survival of the species, may, in fact, accelerate extinction in the wild, leaving behind a trail  littered with rotting corpses of its helpless and hopeless victims.”

Cape Town – South African Airways Cargo division has issued a notice confirming it will once again be transporting selected hunting trophies, effective since 20 July.

Traveller24 reported on SAA’s decision to ban the transportation, initially put into effect in April 2015, following an incident in which hunting trophies were allegedly shipped to Perth, Australia under a false label of ‘mechanical equipment’.

The move was hailed by conservationists and responsible tourism operators both locally and internationally, with the world’s largest airline Emirates following suit and instituting its own ban on the transportation of hunting trophies.

SAA Cargo announced the lifting of the embargo in a cargo policy and procedures advisory, dated 20 July 2015, saying the airline had been engaging with the Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA). It said the DEA’s implementation of “additional compliance measures for permits and documentation” caused the airline to review its embargo and that it has since been lifted on the transportation of selected hunting trophies, namely “rhino, elephants, lion and tiger”.

The move was hailed by conservationists and responsible tourism operators both locally and internationally, with the world’s largest airline Emirates following suit and instituting its own ban on the transportation of hunting trophies.

SAA Cargo announced the lifting of the embargo in a cargo policy and procedures advisory, dated 20 July 2015, saying the airline had been engaging with the Department of Environmental Affairs (DEA). It said the DEA’s implementation of “additional compliance measures for permits and documentation” caused the airline to review its embargo and that it has since been lifted on the transportation of selected hunting trophies, namely “rhino, elephants, lion and tiger”.

The airline said the hunting trophy cargo would also be “liable to physical and documentary inspection by the relevant nature conservation authorities, as they deem fit”.

While the ban was never meant to be indefinite, the move by SAA Cargo comes as the contentious issue of canned hunting takes centre stage, with the #Animalrightsintourism trending at number two across South Africa at the time of publishing.

The issue is also being highlighted in the Blood Lions documentary by Ian Michler of Invent Africa  – one of the continent’s finest wildlife guides, as well as an outspoken conservationist who has fought for the protection of African wilderness and wildlife. For 15 years Ian has researched and campaigned against the canned lion hunting industry in South Africa.

‘Blood Lions’ is due for release at the Durban International Film Festival on 22nd July.

“The canned hunting industry is unnatural‚ unethical and unacceptable. It delivers compromised animal welfare and zero education. The Born Free Foundation on Wednesday applauded the international premiere of the hard-hitting documentary‚ Blood Lions‚ which “blows the lid off the predator breeding and canned hunting industries in South Africa”.

Last year alone‚ according to the foundation‚ more than 800 captive lions were shot in South Africa.

According to the film makers‚ Blood Lions “shows in intimate detail how lucrative it is to breed lions‚ and how the authorities and professional hunting and tourism bodies have become complicit in allowing the industries to flourish”.

Will Travers‚ president of the international wildlife charity said‚ “South Africa’s failure to address the canned hunting industry has emboldened those who make a living out of the death of lions bred‚ raised and slaughtered on a ‘no kill‚ no fee’ basis.

“The canned hunting industry is unnatural‚ unethical and unacceptable. It delivers compromised animal welfare and zero education. It undermines conservation and creates a moral vacuum now inhabited by the greed and grotesque self-importance of those who derive pleasure in the taking of life.

“Blood Lions lays bare the truth behind the canned hunting industry that‚ far from contributing to the future survival of the species‚ may‚ in fact‚ accelerate extinction in the wild‚ leaving behind a trail littered with rotting corpses of its helpless and hopeless victims‚” Travers said.

Blood Lions‚ directed by Bruce Young and Nick Chevallier‚ premiered at the Durban International Film Festival at 6pm on Wednesday.