This is the moment ten lions are rescued from a South African farm that sells animals to foreign trophy hunters for so-called ‘canned hunts’.
Canned hunting is when people pay to kill an animal that is still in captivity. Some trophy hunters don’t even leave their cars to shoot the endangered animals.
A German NGO called Wild at Life went to the farm in November last year to rescue the pride of lions who were kept in ‘a totally secluded and closed shed with no light or grass’.
They tranquillised the emaciated lions, put them on a trailer and transported them to a sanctuary ‘where they will learn to be lions again’.
The team travelled 5,000km in total and spent about 10 hours removing the lions from their ‘horrific’ enclosures.
They said that although they tranquillised the lions, the animals needed to be calmed down first because they were so stressed.
The team said: ‘Thankfully, the lions are now able to live in the sanctuary surrounded by proper trees and a comfortable environment but perhaps most importantly they are able to be together.
‘A canned hunt is a trophy hunt which is not a fair chase. It has been made too easy for the hunter.
‘In most cases the lions are kept in tiny enclosures, are confined to horrible places, with limited or no food, extreme stress, no hygiene and veterinary care.
‘Animals do not stand any chance. Such facilities even put male lions in small enclosures for them to fight each other, so the lions end up with scars on their faces.’
There are an estimated 5,000 lions in captivity in South Africa, which is more than double the 2,000 lions that remain in the wild.
Canned hunting is a fast-growing business in South Africa, with more than 160 farms breeding thousands of lions in captivity for wealthy trophy hunters.
Organisations and activists have campaigned to ban canned hunting for years but the South African government has not made it illegal.
In July 2018, the South African government tried to double its annual export quota for captive-bred lion skeletons – which are used in traditional Asian medicines – but it was scrapped following an international outcry.
Later that year a parliamentary committee called on the Department of Environmental Affairs to make the captive lion breeding industry illegal.
Not only did the government ignore this call, but it retrospectively issued permits to what had previously been illegal breeding farms.
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