Controversial animal dealer Riccardo Ghiazza has bought Thor, a famous white lion whose face has launched a thousand PR campaigns around the world.
Thor is the second-generation offspring of the original white lions of Timbavati, who created an international sensation when they were first spotted west of the Kruger park in the mid-1970s.
White lions are leucistic — they have whitish fur due to a recessive gene, and are not albinos.
When the white lions were found in Timbavati by a young researcher, Chris McBride, they were regarded as more than just a scientific curiosity. Local communities and traditional leaders endowed them with a spiritual and cultural significance that has endured.
But 25 years later there are no white lions left in Timbavati or anywhere in the wild. They have become the lucrative playthings of breeders, dealers, “canned” hunting operators and magicians — and critics say Ghiazza’s ownership of Thor indicates this situation will endure.
“White lions should be part of cultural tourism, which is extremely important for conservation,” says author Linda Tucker, founder of the Global White Lion Protection Trust.
“According to African mythology, the white lions are messengers of the gods. The belief is that showing disrespect for the highest creatures of creation will incur the wrath of the gods. This is in line with indigenous beliefs the world over.”
Thor, named after the Nordic god of thunder, is one of a growing number of white lions caught up in the sordid big-cat breeding industry. One canned lion breeder in the Free State, Marius Prinsloo of Camorhi game farm, has been advertising a white lion for a “hunt” at R1,65-million.
Two white lion cubs were on sale for R490 000 at the world’s largest big-cat auction, held in Hoopstad in late November. After the Mail & Guardian broke that story last year, widespread media interest resulted in few of the cats — including the white lion cubs — being sold at the auction.
Many of the cats from the Hoopstad auction are still being advertised and sold privately. A second public auction is being held this Saturday, January 25, at Reitz in the Free State and 30 brown lions — nine males, 21 females — are being offered for sale.
Thor’s grandparents were removed from the wilds of Timbavati after
Albert Mostert, a Limpopo canned lion breeder, allegedly stole one of the original white lions from the reserve. Amid fears that the other white lions would be stolen or hunted, they were sent to the Pretoria zoo — with the aim of breeding more white lions and eventually returning them to the wild.
Thor, born on January 30 1986, grew up in the Johannesburg zoo. He was not part of a deal the zoo clinched with Las Vegas magicians Siegfried and Roy in 1994 — but they used his photograph on PR calendars, postcards, brochures and T-shirts advertising the deal.
The deal enabled Siegfried and Roy to breed white lions and use them in their magic shows at The Mirage in the United States’s “sin city”. They now claim to have 23 white lions under their care, along with 38 white tigers.
Thor was sold to Ghiazza last year, to settle debts worth “a couple of hundred thousand rand” owed to him, says Johannesburg zoo’s general manager of operations, Eloise Langenhoven. The debts were owed for animals Ghiazza had supplied to the zoo.
“When the new management started in 2001, Thor was the subject of a three-way breeding arrangement between the zoo, Ghiazza and the Lanseria Lion Park. The new CEO, Thembi Mogoai, wanted to clean up the mess of the past,” says Langenhoven.
Thor is now living at the Lanseria Lion Park and has sired four litters — among them three pure white lion cubs. Two of the white cubs are still at the lion park, while the third was returned to the Johannesburg zoo.
Ghiazza and his African Game Services became well known in 1999 after he was charged with cruelty in connection with 30 young elephants he imported from the Tuli Block in Botswana and tried to “train”. The long-drawn-out Tuli court saga is due to resume in the Pretoria Regional Court on February 5.
Asked what his plans are for Thor, Ghiazza says he has “donated him to the lion park, for display. The only condition is that they can’t sell him.”
Mainstream conservationists maintain that white lions are of little scientific conservation value and that they have little chance of surviving in the wild because of their lack of camouflage.
But a big-cat specialist who asked not to be named points out that the original Timbavati white lions came from hardy stock that had lived in the wild for years — and that one of McBride’s aims in sending them to the zoo was to save them from the kind of breeding and hunting industry that Thor is caught up in.