The Mail on Sunday

LIONS BRED FOR BONES

REVEALED: The sick trade in the skeletons of these noble animals, taken from their mothers before they can even see, reared so they come to trust humans . . . then shot by ‘hunters’ in tiny enclosures

- From Barbara Jones IN SOUTH AFRICA Additional reporting: Toby Selander

IT IS the most degrading and cruel of fates for the king of the jungle. Bred in captivity, l i on cubs are torn from their mothers while still blind, a few days after birth. Growing up, they are petted as playthings for tourists until they are ready to be released into small enclosures where they will be shot and killed by wealthy trophy-hunters in what are known as ‘canned hunts’.

But then a final indignity is visited upon the dead lions: for the carcasses are sent to the Far East to meet the enormous demand for ‘medicines’, jewellery and even wine made from the remains.

This has been the horrific destiny for 800 lions from South Africa this year alone – and it is entirely legal, as the government rubberstam­ps export licences for the lucrative industry.

China’s insatiable demand is fuelling the trade in the lion bones, while shameful products from the callous trade are also on sale in other South East Asian countries including Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam.

There are about 8,000 captivebre­d lions awaiting this fate on 200 ‘farms’ in South Africa – twice the number of lions roaming free in the wild in the nation.

While internatio­nal conservati­on groups have put up a fierce fight against the callous industry, the quota has been allowed by the powerful Convention on Internatio­nal Trade in Endangered Species, which has 169 member nations.

Its ruling is seen as a compromise to appease many of the countries that were pressing for the legalisati­on of trade in the remains of wild lions as well as captive-bred animals.

With a sad irony, consumers in the Far East believe the bones come from tigers and therefore, in their minds, have almost magical medicinal properties and are seen as aphrodisia­cs. But the strict laws now protecting tigers has led to increased use of lion bones by unscrupulo­us traders.

The practice of canned hunting has long been controvers­ial, and lion ‘ farmers’ are notoriousl­y secretive. But a Mail on Sunday investigat­ion can reveal details of the chain of shocking animal abuse inflicted on captive- bred lions from the first days of their birth to adulthood at four years when they are killed for trophies – and the lucrative trade to be had from their skeletons.

‘ Hunters’ pay an average of £12,800 to shoot the animal in a small enclosure, then take home the skull and skin. The farmer can make extra profit selling on the carcass for about £1,440 to Asian countries. When divided into smaller consignmen­ts, each carcass could fetch up to £50,000 on the streets.

We visited four so- called lion parks and spoke to conservati­onists who have documented first-hand how lions are processed for an industry reviled by animal-lovers.

At Ukutula Park, two hours’ drive north of Johannesbu­rg, tiny cubs were huddled up to their mothers in small woolly bundles.

A few days later they would be taken away and bottle-fed by volunteers, mostly young people who are paying for the experience during their gap years, believing they are involved in lion rescue.

At about a month old, the cubs are submitted to ‘petting’ by feepaying tourists who play with them and take photograph­s for several hours every day.

Later, when the youngsters have become adolescent­s they are used for bush walks in which dozens of tourists stroll alongside the animals armed with sticks – intended to show domination – and are later rewarded with diplomas to show their ‘courage’.

Mail on Sunday journalist­s saw one lion climb a tree to rest on a branch. It was rewarded with a piece of raw chicken thrown up to it by the walking guide – a circus act that helps keep the lions tame.

The guide explains that if the lions kill wildlife in the park, they are not allowed to eat it. They learn this way that their food comes from inside their enclosure.

‘They must remain in captivity,’ he says. ‘And they will die in captivity.’

The story was the same in three more lion parks – at the Krugersdor­p Rhino and Lion Park and the Lory Park, both on the outskirts of Johannesbu­rg, and at Akwaaba, outside Rustenburg, two hours east of Pretoria.

At about three or four years old, when male lions have grown a substantia­l mane, they become the target of trophy-hunters. The parks where they were born often sell them on to canned hunts, despite the sustained internatio­nal outcry at images of drugged lions being placed in small enclosures with no chance of escape from hunters.

Attempts to ban these sick spectacles have failed, although new regulation­s have forced owners to put the animals in bigger enclosures, and to release the lions at least a week before hunting begins, to give the appearance of some sort of fairness.

But this newspaper has been told that lions are still being released on the day they are transporte­d to a hunting enclosure, while still suffering the effects of sedation from the journey. Sometimes, the animals – who have become used to human voices and whistles – are summoned closer to the hunters, who then shoot from their fourwheel-drive vehicles.

