Tourist attractions, hunting trophies and skeletons for sale. That is how captive-bred lions are viewed in South Africa, where after being mistreated they are hunted towards extinction.
Cries of protest are rising from around the world to denounce the cruelty inflicted on South African lions, which are facing a new threat: the surge in trade in bones, teeth and claws. Unsuspecting tourists pay to take selfies holding cubs, or to walk among lions on farms. Many of these animals are then transferred to areas where trophy hunters practise canned hunting, that is, hunting on demand. The bones and other body parts of the slaughtered lions are then sold on local and international markets.
The bones of these animals are used in traditional medicine and as pendants, above all in South-East Asia. Over the past ten years, more than six thousand lion skeletons have been exported to South-East Asia from South Africa, where the animals were bred in captivity only to be killed by hunters who pay to do so. The largest importer of lion bodies is Vietnam, which also ranks second for the importation of skeletons. Laos is the largest importer of lion bones and skeletons, while the United States holds the record for the importation of lion parts, according to a 2018 report published by Cites, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.
A report on lion bones published in 2015 shows that demand from China and South-East Asia increased following the introduction of stricter conservation measures for the protection of tigers and other large Asian felids. It is hypothesised that these measures pushed traffickers to turn to the African lion market, because their bones appear similar to those of tigers. Legal exports of lion skeletons from South Africa rose from 50 in 2008 to 573 in 2011.
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In a controversial move, former South African Environment Minister Edna Molewa decided in 2018 to double the quota of exportable skeletons, raising it to 1,500 skeletons, without first consulting the public or the authorities. Last July she stated that the new export quota complies with international guidelines on the trade in wild animals, and that the consequences for wild lions will be analysed through a three-year study with annual reviews. However, experts warn that the lion skeleton quota is harmful because it incentivises poaching and illegal trafficking, managed by a sophisticated criminal organisation active in the illegal wildlife trade, which also traffics, for example, rhino horns.
Luke Hunter, Conservation Director for the NGO Panthera, which works to protect wild felids, states that the South African government has provided no scientific evidence lending legitimacy to the idea that the legal trade in skeletons can counterbalance illegal trafficking, and certainly not enough to justify such a considerable increase. "I'm quite bewildered. Look at how these poor captive lions live. It is truly sad that they spend their lives doing almost nothing, waiting for the bullet that will kill them," Hunter reiterates.
Cites has noted that more than 8,000 lions live on farms and canned farms in South Africa, while figures for lions in the wild stand at between 1,300 and 1,700 adults. "No more than 20,000 lions survive across the entire African continent, a number that has plummeted by 43 per cent between 1993 and 2014," Cites data reveals. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (Iucn), which aims to assess the conservation status of numerous animal species through its Red List, classifies the lion as vulnerable.
Meanwhile, some undercover investigations into farming practices have revealed that cubs are separated from their mothers after just a few days, or even a few hours of life, to be used as subjects for photographs that earn their owners enormous sums of money. Lionesses, on the other hand, are forced into continuous pregnancies and are inseminated shortly after giving birth. On canned hunting farms, cubs are never released into the wild (and would not survive if this were to happen), but are raised in cages, becoming so accustomed to humans that they begin to associate their scent with feeding time. Many of these lions subsequently become hunting trophies: this industry is expanding in South Africa and trophy hunters are seeking to spread the term "captive hunting", whose connotations are less negative than "canned hunting".
Aaron White, an activist and wildlife researcher, has observed that the trafficking of lion bones, teeth and claws is exacerbated by demand for these hunting services and the apparent legitimacy of lion farming.
Many tourists and volunteers often spend thousands of dollars helping to raise lions, convinced they are taking part in conservation projects when in fact, without realising it, they are contributing to the trophy and lion bone industry. Born Free, a British animal welfare charity, has called on South Africa to immediately halt the canned hunting industry and commercial lion breeding, and many hunting associations also condemn these practices. "It is a scam that puts wild lions and other felids at even greater risk, encouraging poachers who aim to resell bones and other parts," says the NGO's president, Will Travers.
In 2016, the IUCN had warned that lion bones from southern and eastern Africa risked being added to Asia's enormous illegal wildlife trade, centred on ivory from elephant tusks. Yet, despite the fact that lion farming contributes nothing to wildlife conservation and is linked to international black-market trafficking, South African authorities continue to encourage its growth.