Eight lions supposedly saved from the canned hunting industry face being harmed by their owner’s good intentions clashing with the law.
Greg Mitchell and Kelcey Grimm bought the lions from a breeder, Marius Prinsloo, for R175 000 and gave them shelter at the Enkosini reserve they established outside Lydenburg. But they neglected to arrange for permits to keep the animals in Mpumalanga, the only province that expressly forbids lions being kept in captivity.
Now a court has ordered that the cats be shipped back to Gauteng.
Ken Heuer, representative of Great Cats in South Africa, who keeps lions at a park outside Johannesburg, said the lions might be killed by their owners’ misdirected kindness. He says the animals are placed at risk every time they are tranquilised and moved.
Heuer clashed with Grimm and Mitchell at Prinsloo’s Camorhi Game Lodge where Heuer had kept some of his lions. His lions were drugged when Grimm and Mitchell moved their own lions. Heuer’s lions lost their cubs and he believes Mitchell is unfit to care for lions.
”My only concern is for the lions and I get mad when people endanger them. I have a passion for cats and I will do anything to help those in need,” said Heuer.
Grimm and Mitchell bought the lions from Prinsloo’s Camorhi Game Lodge, near Bethlehem in the Free State. They claim that the lodge was involved in canned hunting and that they saved the lions from this fate. The pair ran the eco-tourism side of Prinsloo’s business at Camorhi, but left in September 2001 deeply troubled by what they had seen.
”We saw first-hand the horrors of the captive lion-breeding industry: tame lions sold for canned hunts, cubs ripped away at birth from their mothers, lionesses forced into oestrus for ‘speed breeding’.
”We ultimately had to receive an order from the High Court in Bloemfontein in September 2001 to remove the four older lions because the Prinsloos withheld them from us illegally,” Grimm said this week. ”We believed that the lions would ‘disappear’ into the system.
”The Prinsloos knew that the lions meant everything to us and they would have used the lions to hurt us as much as possible.
”There is quite a bit of movement of lions without permits among hunter-breeders in the Free State. We did not want our lions getting caught up in the industry.”
The Prinsloos declined to comment but said the matter would be resolved in court.
Mitchell and Grimm own a 3 000ha farm in Mpumalanga and transformed it into a refuge for lions rescued from the industry. But they neglected to establish that Mpumalanga forbids lions being kept in captivity and they could not get permits to keep their lions at the reserve.
Mitchell and Grimm say they had to move the lions from one temporary holding facility to another when they left Camorhi.
Grimm says the four older lions — Kiara, Mufasa, Sasha and Baby — have been drugged more than the four younger lions — Scar, Madoda, Nkosi and Mpandi.
The older lions were drugged for the move from Camorhi to their first refuge, the Johannesburg Zoo. Then they were drugged for a move to the Honeydew Lion Park when the zoo needed their cage. Once there the lions had to be tested for feline Aids and screened for disease, so they were anaesthetised again.
”Finally, when the Honeydew Lion Park evicted the lions due to a lack of space, all eight lions were drugged and transported to Enkosini. Since their arrival at Enkosini in May 2002 only the three lionesses have been drugged for their annual implantation of contraceptives to prevent captive breeding.”
Grimm said the Mpumalanga Parks Board refused to grant Enkosini permits for the lions because of a national moratorium on establishing lion-holding projects and the board’s policy against importing captive-bred lions into the province.
She says she and Mitchell had no choice but to defy the law for the good of the lions.
”We waited for nearly nine months before moving the lions to Enkosini. We desperately tried to find suitable accommodation for the lions in a facility that was not involved in the canned hunting industry, but that is not an easy task in South Africa today.
”We had a beautiful 15ha bushveld camp ready for the lions at Enkosini — the only thing missing was the permit … we took action solely in the best interest of the animals.”
The court-imposed deadline for moving the lions back to Gauteng expired on Wednesday and Grimm and Mitchell expect the Mpumalanga Parks Board to show up any day to drug the lions and move them away. They have appealed against the decision to move the lions and their case will be heard in the high court on February 4.
”If we win the case, the lions would just have to be darted yet again and moved back to the sanctuary. So we are arguing why not wait until after the review case has been heard to take any action involving the lions. They have already been at Enkosini for eight months, so what is a few more weeks?”
Christine Kuch, a spokesperson of the NSPCA, says Enkosini’s challenge to the system has implications for conservation in Mpumalanga. ”Our senior inspector, Andries Venter, reports that the Mpumalanga Parks Board has received more applications to hold captive lions since the Enkosini issue arose: including one to hold lions in small camps for hunting. This issue is not of the Enkosini lions per se, but of the future of lions in Mpumalanga.”
She says Grimm and Mitchell may have had the lions’ best interests at heart, but they had not acted in the animals’ best interests.