The rise of ethical tourism: Confronting South Africa's captive lion industry

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 $273.8 billion and is set to grow at 5.9% to reach $409.28 billion 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.  

During the build up to Africa’s Travel Indaba, a high profile event that showcases tourism products to international and local buyers, this crusade may ramp up with conservationists like British writer and film maker, Richard Peirce ,author of the 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 Lions Bones and Bullets 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 and ultimately 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 December 2022, then-Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, Barbara Creecy, appointed a ministerial task team to recommend voluntary exits for the captive lion industry. Another next task followed in February 2024 with the Terms of Reference 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. 

Lion industry economics

As Peirce found during his recent  discussions, 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 this. 

Officially, an estimated 8 761 lion skeletons have been exported from South Africa since 2008 but 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. 

He finally came up with an estimate of around $180 million, a figure that includes lion cub petting and voluntourism but excludes taxidermy, hunting and the sale of lion bones. 

A similar study conducted at the Northwest University put the value at a far more conservative $26 million a year, or R500 million. 

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 $50 000 for a hunt plus shooting a lion which costs anywhere between $8 and $14 000 depending on the type of lion.”

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 $65 dollars per kilogram and each skeleton weighing about 15 kilograms, this comes to $2 475 per skeleton and $ 2.7 million dollars per year.  

Hence the bone trade is probably the most convenient way of disposing of lions that are no longer big earners as tourism or hunting attractions. 

Peirce says the flip side is that it costs very little to breed lions. However, he also believes that 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 gleans as conservationists ramp up their efforts to expose the cruelties of captive breeding. 

He suggests that Creecy’s department had not fully thought through the ramifications of making lion breeding illegal.  

Peirce and Harvey say lion breeders can calculate an audited value for their businesses as part of a strong legal challenge against Creecy’s legislation and George’s attempted implementation. They point out that a cash strapped government cannot take on the court battle let alone compensate farmers for lost earnings or surrendered bones and body parts. 

Peirce warns that, should government be 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 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. 

“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.  

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.”

SUNDAY TRIBUNE