HUNTING DOWN SOUTH AFRICA’S LION BREEDING INDUSTRY
- O&A Team
- June 9, 2025
- Conservation, Features
- Blood Lions, Captive lion breeding, Conservation Action Trust, Dr Ross Harvey, Ethical tourism, Lion cub petting, lion farming, Richard Peirce, Selling lion skeletons, Voice4Lions
- 0 Comments
Lion cub petting, farming and voluntourism as well as the sale of lion skeletons has created a massive lion breeding industry in South Africa which is now home to the world’s largest captive lion population. O&A spoke to conservation writer Richard Pierce and other experts about progress make towards ending this
WORDS: SHIRLEY LE GUERN
IMAGES: JACQUI PEARCE
Sustainable or ethical tourism is growing and, although South Africa relies heavily on Big 5 safari experiences, the sector will soon butt heads with travellers no longer prepared to countenance a captive lion breeding industry riddled with corruption, cruelty and exploitation.
According to Coherent Market Insights, the global ethical tourism market is currently worth US$ 273.8-billion and is set to grow at 5.9% to reach US$409.28 by 2032. Millennials, in particular, spend on tourism experiences that make the world a better place and petting of days old cubs removed from their mothers, walking with captive lions and voluntourism which deceives people into believing they are helping to rehabilitate wild big cats will no longer pass muster.
For several years, Blood Lions, Four Paws South Africa, Voice4Lions and other conservation organisations have actively campaigned against the horrors of South Africa’s commercial captive lion industry.
In months to come, this crusade may ramp up with conservationists like British journalist, author and film maker, Richard Peirce (author of the best-selling book Cuddle Me, Kill Me) revisiting the horrors that continue to be swept under the eco-tourism mat.
Four years after the award-winning documentary Blood Lions, Four Paws South Africa, Voice4Lions premiered at the Monte Carlo Television Festival, he is back in South Africa investigating what progress, if any, has been made. He shared conversations with breeders, hunters and conservationists as well as his own concerns about a burgeoning captive bred lion population that is now the largest in the world.
In Lions Bones and Bullets, Peirce and his fellow film makers graphically showed how lions were housed in cramped and filthy cages, subjected to unmentionable cruelty and then slaughtered for their bones which were sold for traditional medicine in South East Asia.
Statistics are shaky at best, but the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment has unwittingly documented the growth of the very industry that it promised to disband. In months to come, this crusade may ramp up with conservationists like British journalist, author and film maker, Richard Peirce (author of the best-selling book Cuddle Me, Kill Me) revisiting the horrors that continue to be swept under the eco-tourism mat.
Four years after the award-winning documentary Blood Lions, Four Paws South Africa, Voice4Lions premiered at the Monte Carlo Television Festival, he is back in South Africa investigating what progress, if any, has been made. He shared conversations with breeders, hunters and conservationists as well as his own concerns about a burgeoning captive bred lion population that is now the largest in the world.
In Lions Bones and Bullets, Peirce and his fellow film makers graphically showed how lions were housed in cramped and filthy cages, subjected to unmentionable cruelty and then slaughtered for their bones which were sold for traditional medicine in South East Asia.
In December 2022, then-Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, Barbara Creecy, appointed a ministerial task team to identify and recommend voluntary exit pathways for the captive lion industry. The appointment of yet another task team followed recommendations that emerged in February 2024. The Terms of Reference were finally published on April 26, barely a month before the national general election.
In 2023, Creecy’s ministerial task team estimated that there were 7 400 captive lions in 519 facilities across South Africa. By November 2024, when replacement Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, Dr Dion George, called on the captive lion industry to voluntarily surrender stockpiles of lion bones and derivatives, this population had apparently grown to 8 000 – more than double the 3 500 wild lions that prop up safari tourism.
As Peirce found during his discussions with fellow conservationists, the smoke and mirrors continue with a cash strapped government unlikely to compensate lion farmers.
Already, the so-called captive lion industry has launched a court battle to re-instate the legal export of lion skeletons. This follows a 2019 High Court ruling that prohibited lion bone exports. The industry is now demanding reinstatement of export quotas for 2024 and 2025.
Officially, an estimated 8 761 lion skeletons have been exported from South Africa since 2008. There is evidence that bone sales have not only continued illegally but escalated.Peirce shared how environmental economist and member of the Conservation Action Trust, Dr Ross Harvey, attempted to work out the value of the captive lion industry in 2018. This proved almost impossible given the unavailability of accurate statistics as well as the plethora of “uses” for these big cats.
Across 40 facilities that provided reasonable data and offered attractions that extended from feeding very young cubs to walking with lions, property game drives and voluntourism, he came up with an average of about US$ 606 000. When multiplied across the estimated 297 facilities that existed at the time, his total was around US$ 180 million.
This excludes taxidermy, hunting and the sale of lion bones and skeletons.
A similar study conducted at the Northwest University put the value at a far more conservative US$ 26 million a year, or R500-million, although it is not clear how the researchers arrived at this figure.
In addition, according to Harvey, there is no data available on the number of hunts that are sold each year or taxidermists’ earnings. Sadly, Peirce comments, lion hunting is booming. During a conversation with president of the South African Predators Association (SAPA), he learnt that the hunting fraternity ran out of shootable males in 2024 making the hunting element – canned or otherwise – a significant part of this so-called industry.
Peirce shared further comments from Harvey who agrees, based on the sheer volume of canned hunts being sold: “You get an email advertising discounted hunts. Of course, they don’t say that these are canned hunts because these same outfits ostensibly support the move away from this. Nonetheless, they say South Africa is about to shut down the trade, so you need to respond if you still want a shot at their inexpensive rate. Current prices are about US$ 50 000 for a hunt plus shooting a lion which costs anywhere between US$8 and US$14 000 depending on the type of lion. I can understand that the industry has had a bumper year because of the way in which it’s been marketed.”
