THE LION QUEENS:
The Aussie crusader joining forces with Hollywood stars to save Africa’s big cats
Sharing breakfast with a fully-grown lion, lounging elegantly with leopards or waking to the roar of tigers, Hollywood royalty Tippi Hedren has devoted more than half a lifetime to saving and conserving the big cats that rule her home and heart. Some movie stars amass diamonds, designer mansions or divorces. This evergreen actress, who drove director Alfred Hitchcock wild while they were making The Birds, prefers to play “den mother” to a pride of apex predators at the Shambala Preserve she founded outside LA in 1972.
“Everything I’ve done in my life was to lead to my work with animals. If people could be as honest as animals, what a different world it would be,” says the diminutive, indomitable 89-year-old, who rescues and rehomes unwanted or abandoned big cats at her sprawling desert property. Fittingly, perhaps, many of them are show business cast-offs from circuses and zoos, or retired from filmmaking.
“I could really use a corporate sponsor. People think because you’re in the movies, you’re rich,” smiles Tippi, an award-winning wildlife crusader whose love affair with lions started on the African set of Satan’s Harvest in 1969, and survived the ill-fated comedy adventure, Roar, co-starring daughter Melanie Griffith and 100 big cats.
Fast forwards 50 years and Tippi is fighting for an international ban on licensed trophy hunting in cahoots with Priscilla Presley – and a dedicated and surprising co-conspirator, flamboyant Australian Lynn Santer.
Sometimes Lynn has to pinch herself in disbelief that those extraordinary friendships are real. Yes, Priscilla paid a private visit and hand-fed the swans Lynn has lovingly tamed on the lake bordering her Gold Coast garden. Tippi did stay overnight, snuggling up to sleep with Lynn’s adored pet dog following a motherly reminder about the importance of removing eye make-up before bedtime. Truth can be stranger than fiction, it seems.
Throw in a couple of retired commandos, a knight, and a former Zimbabwe RSPCA inspector, and Lynn’s inner circle sounds like characters from a Wilbur Smith bestseller, or the screen blockbuster she hopes their story will one day become.
“People sometimes think I’m on drugs when I talk about my life, but it’s all true,” laughs the author, producer and wildlife activist, who lives with her 83-year-old mother, Clare, at Mermaid Waters, when she’s not campaigning to save big cats and other threatened wildlife.
“That’s the passion I share with Tippi and Priscilla,” explains Lynn, a British-born dynamo with a talent for drawing the most unlikely people together. “So far it’s been 17 years of blood, sweat and tears trying to get this message across, but none of us will rest until we make people aware of what’s going on. It’s layers of deliberate, barbaric cruelty.”
In their sights all three women have the wealthy, influential Safari Club
International – a secretive organisation whose elite members compete to kill the rarest animals in the most unusual ways, according to the Humane Society International.
“We need all the help we can get to expose this brutal, evil slaughter. We’re trying to raise money to make a documentary letting people know what goes on behind the scenes,” says Priscilla, 74, speaking exclusively to The Women’s Weekly from the elegant Beverly Hills home she shares with three pampered rescue pups.
“I have a passion for animals, any animals,” laughs the actress, businesswoman and philanthropist, who connected with Lynn through charity work in 2007. “Growing up in Texas, I’d come home with strays – dogs, cats, bunnies, anything – and hide them from my father, who didn’t want them in the house. When I was only four or five, I remember stealing eggs from the refrigerator and hiding them in my closet, thinking they were going to hatch! So I’ve always been crazy about animals. Sometimes I feel I’d rather be with them than people. That’s pretty bad, isn’t it?”
Priscilla chuckles and then becomes deadly serious: “My heart breaks to see animal numbers dwindling in Africa. I took my son on safari when he was 12, which was magical, but pretty soon our children won’t be able to see lions, leopards, elephants, cheetahs or rhino in the wild anymore.”
It’s a desolate prospect that also terrifies former Hitchcock suspense star Tippi. “The thing I don’t understand is how these trophy hunters can do what they do. How can they take the lives of such beautiful animals, and then take pride in putting their skins on the wall?
“There’s a group of us trying desperately to stop this insanity. We have to make people aware – that’s the first step – and help our children grow up to become sensitive human beings. Otherwise this awful, crazy Safari Club situation will go on.”
In one notorious act of unspeakable inhumanity, a lion called Cecil suffered for 40 hours before his eventual death, after being shot with a bow and barbed arrow by hunter Walter Palmer. The Minnesota dentist had paid more than $56,000 for the privilege of luring the rare, black-maned male from a Namibian game sanctuary to his doom in 2015.
News of the senseless slaughter created global outrage and made Palmer a pariah, at least for a while. Less well-publicised, however, was his link to the Safari Club, whose past members have reportedly included former US President George Bush Snr and Vice President Dan Quayle.
“These people have such money and power, they tend to operate behind the scenes,” says Lynn, 57, who once organised a covert special forces-style mission to gather evidence of the hunters’ activities in Zimbabwe. “If they are so proud of what they are doing and so sure that it’s right, why go to such lengths to keep it quiet?
