Film makes no bones about horrors
A hard-hitting feature-documentary on captive lion breeding and the trade in lion products is about to be screened in South Africa
At month end, members of parliament will attend a screening of Lions, Bones & Bullets, the muchanticipated documentary about South Africa’s captive lion breeding industry, which is starting its local and international roll-out.
Few members of South Africa’s conservation community have seen the film, although discussions between local TV broadcasters and the film’s distributors are under way.
It was screened for British parliamentarians last month, ahead of a bill that is expected to ban the import of wildlife trophies into that country by November.
It will also soon be available across Europe where similar legislation could follow.
The feature-documentary, which was completed after nearly three years of investigation and filming in South Africa, Vietnam and Laos, tracks the journey of British conservation writer Richard Peirce as he travels from so-called lion ranches in South Africa to wildlife markets in Southeast Asia.
Included in the film are frank discussions with local lion breeders and wildlife traffickers, clandestine views of the markets that Peirce visits and views of facilities in which the big cats are housed prior to being shot for the burgeoning trade in lion bones.
The film is narrated by British actor Peter Egan, of Harry Potter, Downton Abbey and Chariots of Fire fame.
It follows Peirce’s book, Cuddle Me, Kill Me, which was released in March 2018 and which lifted the lid on canned lion hunting.
Lions, Bones & Bullets premiered at the Monte-carlo Television Festival in Monaco a year ago and has followed Oscar-winning South African documentary My Octopus Teacher as a winner in the Jackson Wild Media Awards in the Educational/ Informational Film category.
Delays caused by protracted negotiations with global distributors could now prove invaluable because the film is expected to make a meaningful contribution to the unfolding debate about the government’s conservation white paper, which is being circulated for public comment.
Peirce says he was under pressure to make a film about his book but soon realised that much had changed in the years since its publication. He teamed up with New Zealand director and now executive producer of Lions, Bones & Bullets, Anton Leach, who has filmed in war zones such as Iraq, Syria and Gaza, as well as having worked on wildlife documentaries for global animal welfare organisation Four Paws, and producer, writer and editor, Jasmine Duthie, also a specialist conservation film-maker, to chart the changes.
While the obvious cruelties of canned lion hunting were graphically exposed through the film’s predecessor, Blood Lions, this time Lions, Bones & Bullets investigates what happened after the outrage when a lion called Cecil was killed in Zimbabwe in July 2015 by a recreational trophy hunter for $50 000.
When the US banned trophy hunting, local lion farmers shrugged off the loss of this lucrative income by switching to exporting lion products, including bones and skeletons.
South Africa is now the world’s primary source of “legal” exports of lion products, which are not only used for traditional medicine but clandestinely substituted for tiger body parts for the manufacture of tiger cake, tiger wine and other products used in Chinese medicine.
In 2019, the South African government tweaked legislation to classify lions and 32 other wild species as farm animals. As the demand for
lion exports — especially lion skeletons and bones — climbed, the government agreed on an annual quota of 800 lion skeletons with the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.
“But, the more that you supply your captive lions into the market, the more you’re raising poaching and threatening the wild population,” Duthie warns.
Although there are no official figures, it is estimated that there are fewer than 3 000 lions in the wild in South Africa. But the number of captive bred lions has rocketed to more than 12 000.
According to the World Wildlife Forum, and other global conservation bodies, African wild lion numbers have plummeted by more than 40% in the past three generations because of loss of habitat and conflict with people.
Lions are not regarded as endangered in Africa. But, with fewer than 23 000 African lions believed to be left in the wild, they are classified as vulnerable.
Alongside its huge captive-bred population, South Africa has one of Africa’s most successful wild populations. The Kruger National Park is estimated to be home to about
1 650 wild lions, the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park about 300 and smaller national parks and private game reserves about 500 lions.
Leach says his most alarming discovery while making the film was that, if poaching and lack of effective conservation continue, the lion is likely to be extinct in the wild before the rhino.
“Without taking anything away from the rhinos, the lion is an iconic species. That’s why this is a really important film. This is something most South Africans — and even the rest of the world — know nothing about,” he says.
Other “unknowns” that the film highlights include the fact that lion petting operations are just the start of a complex supply chain that feeds into the bone trade. In addition, as with other zoonotic diseases passed between animals and humans such as Covid-19, swine flu and Ebola, there is a risk of exporting tuberculosis, to which the local lion population is particularly vulnerable.
Then comes the ethics of substituting lion-based ingredients for tiger body parts without informing Chinese consumers. As an undercover investigator explains to Peirce in the film, it’s cheaper to import lion skeletons from South Africa than to farm and feed tigers in Asia.
“The important thing to remember is that, at any level, this is fraud. You know that whether the consumer is having a photo taken or paying to walk with the lions or a consumer is purchasing what he believes to be tiger wine, he or she is not being told the truth. That is a point that we tried to get across,” says Peirce.