Harvey also tried to work out the average earnings per year from selling lion bones. Based on estimates of around 1100 skeletons sold each year for an average of US$ 65 dollars per kilogram and each skeleton weighing about 15 kilograms, this comes to US$ 2 475 per skeleton and US$ 2.7 million dollars per year in total revenue.
Hence the bone trade could well be the most convenient way of disposing of lions that are no longer big earners as tourism or hunting attractions.
Peirce agrees, pointing out that whilst making the film Lions, Bones and Bullets, researchers arrived at a figure of US$ 2 000 per lion skeleton.
The flip side is that it costs very little to breed lions. “It is in the selling of bones, tiger or lion bone wine and tiger balm that really deliver the high margins. The tragedy of the economics is there is so many stages of the lion cycle,” Harvey adds.
Peirce believes that, from a financial perspective, the value of the lion breeding industry – at just four to five percent of the value of entire tourism sector – is not worth the bad press that it will glean across the world as conservation bodies ramp up their efforts to expose the cruelties of captive breeding.
Nevertheless, he hints that when Creecy’s department laudably set out to make lion breeding illegal, it had not fully thought it through. “Had they done so, they would have realized there’s some pretty massive hurdles along the way. One is that if you can’t afford to pay compensation for something that was legal yesterday and you’re trying to make illegal tomorrow, then you’ve got to invent mechanisms to deal with this.”
Based on arguments around loss of earnings and even jobs, Peirce and Harvey believe that lion breeders could calculate an audited value for their businesses as part of a strong legal challenge against Creecy’s legislation and George’s attempted implementation. They also agree that a cash strapped government would not have the resources to fight this let alone compensate farmers for lost earnings or surrendered bones and body parts.
“This puts government in a predicament. Under section 25 of the constitution, any kind of animal or private property belongs to the owner. At the moment, to argue for compensation means they could also probably argue for preservation of the industry on the basis of property rights,” Harvey argues.
Without disclosing his source, Peirce says that, in the event of government being taken to court by breeders, the case would remain in court for a protracted period.
He likens this to the British government trying to legitimise the slave trade. “This could be in court for five, six, seven years. If pockets are deep enough to keep it there, the misery goes on, the trade goes on.”
For most conservationists, the only solution is the complete eradication of captive lion breeding. However, some sort of compromise will probably be the eventual outcome.
Instead of going the legal route, Peirce suggests that some of the bigger businesses are looking at cleaning up their acts and pushing out the smaller players who have given this so-called industry a bad name.
“What they’re trying to do now is introduce better husbandry laws, stricter requirements, better licensing, better record keeping, and try to squeeze out the smaller people and the petting businesses.”
Harvey agrees but does not necessarily see a positive outcome. “We are talking about a government that has struggled to regulate this industry in the past. There’s not a lot to suggest that it will do any better in the future, especially given that from province to province, operators seem to do whatever they like. Whenever we put in a request to find out how many breeding facilities are operating in the country, we are referred to the provincial authorities who don’t have a clue what’s going on.”
Somewhat reluctantly, Peirce concedes that a solution could be based on supply and across what has evolved into an entire lion supply chain.
“I think it may come back to scale. The big boys with large farms may consider getting involved in eco-tourism. If you close off smaller operators doing cub petting and lion walks, less lions need to be bred. Although many conservationists and animal welfare campaigners will not like this, I think they should consider going for what they can get as a start,” he suggests.
Harvey agrees that this compromise could have the Minister on side but is not convinced that highly regulated lion ranching where big cats could still be hunted under fair chase rules offers a long term solution.
He says this would be bitter pill given that captive bred lions do not have the instincts of a wild lion and wouldn’t naturally run away from a hunter, especially one with a powerful rifle and scope.
Conservationist and former national inspector for the NSPCA, Karen Trendler, notes that authorities dragging their heels when they should have closed the industry years ago gave it time to strategize and fight back.
Currently, there are no standards or regulation and lion farmers are required to pay as little as R50 to R100 for a permit to operate.
“They should be paying for the permit application, administration, a pre permitting inspection. It’s little steps like that, that are going to enable us to push standards and costs up to make it too difficult and expensive for so many to operate.
“We all acknowledge that what is happening is appalling, disgusting. We know it’s cruel. By bringing in high standards, you have something against which to measure someone in court. From a wellbeing perspective, cub petting, the removal of cubs, walking with lions will be easy cases to win. The intensive breeding of lions, where you’ve got large numbers in very small cages can be challenged,” she suggests.
Trendler concedes that allowing regulated and pared down lion ranching may be the only chance to get a better deal for lions. However, significant investment is needed to get standards to accommodate the needs of large carnivores.
“This will require full time veterinarians and infrastructure, qualified trained managers and lion breeders. Breeders will have to ask themselves if their businesses are sustainable and if it is financially viable to continue,” she says.
Harvey, too, acknowledges that it may be time for a cease fire in the war between breeders and conservations. However, so far, there is no clear strategy in place – and creating one goes back to the very beginning of the debate.
“We still need to know how many lions there are, where they are and then we need to regulate conditions under which they’re bred. At the moment, we’ve got this great, unregulated, amorphous mass of an industry conducted in all sorts of covert ways. Right now, large numbers of operators clearly believe that they can avoid detection and simply carry on. There’s not a lot of concern for potential increased regulation. I do worry about our state’s complete lack of capacity to regulate,” says Harvey.
Linda Park, director and co-founder of Voice4lions says that while conservationists and the public world-wide want to put an end to the industry, there might be a need for compromise: ”We need to be pragmatic. Dithering around and futile arguing is getting us nowhere and certainly not helping the very animals for which we are fighting.”
