SIMBA, THE LION KING I SAVED
UNCOVERING THE TRUTH: Lord Ashcroft in a helicopter on his lion farming investigation in South Africa
or captive-bred lion hunting also argue it aids conservation, that the revenue it generates helps the state to protect the wild population and maintain land.Yet any sense that canned lion hunts safeguard wild lions is dismissed by those who have watched as the industry has mushroomed.
Canned hunting is considered responsible for a surge in poaching. And the increase in demand for lion parts like bones has led to an increase in supply. Lion and tiger skeletons are highly prized in parts of Asia among those who believe it can cure joint pain, arthritis and osteoporosis.
Others buy bone products because they think they will give them greater physical strength or will boost their virility or to use as an aphrodisiac. This “traditional medicine” is pure quackery, of course, but its impact has been devastating for the world’s dwindling wild tiger population.
Tiger wine, produced after a bone is steeped in alcohol then blended with herbs and spices, sometimes drunk by businessmen keen to display their wealth, is as costly as champagne. A particularly sick new trend within the bone market is “pink bone”,
WHEN, in 2018, I set up an undercover operation in South Africa with the aim of revealing more of this sordid business to the world, little did I realise it would end with me saving a lion from certain death.
Simba was a male lion, aged about nine, with a superb thatch of coarse hair and a scar beneath one of his piercing yellow eyes.
He was one of 16 in a brochure my investigator was emailed, each with its own price tag ranging from $13,000 to $26,000, depending on the quality of its mane.
It is likely Simba came from a lion farm where thousands are bred every year; torn from their mothers when days old, used as pawns in the tourist sector, and then either killed in a “hunt” or slaughtered for their body parts.
In between, they are poorly fed, kept in cramped, unhygienic conditions, beaten if they do not “perform” for customers, and drugged.
My investigator posed as the representative of a wealthy American client who wanted to hunt and kill a lion. A price of $23,000 was agreed but on the day of the hunt my investigator said he did not want to shoot the lion but to save it.
In April 2019, nearly a year after first being emailed Simba’s picture, we secured his rescue.
To have saved just one out of a possible 12,000 captive-bred lions from certain death felt like a small but crucial victory in the war to end one of South Africa’s darkest industries. achieved by deboning the tiger or lion while it is still alive. This technique leaves blood in the bone and the resulting products are held in even higher regard. Buying bone is as bad as purchasing any Class A substance from a drug dealer. The whole sordid business around lion bones is, seemingly, immersed in corruption at an official level and is intricately entwined with organised crime at street level. The global trade in wildlife parts is worth billions of dollars a year. Indeed, it is considered to be the third most profitable trade on the black market after narcotics and weapons, meaning there is likely to be substantial crossover between all three.
The business even has a kingpin, dubbed by investigators “the Pablo Escobar of wildlife trafficking”.
He is Vixay Keosavang, originally from Laos, a figure so notorious that in 2013 the US government placed a bounty of up to $1million on his head for information leading to the dismantling
of the Xaysavang Network, an international wildlife trafficking syndicate which he is believed to run.
In a further disturbing twist, some campaigners fear that increasing numbers of lions are being cross-bred with tigers to produce so-called ligers, the offspring of a male lion and a tigress. With their squashed faces and abnormally large bodies, ligers can grow to be far bigger than their progenitors.
ATHREE-YEAR-OLD liger can be the same size as a nine-year-old lion. Its accelerated growth means it produces more bone more quickly. Once slaughtered, it generates greater profits.
So what can be done? First, the South African government must ban captive-bred lion farming, which has no conservation value. The case for a uniform nationwide hunting law, as opposed to individual laws in each province, should also be made.
Wildlife and conservation groups must coordinate campaigns. Airlines, shipping firms and freight firms must be lobbied until they ban the transport of trophies and bones of captive-bred lions. The world’s tourist industry must educate visitors to South Africa that cub-petting and “walking with lions” experiences are just part of this cruel business. It should become socially unacceptable for any tourist to indulge in any of these activities.
Furthermore, I call on the British Government – and every other government – to follow the example of Australia, France and the US and introduce laws to discourage the import of captive-bred trophies. There are difficult decisions ahead, but it is imperative that everybody, especially tourists, helps ensure the barbaric abuse of lions is consigned permanently to the dustbin of history.