Many of Timbavati’s famous white lions may have ended up as prize trophies on neighbouring game farms
Fiona Macleod
Lions are being stolen from the Timbavati Nature Reserve by suspected canned-lion hunting operators. An employee on a small neighbouring game farm was convicted and sentenced late last month after he was caught red-handed trying to lure a Timbavati lion through a fence.
Brian Harris, Timbavati’s manager, says the reserve is surrounded by “an intricate web of mafia” involved in canned-lion hunting in the Northern Province.
Canned hunting, where the animal is killed in a small enclosure or cage and is often drugged, is regarded as unethical by professional hunting organisations. It is outlawed in Mpumalanga but not in the Northern Province.
“Over the years these guys have been getting away with murder,” says Harris.
Timbavati, a private reserve of some 50 000ha adjoining the Kruger National Park, is owned by 44 wealthy businesspeople. It is world-renowned for its white lions, which are unusually pale because of a recessive gene.
Sightings of the white lions have become rare in recent years, and it is suspected that many of them have ended up as prize trophies on neighbouring game farms.
The theft of Timbavati lions is creating a vacuum into which Kruger park lions are moving, so the culprits are also stealing lions from South Africa’s premier national game reserve.
One of the private farms being investigated by police in connection with the thefts is the 4 500ha Sandringham, owned by wealthy Italian businessman Julio Bertrand.
Sandringham is separated from Timbavati by an electric fence, and when Timbavati field ranger Gideon Mzimba came across a putrid piece of warthog meat attached to the fence last December, he knew something was wrong.
The electric fence had been deactivated by isolaters and had been lifted with a jack. On the other side were other pieces of rotting meat and wiring that would have been used to lower the fence once the lion had gone across.
Mzimba told police it appeared the operator of the lure had departed in a hurry, leaving his equipment behind. Mzimba stayed next to the fence that night and saw the manager of Sandringham, Sam Liversage, and his right-hand man, Mfuwa Malatjie, driving along the fence line at 6.30am on the following morning.
“When they got to the scene, Liversage asked me what the problem was. I replied that nothing was wrong, but Liversage said yes, there was a problem,” Mzimba said in a sworn statement.
Malatjie ended up taking the rap: on March 27 he was convicted in the Hoedspruit Magistrate’s Court of contravening the Nature Conservation Act, by making an opening in a fence so that game could escape. He was fined R1 500 and given a 12-month jail sentence, suspended for five years. Malatjie, who pleaded guilty, said in his defence that a lion had broken out of Sandringham and he was trying to lure it back without the manager knowing about it.
Bertrand spends long periods away from Sandringham, conducting business at Morgenster, his wine and olive estate in Somerset West, and in Italy. He said this week he had not been to the game farm for the past two months and knew nothing about the case, but he would look into it over the Easter weekend.
Timbavati’s Harris says he has spoken to Bertrand about the case; this is not the first time he has brought the luring of lions and other game to his attention. Harris has laid charges directly against Sandringham’s manager in the past, but Liversage has not been prosecuted.
“Our trail rangers say a lot of lions are disappearing from Timbavati,” says Harris. “Timbavati’s landowners take a dim view of this and they want me to take strong action.”