Two lion cubs are coming home to Mother Africa, having never known the feeling of the wind in their fur.
Aletta Gardner | about 24 hours ago
CAPE TOWN - Two very special little cats will touch down in Johannesburg on Friday. They’re a pair of lion cubs, who’ve never felt the wind in their fur, or the grass beneath their feet.
Their human carers have dubbed them Yame and George. The two little guys were being used as a tourist attraction at a theme park in Spain. For a price of €10, people could handle them and have their pictures taken with the cubs.
But when one of these holiday snaps found its way to the Campaign Against Canned Hunting (CACH), the organisation felt compelled to get involved. They found the cubs in a shocking state; malnourished, stunted, and stressed from repeated handling.
CJ and Luis Munoz, the organisation’s representatives in Spain, say the cubs’ owner fed them nothing but milk in a deliberate bid to stunt their growth. “The first thing that we noticed was that the cubs were small for their age and we knew immediately it was because of their diet. The abusive owner had been denying the cubs everything that they needed to grow strong bones and get bigger. She was keeping them as small as she could to continue exploiting them for profit,” they explained.
The authorities were alerted, but since the woman could produce nothing more than some papers showing she had bought the cubs from a circus in France, she could not prove that they were born in captivity. The cubs were impounded. CACH took them to Madrid, where they underwent intensive big cat rehab, whilst their human carers looked for a new home for them.
There was nowhere for them in Europe, and things were looking bleak – until CACH made contact with ‘Lion Whisperer’ Kevin Richardson, who agreed to give the cubs a home on his 1,300 hectare sanctuary in South Africa.
CACH managed to raise nearly $15,000 (around R160,000) to bring the cubs home. But that wasn’t the end of the story. Getting clearance for them to leave Spain and come home to Mother Africa was a bureaucratic minefield all of its own, with vaccinations, exit and entry permits and CITES papers all a requirement.
WATCH: Yame and George (who were initially named Spain and CACH) recover in their sanctuary in Spain.
It’s been a long road for these two little sons of Africa, and the difference in them is remarkable. Their carers say they’re playful, lively, and getting stronger by the day. There are thousands of exotic animals around the world that are not so lucky, and CACH believes if Yame and George hadn’t been found, they probably would have died, or wound up in one of the many canned lion hunting establishments.
While Yame and George will never be able to be released in the wild, they will experience the next best thing at their new home.
The Kevin Richardson Wildlife Sanctuary provides a haven for predators at the Dinokeng Game Reserve.
His mission is to highlight the link between cub petting and the ‘canned’ hunting industry through education.
The sanctuary provides the animals in its care the ability to live out full lives, in an open and natural environment, by providing cutting edge enrichment programmes and healthcare.
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