NO MORE LIONS BRED TO BE DEAD! LET'S ROAR FOR LIONS!
DID YOU KNOW that tourists go to lion farms believing that they are HELPING orphaned lion cubs (orphaned only because they were ripped away from their mothers shortly after birth)?! The mothers are then impregnated AGAIN, up to three times per year. People pay money thinking they are helping with conservation of lions when in fact they are contributing to the cold-blooded murder of these innocent, TRUSTING, hand-raised adorable cubs once they mature.
COST: If through a travel agency: the tourist pays $140 for lunch, a lecture (by an unpaid volunteer), a walk with teenage lions "down to the river," and interaction with baby lion cubs. The lion farmer earns up to $2000 per day on these clueless tourists. Once the cubs are about 3-4 years old, they are sold to the death camp "hunt" facility, where "hunters" pay up to $20,000 to brutally shoot drugged up lions in the body. The head is the "trophy." The bodies are then sold to countries such as CHINA & VIETNAM in the BONE, SKIN, CLAW, and SKULL trades for their medicine markets.
In the wild, it costs up to $75,000 to hunt lions, with no guarantee of success. For Joe Shmoe in Fartbag, Texas, $20,000 is a bargain. Even real hunters call canned hunting:
"Hunting Behind Fences."
SOME FACTS:
• Female lions are forced to produce up to three litters per
year (one litter every 3 years is the norm in the wild).
• The cubs are removed shortly after birth and the mother is
forced into the next pregnancy.
• The “orphaned” cubs are marketed by recruitment agencies
in the UK, USA and worldwide to the “volunteer” market – unsuspecting people
(in their droves) sign up to stay at these farms for two weeks or more (costing
them circa £1,200 (or $2000) per fortnight plus their airfares). They are led to believe
they are helping conservation and that these cubs will be put back into the
wild when they reach adulthood. LIES!
• At the farms, further income is generated from cub
petting, photographing and walking with the lion cubs. The presence of paying
volunteers often avoids the need for the farms to incur staffing costs to man
the operation.
• Once the cubs reach maturity, the males (at about
3-4years) and the females (once they can no longer produce the new cubs in the
“puppy mill” operation listed above) are sold to the canned hunting operators.
• Canned hunting is where the human habituated lion is put
into a field and a tourist hunter shoots it dead.
Sometimes the lion is
partially anaesthetised and drugged beforehand. It offers no resistance and cannot run away
from the hunter. It is a tame lion.
The lion is shot through the body (to
preserve the trophy quality of the head) and the lion often dies an agonizing death,
particularly if the tourist is a bad shot and has several “goes” to kill the
lion. Some lions are hunted with bow and arrow, and some are even shot with
pistols.
• The tourist hunter goes home with his trophy and the lion
carcass is sold into the lion bone trade for the Chinese Traditional Medicine
market. The more product, the more factories become invested in the business,
and the greater the demand for more product.
bodies - 239 exported, most to Laos but also China.
bones - 3036 exported, mostly Laos but recently the USA is a
growing destination.
skeletons - 676 mostly to Laos but also Vietnam.
You might be interested that in 2011, 93 skins were exported
to China, a 3,100% increase over previous years. Someone figured out a nice
market there.
You might also be interested that there is a growing trend
for canned trophies in Laos and China....
LION BREEDING FARMS:
These places are often oversubscribed with
volunteers thinking they are saving lion orphans and contributing to lion
conservation, and the breeders have a slick operation to tell them that's
exactly what they are doing.
MAKE A STAND AND ROAR FOR LIONS!!! DO NOT PATRONIZE ANY PLACE THAT COSTS MONEY TO 'HELP' ORPHANED LION CUBS! REAL VOLUNTEERS JUST VOLUNTEER. THEY DO NOT PAY AGENTS!!
SAY NO TO MORE LIONS BEING BRED TO BE DEAD.
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