On the occasion of World Lion Day, that is marked annually on August 10, Blood Lions, a South African NGO that runs an organisation to protect lions in their natural habitats, has launched a campaign to end the commercial captive lion industry in South Africa with their new campaign, ‘You’re Killing Them Softly.’

According to a press statement by Blood Lions, any visitor or volunteer paying to play, bottle feed, and/or hand-raise captive-bred predator cubs, use them as photo props, or merely visit predator parks is fuelling South Africa’s cruel commercial captive predator industry.

The statement adds that this is what its campaign, You’re Killing Them Softly, aims to brings awareness to and calls for end of the practice of captive wildlife facilities that offer interactions.

Blood Lions says that South African lions breeding is largely to blame

According to Blood Lions, currently at least 8,000 lions and thousands of other big cats, including many tigers and cheetahs, are bred and kept at approximately 350 lion farms in South Africa.

According to World Animal Protection, a global non-profit organisation that campaigns for animal protection, since 2005, there has been a 675 pc increase in numbers of registered facilities, from 45 to 350, and a 220 pc increase in the numbers of lions held in captivity, from 2,500 to 8,000. This growing industry threatens wild lions, says Blood Lions, adding that South African lions are endangered and captive lion breeding is largely to blame.

Though lions are wild animals, unsuited for living in captivity or in close proximity to humans, South Africa currently has more lions living in captivity than it does in the wild, it says blaming a 30-year-old law that has allowed the captive breeding and keeping of lions. 

Blood Lions says that the industry initially started to supply hunting operations, but by 2008 it was supplying Southeast Asia with lion bones for traditional medicine and feeding commercial display and entertainment activities, like cub petting and walking with lions, in China, Thailand, Pakistan, Vietnam and Bangladesh.

It not only incentivises the capture of wild lions for breeding, leading to a reduction in wild populations, but sustaining the industry can divert resources away from conservation efforts aimed at protecting wild lion populations and their habitats.

This World Lion Day, Blood Lions and other South African NGOs, Four Paws, HSI/Africa and Voice4Lions, have come together to call for progress in ending the commercial use of lions in South Africa. 

The statement adds that however well-intentioned people’s actions are, these cubs are not orphans. They have no conservation value, saying that they are purely bred to feed an unethical and insidious industry that commodifies these predators.

The organisation says that lions and many other predators are bred solely for commercial purposes, such as cub petting, walking with predators, voluntourism, ‘canned’ or captive trophy hunting, the live trade, and trade in their bones, parts and derivatives.