“Thousands of farmed lions are born into a life of misery in South Africa every year in cruel commercial breeding facilities,” Edith Kabesiime, the wildlife campaign manager of the non-profit World Animal Protection, wrote in an email.
“This latest move by the government of South Africa is courageous—taking the first steps in a commitment to long-lasting and meaningful change. This is a win for wildlife.”
In some captive-breeding facilities around the country, tourists pay to pet, bottle-feed, and take selfies with lion cubs and walk alongside more mature animals.
Critics say such interactive tourism leads to abuse and inhumane breeding practices such as speed breeding—the early removal of cubs from their mothers so they can produce more young.
Many captive lions are sold to hunting facilities at the end of their lives, Michler says, where they’re shot by trophy hunters, sometimes in “canned” hunts held in fenced areas. Trophy hunters keep the skins and heads, and their bones are often exported to Asia for use in traditional medicine.
South Africa set an annual quota for the number of lion skeletons that could be exported legally until 2018, when South Africa’s National Council of Societies for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals filed suit to stop the practice. That year, the government nearly doubled the department’s previous export quota, from 800 to 1,500.
This is “huge,” Michler says. “We believe this is a significant shift in thinking and a fairly clear mandate from the minister to everyone that this has got to be phased out.”
It’s now up to South Africa’s parliament to make the recommendations law. Given the level of support from the government already, “we don’t foresee that it’s going to be turned down by parliament,” Michler says.
The South African Predator Association, a pro-captive breeding organization, did not respond to a request for comment.
(National Geographic)