Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
This lion love better off in garden than
Britain’s Tiger Kings chat to Ross Kemp
Ross Kemp looks on bewildered as Reece Oliver kisses his pet lion on the lips. The big cat, along with a lioness, live in Reece’s back garden... in a Nottinghamshire village.
“This lion loves me, he is obsessed with me,” Reece says, as the lion licks his face through the bars of a cage.
Reece, who also owns a puma, a big cat native to North America, went on: “I rescued them from eastern Europe, they were going to euthanise a lot of the cats and asked did I want the lion cubs?
“I brought them up like they were my children, from 10 and 11 days old.”
They belong in the wild, but these lions are among the 4,000 dangerous exotic animals living in Britain’s homes and gardens today.
Ross meets Britain’s real-life “Tiger Kings” in a new two-part ITV series to find out what makes someone want to own a wild animal.
“I didn’t think it was possible to privately own a lion or a tiger in this country,” Ross says. “I’ve found it truly eye-opening and disturbing to discover how easy it is to source one and get permission to keep it legally.”
Under the Dangerous Wild Animals Act 1976, anyone in Britain can keep a dangerous wild animal as long as they obtain a licence from their local authority.
The licensing process requires the applicant to demonstrate that their animals are properly contained to protect the public. But animal rights charities argue this does little to ensure the welfare of the animals or the protection of the owner and anyone else visiting the property.
Reece himself admits it is “too easy” to obtain a dangerous animals licence.
“You just need to know people out there,” he says. “There’s an abundance of animals kept in eastern Europe which are too easy to get. All you have to do is tick a few boxes.”
But he adds: “You need to have experience, you need to know what you’re doing. A lion isn’t just for Christmas, it’s for life.” When Ross quizzes Reece about the ethics of keeping wild animals as pets, he says they would be worse off without him.
It’s an attitude the presenter found from owners across the board, who were all fiercely protective and unwilling to give the animals away to a zoo or sanctuary.
“They are better off here with me, I’d never give them up,” Reece tells him.
“If you take those lions away from me or from the setting they know, it is going to be stressful for them. They’re happy here and love me... when I’m not there they kind of miss me.”
But other villagers do not agree.
One tells Ross: “My fear is on that tiny plot of land there is nowhere near sufficient space to provide those wild animals with what they are born to expect. In my view it’s wrong. Ultimately I’d like Reece to consider what’s best for those animals.” In Horncastle, Lincs, Ross meets Andrew Riddel and partner Tracy who own more than 200 animals.
These include lions, zebras and brown bears. They also had a tiger who recently had to be put down.
The couple started their collection in 2013 when Andrew gave Tracy a zebra for her birthday.
Neither Andrew or Tracy have any formal training in the keeping of dangerous animals, but insist the creatures are well cared for and have a good quality of life.
Andrew tells Ross: “It’s not rocket science. Ask people how much room does a bear want to sleep, how much room does it want in an enclosure?
“If it’s 30 metres by 30 metres, we’ve gone 40 metres by 40 metres.”
Ross interrupts: “Some people would say it needs to be 40 miles by 40 miles...”
Andrew replies: “Well then they need to do what I’m doing, put all my life and soul into it, get off their arse and come and have a go at it. It’s very simple.”
He adopted a circus tiger, Syas, three years ago but Syas became unwell and had to be put down. Andrew tells Ross he never cried when his parents died but shed a tear when he lost the tiger: “I’ll be honest with you... I cried a bit. You don’t want to show it. Everyone thinks you’re tough.
We can all buy a Rolex but you can to Tesco and buy a tiger.
“He was my cat, donated to me. gone. He was a bit of a devil, he wa to kill you every second.
“That was the buzz of having Like a motorbike rider doing 200 round a circuit. I’m honoured to be to have owned one.”
Ross also meets Jim Clubb, an an trainer whose Oxfordshire firm Ama Animals hires out big cats and mon for TV shows and fi Chris Packham pr ously slammed business “appalling” and is clearly unc fortable when shows how on his tig willin ha