This is an excerpt from an article written by Don Pinnock and published online by Daily Maverick on 19 June, 2020.
Almost without exception, every single captive-bred lion in South Africa faces a miserable fate – petted and played with as a cub, then becoming the target in a canned hunt or ending up being slaughtered for the bone trade.
As Environment Minister Barbara Creecy’s questionable Advisory Committee determines future policies regarding the consumptive use of our wild animals, it’s been handed a devastating book by British philanthropist Lord Ashcroft on the ongoing cruelty of South Africa’s captive-bred lion industry.
The final chapter of this book on the horrors of captive lion breeding in South Africa and published this week describes a deeply worrying interaction.
In an elaborate two-year undercover operation funded by Lord Michael Ashcroft, former Special Forces and security operatives documented in detail the names, places, cruel practices and trafficking routes of the industry. All the information was handed to Colonel Johan Jooste, who heads the SAPS wildlife unit. He interrogated Ashcroft’s team members, threatened to arrest them and handed it back.