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The Drakenstein Lion Park is a unique park in South Africa. It is not your average safari but it is one that Paul Hart has set up to prevent lions from being hunted or abused in the circus. FERNTV looks at the inspiring story of Paul Hart who put his blood, sweat and tears into saving these lions, making a park big enough to sustain them and letting people know what he is doing by letting them tour or have an overnight stay at the park. As Paul mentions, you might not change the world if you save one lion, but you will change that lion’s world forever. FERNTV speaks to Paul Hart to discuss more about the park.
FERNTV: Can you briefly explain the purpose of the Drakenstein Lion Park to our readers?
Paul Hart: Drakenstein Lion Park is an internationally acclaimed and award winning sanctuary for captive born lions. The sanctuary is involved in the rescuing of lions in distress, from South Africa as well as from overseas. The sanctuary provides lifetime care to all the animals it rescues and provides them with an environment where they can live out their lives with dignity. The sanctuary currently houses twenty five lions. The animals at the sanctuary are assured a chance of living out their natural lives in an enriched environment
As a sanctuary we only house captive bred / hand reared animals that cannot be rehabilitated in the wild and very importantly, we do not breed or trade with any of our rescued animals.
FERNTV: What does it feel like to go against the wishes of canned hunters and farmers who breed lions for the purposes of hunting down in South Africa? Have you received any threats from people because you are taking away business from them?
Paul: It's an uphill battle! The canned hunting industry has enormous wealth and will stop at almost nothing to continue to ply their gruesome trade. Death threats and law suits are common practice and it is something one has to become used to.
FERNTV: What does it feel like to have so many people support your vision in building the Drakenstein Lion Park to what it is now and is there still a lot of work to be done?
Paul: We have a small, but very loyal supporter base who contribute what they can whenever we have a rescue pending and need financial support. Finance is of course our biggest hurdle in helping more abused lions. Each new rescue means a new lion habitat needs to be built, funds need to be found to pay for the transport costs of the rescued lion and then of course our biggest expense, the care costs associated with caring for the rescued lion for the rest of it's natural life! We do need more support and more supporters to help us continue with our vision of proving lifetime homes to abused and mistreated lions.
FERNTV: Watching canned hunting on YouTube is just disgusting, why hasn't the government acted upon this?
Paul: The government has tried to introduce new laws to curtail the activities of the canned hunting industry, but the wealthy lion breeders have challenged the news laws in court. The lion breeders lost the court case, but have now appealed and a ruling on this new court case could take years!
FERNTV: Is the abuse of lions by circus acts a common thing around the world...are they all like that?
Paul: The truth is that a circus is an inherently cruel environment for any animal. No circus can supply even the bare minimum of standards required to meet a non domesticated animals most basic environmental and psychological needs. Circus animals spend most of their lives locked in small trailers, with little room to move or exhibit any natural behavior. The process of training a circus animal to perform unnatural acts in an unnatural and stressful environment is far from kind and very often abusive. Animals are terrified of fire, so it stands to reason that if an animal jumps through a ring of fire, it is more terrified of the trainer forcing it to do the trick than the fire!
What is terribly sad is that in this day and age, people will still pay money to watch animals forced to perform demeaning, unnatural and pointless tricks.
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