World Lion Day, celebrated every August 10th, serves as a global platform to raise awareness about the plight of lions and the urgent need to protect them from various ongoing threats, including habitat loss and human-wildlife conflict, alongside hunting & poaching. This year, 2024, marks a long-awaited milestone in the conservation efforts for these iconic big cats as South Africa approves the end of captive lion breeding farms and publishes a roadmap to begin phasing out this horrific industry.
While this decision represents a monumental win for animal rights activists and conservationists, it also brings forth a set of challenges and concerns that need addressing to ensure lion conservation and animal welfare remain at the forefront of what will be a long battle ahead.
The Era of Captive Breeding Farms
For years, South Africa's captive breeding farms have sparked controversy. These farms emerged in South Africa in the 1990s to supply lions to the canned hunting industry, where captive-bred lions are hunted in enclosed spaces. For a time, these farms hid behind the guise of conservation, claiming that hunting captive-bred lions takes the pressure off the declining wild lion populations and creates a surplus of lions for reintroduction to the wild if they were to go extinct. However, hand-reared lions are notoriously difficult to re-wild with little success rate, and many of the lions in these facilities are in-bred, suffering health conditions and unsuitable for release.
Over time, breeders found new ways to profit at every stage of lion exploitation, from using cubs for tourist photos and petting opportunities to offering walking experiences with adolescent lions and ultimately selling the lions on to be shot. A worryingly lucrative market for lion bones became increasingly popular in later years, with the bones exported primarily to Southeast Asia to use in traditional medicine - speculated to substitute tiger bones, which are now rarer and more difficult to obtain. This became hugely profitable, so much so that a third of lion breeding farms in South Africa in 2019 were breeding lions solely to harvest and trade their bones.
The Beginning of the End
In 1997, Roger Cook and the Cook Report shone a light on canned hunting and in 2015, the award-winning and culturally shocking documentary Blood Lions exposed how the exploitation of lions had grown out of control. Nearly a decade later, we’re still only in the beginning steps of the curtain closing on the industry.
In 2019, Environment Minister Barbara Creecy set up a panel of experts to explore management policies for four of the ‘Big 5’ species. The panel recommended that South Africa cease breeding or keeping lions in captivity and refrain from using captive lions or their body parts commercially. In May 2021, Creecy announced that the ministry would begin the legally required consultations to shut down the industry. In December 2022, she formed a Ministerial Task Team of conservationists and lion experts to create a “voluntary exit strategy” for captive lion breeders.
Finally, in April this year, the final proposal was published and approved by South Africa’s Cabinet. They’ve acknowledged that voluntary exit should only be the first step in longer-term objectives. This landmark decision aligns with the ethical treatment of wildlife and the principles of conservation biology that the Western world has been campaigning for. By halting captive breeding, South Africa aims to prioritise the health and genetic diversity of wild lion populations, which have been suffering from habitat loss, poaching, and human-wildlife conflict. The end of these farms is expected to reduce the inhumane treatment of lions and shift focus towards more sustainable and ethical conservation practices.
The Fate of Captive Lions
As South Africa transitions away from captive breeding, the fate of approximately 8,000 captive-bred lions across 342 facilities becomes a pressing concern. The proposed voluntary exit strategy outlines several options:
Challenges Ahead
Sadly, it is likely that the majority of these near 8,000 lions will be euthanised. With a wind-down period of 24 months, canned hunting will also continue to reduce lion 'stock'. Although there may be an increase in lions surrendered to true sanctuaries in the coming years, the limited capacity and high cost of care (estimated at around $10,000 per year per lion) will add to sanctuary pressures. Despite these options being explored for voluntary exit, there is no guarantee that all breeders will agree to this route.
Many conservationists and lion experts are calling for definitive deadlines to close down the industry. While the proposal marks a significant step forward, without clear deadlines, lions will continue to suffer in terrible conditions, and illegal activities may increase.
The report recommends the mass incineration of lion bone stockpiles, which is a relief to many conservationists as the worries of the reintroduction of lion bone export could further stimulate the market. However, with the closing of intensive lion breeding farms and a decline in tiger populations, tighter restrictions will need to be put in place to protect wild lion populations from poaching to fuel this trade. This is an argument made regularly by lion-breeding farmers, and while it may ring true, there is no excuse for the profit-driven industry causing the suffering of captive lions.
Moving Forward
While the end of captive lion breeding farms in South Africa is slowly coming into sight and marks a significant victory for conservationists and animal rights activists, the journey ahead is fraught with challenges. The transition away from these exploitative practices demands robust strategies, substantial resources, and unwavering commitment from everyone involved.
World Lion Day 2024 is not only a chance to celebrate this important step forward but also serves as a reminder of the ongoing battle to secure a safe and thriving future for lions. It is a call to action for continued advocacy, education, and support to end a horrific and unregulated industry that has sadly overshadowed wild lion conservation efforts for far too long.
We hope that in future World Lion Days to come, we can celebrate huge strides in conservation where lion breeding farms are left in the shadow of memory, and wild lion populations move from the uncertainty of their 'vulnerable' classification on the IUCN Red List to 'Least Concern'.
