THE SUNDAY INDEPENDENT

26 January 2003

Lions are the Mice

In This Cat and Mouse Game

Wildlife welfare organisations throughout the country have expressed shock over the brutal bungling by the authorities during the removal of eight lions from their Mpumalanga camp last week.

American Kelcey Grimm and her partner Greg Mitchell bought lions Kiara, Mufasa, Baby, Madoda, Scar, Mpandi, Sasha and Nkosi for R175 000 to rescue them from the canned hunting industry in September 2001.

This couple, the trustees of Enkosini Wildlife Sanctuary, ran the Camorhi Game Lodge’s eco-tourism business in the Orange Free State at that time. While there they experienced first hand the horrors of the captive lion breeding industry in which tame lions were, and still are, sold for canned hunts. “We saw cubs ripped from their mothers at birth to be hand reared and tamed, lionesses used as breeding machines and forced into oestrus for “speed breeding” and we know lions were darted, moved to a camp and “hunted” on the same day,” Grimm said. They decided to buy the lion cubs to prevent them from meeting the same fate.

The parents of some of these cubs have already been killed in canned hunts, as seen in the Cook Report in 1997, a BBC documentary that sent shock waves throughout the country with its graphic footage of how this money-hungry industry operates, and M-Net’s Carte Blanche follow ups. This non-ethical treatment of animals so angered the public that the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) collected 55 000 signatures calling on the government to ban canned hunting within days of the documentary being aired.

As a result of the Cook Report which damned nature conservation authorities, especially the Mpumalanga Parks Board (MPB) where a lot of the footage depicted in the report had been filmed, MPB placed a moratorium on the keeping and breeding of captive lions in their province.

When they got the cubs, Grimm and Mitchell applied for permits to have the lions moved to their wildlife sanctuary, Enkosini, outside Lydenburg in Mpumalanga. Their cubs had been moved from Camorhi to the Johannesburg Zoo and from there to the Lion Park in Honeydew while the couple was waiting for the permits for Enkosini but the Lion Park finally needed the space and the couple had to move their lions by May 2002.

Several wildlife sanctuaries and rehabilitation centres applied for permits to keep the lions on the couple’s behalf but every permit application was denied by the relevant nature conservation authorities.

Some locations were not even considered by Grimm and Mitchell because of their connections with the canned lion and/or captive breeding industry so, in desperation, nine months after applying for their permits, Grimm and Mitchell moved their lions to a 15ha enclosed camp on Enkosini.

There was no question of breeding the lions. The lionesses have, in fact, had birth control implants and the couple certainly did not want to perpetuate a cruel and inhumane trade with the lions they had just saved from such a fate.

The battle to keep the lions then started in earnest. “We did not know what a terrible battle this would be – complete with death threats, high speed car chases in which we and the lions were forced off the road, slanderous statements made about us, a dictator-like attitude by the authorities, illegal landings on our closed airstrip, the bungling of the whole capture procedure and even an underhand inquiry into our finances,” a battle weary Grimm said.

The MPB had placed a moratorium on predator breeding and holding facilities in the province as a direct result of the Cook Report expose which had brought their nature conservation practices out in the open and under intense public scrutiny. Even though they were a role player in condoning the canned hunting practice, they placed the moratorium while they themselves investigated the situation. No such investigation could, therefore, be objective.

Bruce Hamilton, a former employee at Roy Plath’s canned lion hunting farm that became notorious after the horrific footage of a nursing lioness being shot in front of her distressed cubs was aired in the report, said he had pleaded with the MPB not to allow the nursing lioness to be hunted. They had ignored him and, when they initiated an investigation after the screening, Hamilton asked, “how can criminals investigate themselves?”

“In true bureaucratic style the MPB failed to make any provision to address the very problem that they themselves had had an active hand in creating. If government had been serious about addressing the canned predator issue they would make provision for animal protection and welfare. The inevitable consequence of this industry is a huge “surplus” of predators that cannot be released back into the wild because they have been hand-reared, bred and habituated as tame targets – mere specimens rather than species,” Michele Pickover, spokesman for Xwe African Wild Life Investigation and Research Centre said.

So, Grimm and Mitchell would not be granted permits, even though their lionesses were “on the pill” and even though they ran a sanctuary and not a canned hunting or breeding facility.

The couple then went to court to try to save their lions and asked for their case to be reviewed in the Pretoria High Court when the local court hearing failed. This review is set down to be heard in the beginning of February.