“You see individuals – like President Trump’s sons Donald Jnr and Eric, who are both enthusiastic big game hunters – posting photographs with their kills on social media. Walter Palmer’s name was mentioned over and over again, yet there was never any mention of the Safari Club. It’s like a dirty little secret. People know about illegal poaching, but they don’t know about this. It isn’t just hunting, which is bad, or trophy hunting, which is worse. This is the legal torture and slaughter of endangered species for nothing other than self-aggrandisement.”
Together the three women are battling to get this message across, via Lynn’s bestseller, Land Of The Free, and a no-holds-barred documentary. Senior British MP Sir Roger Gale, who was instrumental in banning fox hunting in the UK, and keen conservationist Prince William have already been lined up to participate.
“Cecil’s death made headlines, but sadly that wasn’t enough to stop the killing,” says Lynn. “One of Cecil’s sons was hunted in 2016, and another was lured from a reserve and shot with a barbed arrow, like his father, in 2017.”
Trophy hunting is a merciless, high-stakes game in which huge money is up for grabs by governments and safari operators in some of the world’s poorest countries. Big cats are lured from their lairs using live bait
– tethered goats or donkeys – or pursued with remorseless efficiency by imported dog packs that have largely replaced native trackers. And the cruelty doesn’t stop there, according to a Humane Society International report, since those dogs are often trained using brutal electric collars.
Bizarrely, trophy hunting advocates often defend it as a form of ‘conservation’ which culls just a few animals while providing funds for much-needed research and protection of remaining wildlife. Corey Knowlton, a Dallas Safari Club member who paid $500,000 for a permit to hunt and shoot a rare black rhino in Namibia, argued the kill was a vital part of efforts to save the critically endangered species from extinction.
“You can guess what I think of that line of reasoning. It’s bloody nonsense,” says Lynn, whose enthusiasm for wildlife started during her childhood in London, watching home movie footage of African animals filmed by her late father, Neville, on overseas business trips.
Many years later, travelling through South Africa’s Ngala Game Reserve, Lynn finally got up close and personal with leopards – she’s still partial to a spot of leopard print – and even piloted a 12-seater Cessna Caravan plane. As she travelled, she says, “Africa just became part of my soul”.
Back in Australia, where her family settled in 1978, Lynn invited Tippi to be guest of honour at a glitzy Surfers Paradise fundraiser for Namibia’s AfriCat Foundation. “She’s old-school Hollywood – gracious and elegant, but also one tough cookie,” she says.
Then, in 2001, the saga took an unexpected twist. An urgent email arrived from Meryl Harrison, at that time the RSPCA’s chief inspector in Zimbabwe, revealing a new threat to the country’s leopards. Unscrupulous hunters were using packs of dogs imported from the US to chase down the big cats. Even more shockingly, Meryl revealed, Safari Club International was petitioning Zimbabwe and other nations to overturn legal bans put in place to protect endangered species. George Bush Snr and Dan Quayle were both signatories.
“Using dogs you’re almost 100 per cent guaranteed to get a leopard,” explains feisty Meryl, 80, now retired to the UK but suffering post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of horrific African experiences. “Zimbabwe had only just banned this practice – a ban that was almost immediately rescinded under Safari Club International pressure – so we had to let the world know.”
She found a willing crusader in Lynn, who promptly enlisted Tippi and two former commandos in a daring plan to smuggle proof of the hunters’ “barbaric” activities out of volatile Zimbabwe.
“At that stage I didn’t know Meryl from a flying peanut, or vice versa,” chuckles Lynn. “But when I read her email, my jaw dropped. It was clear we had to blow the lid off this.”
Meryl and several brave assistants ran huge risks gaining evidence in Zimbabwe, while Lynn and her Hollywood friends are working towards a documentary. There has been no shortage of struggles along the way but Tippi has little doubt her friend will ultimately succeed.
“She has things she decides to do and she’s very good at doing them,” smiles the elegant blonde powerhouse who helped push the Big Cats and Public Safety Act into US law. “She’s one determined woman.”
Priscilla, who adores her Aussie confidante’s “whimsical” sense of humour, commitment and “contagious” personality, agrees. “When Lynn latches on, she doesn’t back off. She knows time is of the essence; she’s a force to deal with!”
Clearly moved, Lynn brushes off the plaudits. “Oh, I’m not the hero – Meryl is the hero. I’m just the glue bringing people together. But we have stuck at it. We have to live long enough to get action to prevent this senseless slaughter.
“According to an investigation by [US TV network] NBC … 1.2 million animals [have been killed this way] over the past 15 years, or 70,000 each year, many of them highly endangered, and more so by the day. So this film isn’t just about making a noise and winning awards. It’s about getting international laws changed to stop the import of trophy pelts into countries like America, bringing this barbarity to an end.
“When we collect our Best Documentary Oscar – which we will win – I’d like to stand up and say, ‘Today we add a new species to the endangered list: the trophy hunter!’”