CUB PETTING
A few years ago, I worked for a volunteer organisation in South Africa. We had a big group of volunteer tourists from the UK come over and all of them had one request for their time in South Africa – to pet a lion cub. Apparently they had seen pictures of people doing just this all over social media so they wanted to have a go too. Unfortunately, at this point, I was only at the beginning of learning about the bushveld and hadn’t trained as a field guide yet or studied conservation biology, so in my naivety, I had no idea of the implications of what we did next.
On one Saturday morning we loaded the cars with volunteers and headed an hour down the road to an animal ‘sanctuary’ where we got to be within a few feet on two lion cubs. The sanctuary owner claimed that they were orphans. However, she also claimed that we couldn’t touch the cubs due to the desire to have these cubs returned to the wild one day. Now, I understand that we have animal shelters and rescue centres across the globe filled with puppies and kittens that have actually been orphaned. We can even push this to foxes, racoons and potentially the odd genet over here in South Africa. But think about it…
Lions are an unusual species. They have very few competitors in their environment and they are extremely social. The main threats which they face are anthropogenic in the form of persecution, climate change and habitat destruction. And even if a lioness was killed, unless they were extremely young, her cubs would most likely be taken on by other lionesses in the pride. So how did a ‘wildlife sanctuary’ end up with two seemingly motherless lion cubs?
There’s an interesting phenomenon in the bush. When a dominant male lion in a pride dies and another takes his place, this new male lion will kill all the cubs in the pride – this is known as infanticide and it occurs for multiple reasons. The key one being that this will induce oestrus in the females of the pride, allowing the male to mate with the females and have them produce his offspring and no one else’s. After all, it’s never been about the survival of the fittest species, its survival of the fittest individual. And essentially fitness means one’s ability to pass genes down to the next generation. So, this means that generally when lion cubs are removed from a lioness she will return straight to oestrus. Unfortunately, humans have figured out how to use this phenomenon to our advantage. By removing cubs from a lioness when they are only a couple of hours or days old, humans have been able to create lion breeding machines with females constantly in a state of oestrus or pregnant.
There is an increasing trend of setups calling themselves ‘wildlife sanctuaries’. In these ‘sanctuaries’ females lions are used as breeding machines. Cubs are taken away from females at a very early age to be used for petting and photos. Then, as the cubs get older, they are used to sell ‘walks with lions’ and then sent to the pseudo hunting industry, where the lions are drugged, put in a small pen and shot by a high paying ‘hunter’. In fact, in the case of this ‘hunting’, lions only need to be released into their cage 36 hours before the hunt in order for it to be considered fair chase…in my opinion there’s nothing fair about any of it.
And on top of that, after the head of the lion has been taken off the carcass to be stuck on someone’s wall, the bones are shipped off to Asia to be used in the ‘tiger bone’ trade for traditional medicine. Does that sound at all ethical to you? Does that sound like something someone who innocently wants a photo with a lion cub would want to get involved with if they knew the real story?
“WHAT WE HAVE HERE IS CRUEL EXPLOITATION OF HELPLESS LION CUBS AND THE SCAMMING OF THOUSANDS OF TOURISTS AND VOLUNTEERS EVERY YEAR.”
Tully, 2019
We can’t take away from the fact that there are some true sanctuaries doing extremely beneficial work. These places do not breed big cats, they improve the life of individuals which would have otherwise been exploited in circuses, the pet trade or elsewhere and they most definitely do not allow human interaction. But in places which allow tourists to interact with predators the name ‘wildlife sanctuary’ can essentially be changed to ‘captive breeding facility’ or even to some ‘lion farm’. In South Africa alone there are roughly 300 lion breeding facilities which are home to around 7800 lions. Shockingly, there’s never been a complete audit of these facilities so numbers are estimates at best. Some would rejoice at this, as lions now only occupy 8% of their historical range – a decline of which half has taken place in the last 2 decades. There are now around 23,000-39,000 lions in the wild. So, is having 7800 in captivity not a good thing? Does it not bolster the wild population? It appears not.
Many suggest that breeding lions for consumptive uses such as cub petting places a greater threat on wild lions. It draws attention and tourism income away from national parks where it can be used to support entire ecosystem conservation and directs it towards businesses which make their profit from lying to customers. There are many captive breeding facilities which claim that their cubs will eventually be returned to the wild. This is both utterly false and would be dangerous ecologically if it did take place. Reintroducing lions that have been habituated to humans and have never been taught to hunt is a disaster waiting to happen. On top of this, there is the possibility that reintroduced lions could have disruptive genetic effects and introduce disease or parasites into a wild population which has no resistance to these threats.
All I’m saying here is that there are so many better ways to support lion conservation than visiting a cub petting centre. For example, you could stay at a lodge which actively supports and sponsors lion conservation and research. At the end of the day, petting a lion cub is not likely to be a life changing experience. You’re going to pay the equivalent of $10 for a photo of you with this poor cub which has been ripped away from its mother and will end its life drugged in a cage getting shot at. For what? A profile picture? Is it really worth it? Is it really the best choice to make?
“TRANSFORMED INTO LARGER RANCHES, THERE OULD BE GREATER CARRYING CAPACITY FOR WILD-MANAGED LIONS (INSTEAD OF CAPTIVE-ORIGIN) AND AN ETHICAL, ECOTOURISM OFFERING WHICH MAY BE LESS IMMEDIATELY LUCRATIVE BUT MORE LABOUR-ABSORPTIVE AND SUSTAINABLE THAN CAPTIVE PREDATOR EXPLOITATION”
Harvey, 2020
Its not just the customer who should feel the need to make a change. South Africa also has a reputation to uphold in all of this. It makes an extraordinary amount of money from tourists and if tourists were to learn about these petting facilities it could tarnish the reputation of this country. Another aspect to consider is that these facilities don’t actually contribute that much to tourism’s overall income. A very recent paper by Harvey - see the reference list below - found that predator interaction only constitutes around 0.96% of the total GDP contribution that tourism makes to the country. Tourists sit in a powerful position, they have a huge amount of choice as to where they spend their money. So why would they not spend it in a country which doesn’t support captive lion breeding like this? Would the land on which these captive breeding facilities sit not be better transformed into protected areas where ethically sound conservation and tourism practices can be carried out? These facilities roughly equate to 160,000 hectares of land, which would be an important contribution to South Africa’s total percentage protected area.
There are so many better ways to interact with nature in southern Africa. It truly has some spectacular sites which are worthy of your time and effort. However, I cannot think of a time or place when directly interacting with or touching wildlife is acceptable as an activity for tourists. Educationally speaking, the knowledge to be gained from touching animals can be equalled, if not surpassed, when sat in a game viewer and going on a drive to view wildlife in their natural habitat, carrying out relatively natural behaviours and interacting with their environment. This is far more educational than sitting in an unnatural pen with an animal which has never had a natural life, ever, not since the day in was born. It allows one to understand how all aspects of an ecosystem interact and how all members are dependent on each other. It provides a truly holistic way of developing as a conservationist.
So, chances are, the cubs that we saw years ago with the volunteers were not orphans, this was a lie. It is a lie that has developed a whole world of scams, of organisations built to deceive well-meaning tourists. And if nothing else, that in itself seems to be the most unethical part of this whole debate. If I were to leave you with one piece of advice it would be this: you can learn far more about lions through watching them in the wild than getting up close and far too personal with them in a captive breeding facility. Stop going to ‘sanctuaries’ and rather spend your money in a national park or game reserve where you might have to spend longer looking for the animal, but the reward and education that you will get in the end will be far greater!