MPB decided to move the lions about two weeks before this review. “They could have waited for a fortnight. The lions had been living in safety and were well looked after at Enkosini. What difference would another two weeks make? Was it just a power play in which the lions became the mice and the authorities the cats who wanted to play games with their prey before coming in for the kill?” asked Rita Miljo, founder of the Centre for Animal Rehabilitation and Education (CARE) who has also successfully hand reared lions and who initiated the first true lion haven in the country long before the scandals highlighted in the Cook Report became known.

It is estimated that there are more than 2 500 lions (let alone other predators) who are the victims of the canned breeding and hunting industry.

“There is no choice, sanctuaries are an important part of the solution to the problem. Ethical predator sanctuaries, providing a safe haven and where breeding is not allowed, must exist in order to deal with the fallout of this industry. Government should be actively supporting and providing for sanctuaries instead of foolishly and deliberately placing the notion of sanctuaries and the industry operations in the same basket,” Pickover said.

The authorities, while clamping down on people who run true sanctuaries and wildlife rehabilitation centres, have done nothing to stop the canned hunting industry from operating. This shows, once again, how money talks and is more important than the welfare of the animals the self same nature conservation authorities are supposed to protect.

The MPB decided the lions would be moved to the Rhino and Lion Park in Gauteng for safekeeping until the review had been heard and set about, at great expense, getting the lions there. This despite the fact that the legal owners of the lions had found a sanctuary in KwaZulu Natal and had the blessing of the authorities there to bring their lions.

Using an alleged business partner (Mr Ken Heuer) of the Free State captive breeder and owner of Camorhi (Mr Marius Prinsloo) from who Grimm and Mitchell had rescued the cubs to fly the lions to Gauteng, MPB illegally cleared a closed runway on Enkosini to land two small aircraft on the site.

The planes landed just before midday and the capturing team had to wait until about 3pm in the existing heatwave before they started darting the lions. They drove a bakkie with meat into a smaller camp and enticed all the animals, except one lioness inside.

They then tried to chase the errant lioness into the smaller camp using their bakkie. She refused and became extremely agitated and distressed. Then the darting started. One lion, Scar, was left, darted and unconscious in the blazing sun for more than an hour, another lion was accidentally darted three times but eventually all the lions in the smaller camp were asleep.

The weather had, meanwhile, changed and the small aircraft took off in the middle of a storm.

The lions eventually landed late at Lanseria airport. They were released into a camp at the Rhino and Lion Park near Kromdraai and, 24 hours later, still showed the effects of the darting as they were still unsteady on their feet. Monitoring their progress were Heuer, Prinsloo and the veterinarian used by them. Grimm was allowed to see her lions from a distance.

The lioness left behind at Enkosini spent the night sending out distress calls as she had never been parted from the others in her pride before. She was darted on Thursday and brought to the Rhino and Lion Park.

The lions have almost come full circle. The business partner of the OFS breeder who sold the lions to Enkosini when they were cubs also has an interest in the facility where the lions are presently being kept.

Mitchell has testified and/or given insider information in court cases against Prinsloo (and, therefore, his business partner). In one such case the Johannesburg Zoo loaned a lion, carrier of the white lion gene, to Prinsloo who later falsely claimed that Zeus, the lion involved, had died. This proved to be untrue and Mitchell helped with the investigation. The lion was returned to the zoo.

Prinsloo and Heuer are also facing charges in the Bethlehem Magistrate’s Court in connection with the illegal capturing and importing of wild caught cheetahs from Namibia.

There is obvious animosity between Grimm and Mitchell on the one hand and Prinsloo and Heuer who have friends in high positions in MPB.

There is, justifiably, great concern over the future of the lions. “They cannot be allowed to remain in these circumstances as they could very well end up suffering the same fate as their parents. We will not allow this, the public should not allow this, and the interest overseas in this case (which is incredible) should not allow this.

“We have not moved forward at all since the Cook Report expose. Nothing has changed for these animals. Canned breeding and hunting still goes on. The only ones who score are the breeders and people running this type of despicable operation. The talk of communities benefiting from this financially is absolute rubbish. The authorities benefit from the permit payments for hunting while the breeders and so-called hunting operators line their pockets,” said Chris Mercer of the Kalahari Raptor Centre and spokesman for the animal welfare community.

Meanwhile Grimm and Mitchell are determined to get their lions back or, failing that, to ensure that their lions will be looked after in a sanctuary that has no connections to the canned breeding and hunting industry. The lions, in the meantime, have to adapt to their new surroundings. They have to recover from the obvious over-tranquilising and will have to remain where they are, for the time being. Maybe, in two weeks time, they will be on their way home.

The wildlife welfare group certainly hopes so and hopes that rumours that the animals will be auctioned off by MPB should they win the review are untrue.

By Gien Elsas. Courtesy of The Sunday Independent.