A lot of people don’t realize that there is an industry out there named the Canned Lion Industry and upon becoming aware of this barbaric industry, I have made it a priority to fix it. 

In a nutshell, this is typically how it goes.

If you go to a petting zoo where this happens, like South Africa, you can spend time petting lion cubs and some older ones too. You can get up really close to them. More than if they were in the wild. These animals have been raised in captivity from birth so they completely trust humans. They have no reason not to. As time goes by and these cubs and lions get much older, they start to cost these petting zoos too much money to continue looking after and feed. A problem which they have needlessly created themselves. 

At this point, these lions, still trusting us humans, are sold to people in the Canned Lion Industry as target practice or bait. Essentially, a “prize to be won”. If you can afford the £100,000 price tag, you can pay to hunt one of these lions. You pay £100,000 to murder a lion. 

The people that hunt these lions are not good at hunting either. Their aim is poor. And they don’t always get a direct hit. This would be a possible kindness for them to show these lions. But instead, they miss. That startles the lions. The lions don’t know what’s happening. But it can’t be the humans. The humans love the lions. They pet the lions. play with them and feed them. Why would the humans be doing this? And then, hopefully, the second shot might be on target to kill the lion. To put this beautiful animal out of their misery and terror.

If you have never seen the face of a lion which is being murdered and the petrified look on their faces, it might be hard to understand the level of fear they experience right before their murder. It’s not an easy sight to see and it stays as a long-lasting and painful memory. 

You might have seen some of these images online already. There are trophy hunters out there, who will show off their kill as a triumph, when in fact, it is despicable.

Currently, there are estimated to be around 8-10,000 lions in captivity at the moment. This means that if we were to stop this barbaric industry now, we would need to find a way to save the lives of 8-10,000 lions. If we cannot stop this, over the next decade or so we could lose the lion in South Africa altogether. They would be extinct from that area.

What kind of place would South Africa be without lions?

I am working with Kevin Richardson who has been saving the lives of lions for decades now but he can’t do it alone anymore. 

The solution to this industry is having the South African government ban it, making it illegal. It still would leave us with a lot of lions to rehome, but at least there would be no more murders.

Every penny raised for the lions will go to saving them from this horrible fate. The money raised here will go towards setting up more sanctuaries for these beautiful animals and providing them with food and a safe place to live out the rest of their days without the fear of being killed. 

Awareness is super important here too. Sadly, the tourists that pay to enter these petting zoos, don’t seem to realise that they are supporting the Canned Lion Industry. If you know anyone that has a planned trip to any petting zoos of lion cubs, please stop them. They are doing more harm than good. Then they tell their friends or whoever that they petted lion cubs and it all sounds great and lovely. But these animal are meant to be in the wild. Not petted and then shot by us. So I want to make the world aware of this. 

This is the cold hard truth of the matter. 

And if you happen to be one of those idiots that has murdered one of these lions, you should be honest to God ashamed of yourself. You should be disgusted. And no doubt, you’re not proud of what you have done. Because if you were, I’m sure you would have been stupid enough to post a picture of your kill online. Where you would have felt the retaliation of everyone else who doesn’t support you. 

Maybe it was a mid life crisis moment. Maybe the Ferrari wasn’t enough to compensate for.