Re: Lion Bones export Approved/Blood Lions
Posted: Tue Nov 26, 2019 8:34 pm
Exclusive: Inside a controversial South African lion farm
BY RACHEL FOBAR
PHOTOGRAPHS BY NICHOLE SOBECKI
PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 21, 2019
LICHTENBURG, SOUTH AFRICAThirty-four lions were crammed into a muddy enclosure meant for three. Rotting chicken carcasses and cattle body parts littered the ground. Feces piled up in corners. Algae grew in water bowls. Twenty-seven of the lions were so afflicted with mange, a painful skin disease caused by parasitic mites, that they’d lost nearly all their fur. Three cubs lay twitching in the dirt, one draped over the blackened leg of a cow, its hoof visible. Mewling, they struggled—but failed—to drag themselves forward. A fourth cub looked on, motionless.
“Soul destroying.” That’s how Douglas Wolhuter, senior inspector with South Africa’s National Council of Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (NSPCA), describes the scene at Pienika Farm, in North West Province, on April 11, 2019. The NSPCA is responsible for enforcing the country’s Animals Protection Act, and Wolhuter was conducting an inspection of Pienika, one of the more than 250 privately owned lion farms in South Africa.
“Ever since I’ve been a young kid, a lion has been known as the king of the jungle,” Wolhuter says. “And then you see it reduced to basically an intensively farmed animal—you’ve removed everything regal and noble about the animal.”
https://youtu.be/dRY9xOtDlDE
It is quite a long story and full of photos. If you want to read it all and see the pics, click on the title. The whole thing is rather dramatic and orrido. Before reading this I could only imagine what many of those farms were like, but now I feel sick and horrified
BY RACHEL FOBAR
PHOTOGRAPHS BY NICHOLE SOBECKI
PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 21, 2019
LICHTENBURG, SOUTH AFRICAThirty-four lions were crammed into a muddy enclosure meant for three. Rotting chicken carcasses and cattle body parts littered the ground. Feces piled up in corners. Algae grew in water bowls. Twenty-seven of the lions were so afflicted with mange, a painful skin disease caused by parasitic mites, that they’d lost nearly all their fur. Three cubs lay twitching in the dirt, one draped over the blackened leg of a cow, its hoof visible. Mewling, they struggled—but failed—to drag themselves forward. A fourth cub looked on, motionless.
“Soul destroying.” That’s how Douglas Wolhuter, senior inspector with South Africa’s National Council of Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (NSPCA), describes the scene at Pienika Farm, in North West Province, on April 11, 2019. The NSPCA is responsible for enforcing the country’s Animals Protection Act, and Wolhuter was conducting an inspection of Pienika, one of the more than 250 privately owned lion farms in South Africa.
“Ever since I’ve been a young kid, a lion has been known as the king of the jungle,” Wolhuter says. “And then you see it reduced to basically an intensively farmed animal—you’ve removed everything regal and noble about the animal.”
https://youtu.be/dRY9xOtDlDE
It is quite a long story and full of photos. If you want to read it all and see the pics, click on the title. The whole thing is rather dramatic and orrido. Before reading this I could only imagine what many of those farms were like, but now I feel sick and horrified