The reasoning of South African ranch- owners who run canned hunts appears to defy logic. Clayton Fletcher, a profession­al hunter and owner of Tinashe, in the country’s North-West Province, is proud that his father Douglas was the first person to hunt a captive-bred lion back in 1985. And he justifies the cruel trade by saying: ‘The reason people breed lions is because of the value and the only reason why lions are valued is because they are being hunted.

‘ If you stop hunting, you take away the value of the lion and if you take away the value of the lion, then nobody breeds them and the lion becomes extinct.

‘The only way you can protect an animal like a lion is to give it a value, and unfortunat­ely the only way is through hunting.’

Defending the use of captivebre­d lions for the Asian market in their bones, Mr Fletcher said: ‘We hunt the lion legally and then we notify the nature conservati­on authoritie­s that we would like to sell the bones.

‘There are seven or eight permits

They must remain in captivity and they must die in captivity

we have to get before that carcass goes out. And when that carcass leaves the country, we have saved one lion from being poached in the natural world.’

Derek Gobbett is a celebrated safari photograph­er who was once hired by Americans to film them killing lions, but is now a fervent conservati­onist. He told of seeing the hunters shooting a lioness that had panicked and hidden in a porcupine burrow, and of another animal that climbed a tree to escape and was subsequent­ly shot at point-blank range. He said: ‘I shot footage that no hunter would s how i n order to boast. One male lion was whistled at and the shooter fired from the bed of a pick-up truck; another was impaled on fence-posts and shot. It was slaughter, with ten hunters killing ten lionesses in a week and wanting film footage of each shoot to take home with them.’

He said the lions had arrived the day before the hunt from a farm in Bloemfonte­in. Four were being released into an enclosure at the same time as the American hunters’ private plane landed.

Ian Michler, a wildlife guide and photo- journalist who made the hard-hitting documentar­y Blood Lion, exposing South Africa’s canned hunting industry, is campaignin­g to stop the trade in lion carcasses. He said: ‘Lions are a charismati­c species at the apex of our ecosystems. If we can’t look after them responsibl­y, then what hope is there for anything?’ He condemned the farmers who breed lions in captivity, saying: ‘They’ve tamed the lions. There is nothing noble or fair about the chase and it has nothing, absolutely nothing, to with conservati­on whatsoever.’

According to data from CITES, 2,000 full lion skeletons were shipped to Laos from South Africa in the six years up to 2015 and there were a further 2,300 shipments of incomplete skeletons, meaning bones and parts.

But wildlife activists believe this is just the tip of the iceberg. Tons of animal parts are sent through the porous border dividing China and Laos, with no documentat­ion. Some are smuggled through to Vietnam for Tiger Bone Cake, which is crumbled into wine and used as an aphrodisia­c and bonestreng­thener. One ton of lion bones will make 60 to 70 ‘cakes’, which sell at $1,000 (£762) each. A pilot in the regions aida colleague had witnessed huge shipments of unregister­ed lion skeleton sin cargo holds. They are marked ‘Scientific supplies’ and sent to China. The full extent of South Africa’s despicable treatment of one of the noblest wild creatures has been revealed by Britain’s Environmen­tal Investigat­ion Agency.

Campaign leader Debbie Banks said: ‘There is a huge surge in these businesses now Asian countries are accepting lion bones.’

She predicts a substantia­l increase in the poaching of wild lions, and of the endangered tigers remaining in Asia.

‘We fought against the quota of carcasses allowed by South Africa and we fought against CITES allowing the trade. But the sad truth is that lions have now replaced tigers as the world’s prime source of big-cat body parts.’

The South African government’s Department of Environmen­tal Affairs has argued that allowing a quota for the export of lion bones could help to deter poaching.

But conservati­onists believe this is spurious. Dr Luke Hunter, chief conservati­on officer of wild cat protection group Panthera, says: ‘There is not one shred of scientific evidence to show that canned hunting and legal bone exports help the wild lion population.

‘They only stimulate the demand for wild lion, leopard and tiger parts throughout the world.’

And Mark Jones, of conservati­on organisati­on Born Free, said: ‘The intensive breeding of lions and their exploitati­on for profit is completely unacceptab­le. South Africa’s lion- breeding industry serves no conservati­on purpose and the animals all too often suffer short, miserable lives. The government has a responsibi­lity to close this industry down and focus on protecting wild lions.’

His organisati­on i s seeking tighter rules on trophy imports into both the EU and the US.

The animals suffer short, miserable lives – this industry needs to stop

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