National Geographic: Inside a Controversial South African Lion Farm
LICHTENBURG, SOUTH AFRICA
Thirty-four lions were crammed into a muddy enclosure meant for three. Rotting chicken carcasses and cattle body parts littered the ground. Feces piled up in corners. Algae grew in water bowls. Twenty-seven of the lions were so afflicted with mange, a painful skin disease caused by parasitic mites, that they’d lost nearly all their fur. Three cubs lay twitching in the dirt, one draped over the blackened leg of a cow, its hoof visible. Mewling, they struggled—but failed—to drag themselves forward. A fourth cub looked on, motionless.
“Soul destroying.” That’s how Douglas Wolhuter, senior inspector with South Africa’s National Council of Societies for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (NSPCA), describes the scene at Pienika Farm, in North West Province, on April 11, 2019. The NSPCA is responsible for enforcing the country’s Animals Protection Act, and Wolhuter was conducting an inspection of Pienika, one of the more than 250 privately owned lion farms in South Africa.
“Ever since I’ve been a young kid, a lion has been known as the king of the jungle,” Wolhuter says. “And then you see it reduced to basically an intensively farmed animal—you’ve removed everything regal and noble about the animal.”
(snip)
Three days after our visit, in a follow-up inspection, the NSPCA saw a different Pienika. Wolhuter says he found about 20 young lion and tiger carcasses in a freezer in a staff member’s home, a lion cub in a walk-in freezer, and, hidden in a shed, two live cubs with symptoms similar to those affecting the two cubs surrendered during the previous inspection.
Wolhuter, who was checking to see whether the Pienika animals’ food was properly stored, says he was “speechless” when he opened the freezer and saw the bodies. “I’m just thinking, How did these things die? Did they suffer in death?” he says. “It’s that sort of stuff that actually preys on your conscience as well, because, could you have made that difference if you’d known before?” Wolhuter says the two live cubs had to be euthanized and that the NSPCA is still waiting for the results of postmortems on two of the frozen carcasses.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2019/11/lion-farm-south-africa/?cmpid=org=ngp::mc=social::src=linkedin::cmp=editorial::add=li20191121animals-newanimalslionfarmexclusive::rid=&sf224262308=1
I don't know whether to cry or throw up.
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