Canned Hunting Lions Rescue

We had to fight hard for the lives of these lions. But dedication and passion made this mission a success. For this rescue, a total of 5000km was covered on road and 9.5 hours were spent taking the 10 lions out of the shed. The import and export paperwork from the authorities was issued after a lot of pressure from us, and we finally got a day set for the big day.

Entering and darting was a big problem as the building had only one door and no other entrance. We have decided to drive into the shed and dart the animals inside. Wild at Life e.V. was in with a local team.

And darting has begun. It was a lot of work and took a long time to calm the lions after each darting. These lions had neither access to the outside nor any light and grass, so their stress levels were much higher than usual. But we were committed to taking them out, so we did.

We worked nonstop to move the lions to the transport trailer, which we then drove back to the sanctuary, where they will learn to be lions again.

Mission Two

On our way out we met a lonely lion. He was lion number 22 in the registry and was likely to be sold for his bone as part of the Asian bone trade for local medicine. We named him Georges and promised to come back for him.

Then came the COVID-19 pandemic.

The team found ourselves stuck with no way of travelling to Georges to take him to safety. To make things worse, the sanctuary he was going to did not make the necessary plans to rescue him on their end, so we had to search for a new home for him. Whilst preparing Georges’ permits, we became aware of three more lionesses in dire need. Wild at Life e.V. decided to rescue them all, leaving no one behind.

Finally, our team led by Wild at Life e.V. founder, Asli Han Gedik, arrived in South Africa to rescue Georges, Julie, Eva and Elma.

Lonesome and lugubrious Georges lived day in and day out inside a barren enclosure for four long, painful years. The only company he had was a cement ring that would offer some protection against the South African heat whilst he awaited his imminent slaughter.

The lion farmers were waiting for his mane to grow so he would look “handsome enough” for someone to pay up to an estimated sum of 11.000€ to shoot him in an enclosed area from which there was no escape.

But Georges was born with a fault; his tail was crooked and he was therefore discarded as a future trophy, instead, he was to be slaughtered just for his bones.

The lion bone trade is a lucrative and legal stream for farmers in South Africa and has come about as an alternative to tiger bones for use in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). It is a burgeoning component of the wildlife trade and in the year 2018, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) awarded a quota of 1500 lion carcasses for export a year.

On the morning of the rescue, Wild at Life e.V. and their veterinarian entered the lion farm, they then successfully sedated Georges, Eva, Elma and Julie inside their stark enclosures.

Once sedated, the lions were all then carefully lifted out one by one by our team of six and placed onto their waiting transport.

After a morning of strenuous work, our expert team and the veterinarian had managed to successfully place all lions into their transport for the journey ahead to freedom.

We made frequent stops on the roadside to check up on their well-being.

Finally arriving at the sanctuary, Julie was the first out of the trailer.

The pride’s new sanctuary has plenty of features that would be found in their natural habitat, tall grass to relax in and an array of Acacia, Jackalberry and Marula trees to offer shade and enrichment. As lions possess interdigital glands, they use the trees to transmit a scent when flexing their toes, which aids in territorial marking and other types of olfactory messaging to one another.

Georges, Julie, Elma, and Eva will now live as a pride for the first time in their lives free from the threat of a bullet.

There are currently around 7.000 captive lions held in horrendous lion farms across South Africa, they will all be constantly bred until the day they will be shot for a trophy.

We do not breed our rescued lions, because we know doing so contributes to the problem that we trying to solve.

The lions that we rescue from these notorious farms, can never live in the wild – they would not survive. It also takes up valuable space that could be occupied by another rescued animal and depletes our already limited resources to rescue others in need.

George, Eva, Elma, and Julie are symbols of hope in our campaign against canned lion farms.

Four more lions were saved, and we will continue until there are no-more lions left in horrible farms.