Linda Park, part of lion advocacy group Voice4lions, who has seen the
film and feels frustrated that more South Africans haven’t, points out that Lions, Bones & Bullets is no ordinary documentary.
“Those who have seen it so far — mainly overseas viewers, obviously — have had a real eye-opener.
“This movie may come from a neutral perspective but I think that it shows people the extent to which this has just got completely out of hand. It is amazing that even South Africans have no idea about what is going on,” she says.
Park, too, believes tourists are being hoodwinked.
“Those that go cub petting haven’t made the connection. It’s so nice to pet a cub but what happens afterwards? So I think Lions, Bones & Bullets is certainly a very important tool in helping to get new conservation legislation through.”
Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment Minister Barbara Creecy this week called for nominations for a task team to advise on how to offer captive lion breeders an early exit from the industry.
But Park believes an even more pressing need is to stop captive lion breeding immediately so the legislative process can take its course — and this could be as long as 18 months.
“We are sitting with a problem. What happens to all these lions when the industry shuts down? Allowing breeding to continue during this consultation period is just adding more lions into the pot.
“Then we need to work out what to do with the lions that we do have. All these places need to be inspected and the NSPCA needs to be mandated by the department to take stock of what is actually going on because nobody, including the government, knows how many of these places there are.”
Lizaene Cornwall-nyquist, founder and director of Panthera Africa, who has worked on both the breeding and the rescue side of the lion industry, agrees.
“I’m not just a sanctuary owner. I can talk from personal experience. I was one of those people who was drawn in, raising cubs. I believed their lies until I found out what was really happening. I’ve followed up on animals only to find they’d been used for the bone trade. There are so many lessons that need to get out there. “
Creecy’s early-exit plan would need to be ethical, humane and sustainable. Huge sums would be required to accommodate just a quarter of these captive animals and the country’s sanctuaries are already full, she says.
She fears that most will need to be put down.
“Were actually sitting with between 12 000 and 15 000 lions in captivity. That’s an estimate as there are no exact numbers. The biggest thing is that there is no positive or good life for these animals,” she points out.
“Some of the facilities may meet some of the five required freedoms, providing water and shelter.
“But the quality of life is just nonexistent. There are so many social behavioural issues, there’s conflict, there’s malnourishment, under-feeding, unhygienic conditions.
“These animals have compromised gene pools so there’s no chance of any of them being released back into the wild.”
Against this dismal background, can films such as Lions, Bones & Bullets and even its predecessor, Blood Lions, have an effect?
“I think that they do. At Panthera Africa, we try to educate tourists and international volunteers who have chosen to come to a sanctuary and not a petting or a breeding facility.
“Because of Blood Lions, because of Cuddle Me, Kill Me and now Lions, Bones & Bullets, people’s eyes will be opened to which facilities should be
supported,” Cornwall-nyquist says. After Blood Lions was released there was a reaction, she says, with Australia following the US in banning trophy imports.
“When people see what’s truly happening to these captive lions, that it’s not a beautiful story of Born Free and Elsa and hand-rearing lions for release in the wild, it will have a huge impact. Films such as this will put international pressure on the government to act.
“When Blood Lions was released there was an incredible mood shift. But I feel that Lions, Bones & Bullets has gone a step further, making more international governments aware so that they can ban trophies and stop their countries from participating in the bone trade,” she says.
As the film begins to gain traction, Park says more facilities are springing up. Peirce confirms that the breeding facilities in the documentary continue to operate.
Looking back over a three-year filming journey, Leach says the filming process was not easy.
“We saw a lot of terrible things. We felt a lot of terrible things. We experienced a lot of terrible things. But, unfortunately, that is what is going on. I think, as film-makers, all three of us are, deep down, extremely passionate and emotional about this. But, you have to do the job otherwise no one will know about it.”
As the roll-out of the film gathers
momentum and the conservation white paper does its rounds, opposition to the new legislation is building and a court showdown is almost inevitable, according to conservationists.
But Peirce believes the fight for lions, which started more than 25 years ago, has only just begun.
“When we started with this film, what we wanted to achieve was a genuine investigative piece of work that would allow people to make up their own minds about whether or not lion farming is a practice that should continue.
“I think that we knew the answer before we asked the question. We don’t think the indefensible can be defended and that’s why we felt fairly safe adopting a neutral approach,” Peirce says.
“We suspected that what would come out at the other end of the mix was a pretty damning indictment and that’s what has happened.
“Lion farming and the increasing sale of lion bones to Asia involves exploitation, cruelty, injustice, misconception, fraud and corruption.
“This is a threat to wild lion populations. It is mind-blowing in terms of the huge negativity involved and has no redeeming aspects.
“Lions are a flagship species. What happens to lion populations will be a major factor in determining the future of most wild animals in Africa,” he points out.