Some were completely deboned, with just their butchered flesh and skin remaining, Everatt said. It's illegal to hunt lions in Limpopo National Park, a protected area of 1 million hectares along Mozambique's western frontier. But just across the border in South Africa, killing captive-bred lions to export their skeletons is perfectly legal -- and increasingly lucrative. The bones are typically shipped to Asia, where they are often falsely advertised as tiger parts in luxury products.
Everatt said he's witnessing the detrimental impact that South Africa's legal lion bone trade is beginning to have on the conservation of wild lion populations, which are already in steep decline across Africa. He said poachers in the region have caught on to the growing market for lion parts, and the iconic big cats are relatively easy to kill by simply lacing a piece of meat with poison.
South Africa has been legally exporting lion skeletons since Back then, the bones typically entered the international market as a by-product of the trophy hunting industry. Many of the trophies originated from captive-born lions that were killed in canned hunts, in which the often-tamed animal is hunted in a confined area.
Americans once comprised half of South Africa's foreign clientele, according to a recent study of the industry. But that all started to change after the United States suspended imports of captive-bred lion trophies in Later that year, the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species CITES directed South Africa, the world's largest legal exporter of lion bones, to establish an annual export quota for lion skeletons derived from captive breeding facilities.
In , the South African government set a quota of lion skeletons, with or without the skull. Officials raised the quota to 1, last year but then reduced it back to following public outcry. Researchers surveyed captive lion facilities registered in South Africa, most of which had sold live lions for the hunting industry, and 82 percent said the U.
While most of the breeders said they scaled down their operations and laid off staff as a result, 30 percent said they turned to the lion bone trade, according to the study, which was published in the scientific journal PLOS One in May. The sale price for live lions in South Africa has plummeted while the price for their skeletons has increased by more than 22 percent since , as the big cats are being increasingly slaughtered for their bones.
The growing demand for lion bones comes at a time when the African lion, which is classified as "vulnerable" on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species, is already under major threat across the African continent from habitat loss, a decrease in their natural prey species, and human encroachment. Wrong language? Change it here DW.
COM has chosen English as your language setting. COM in 30 languages. Deutsche Welle. Audiotrainer Deutschtrainer Die Bienenretter. Asia Lion cheaper than a pedigree kitten in Japan The nation's once-busy zoos face a shrinking customer base, rising costs and a surplus of an attraction that has the reputation of being the king of the jungle.
Hedgehog cafe opens in Tokyo. Newest "babydeer" delights Japan. Date Griesel says the lions are fed every day except Sunday when the chicken slaughterhouse is closed , and during the week, they get a powdered vitamin and calcium supplement. I ride with Peens and Griesel in the back of a pickup truck loaded with dead chickens and a bloody, chopped-up cow. Two farmhands throw the meat to the lions, which run toward us as soon as they see the truck. White feathers rain down as chickens sail over the fences into the enclosures—one chicken per lion on average.
Bones snap between powerful jaws. In the wild, lions hunt a variety of animals and eat a variety of their parts—one day a lion may eat antelope meat, the next day it may eat the heart or intestines. Feeding captive lions whole carcasses may not be the best thing. Carcasses have to be very fresh to avoid the risk of bacterial infection from rotting meat, and the internal organs rot first. Frozen meat also poses risks, Caldwell explains. We come to two approximately byfoot enclosures holding 26 lions.
No autopsy was done, but Peens believes the cause was liver failure. The lions, between 18 months and two years old, seem used to humans—instead of growling or baring their teeth, they come up to the fence to inspect me, meowing plaintively like overgrown cats.
At the time of the NSPCA inspection and confiscations, Peens says, the other Pienika lions—the four cubs—had been under the care of a local veterinarian. At the end of our tour of the farm, Peens asks: Do I see any lions being mistreated?
Did they suffer in death? Wolhuter says the two live cubs had to be euthanized and that the NSPCA is still waiting for the results of postmortems on two of the frozen carcasses.
The lions, he explained, had either been stillborn or had died shortly after birth. Steinman to use in his collection. Pienika Farm is a lion-breeding facility that also offers sport hunts. Permits from the environment department are required to own, breed, sell, transport, hunt, and euthanize lions.
When I put the same question to Mercia Smith, a communications officer in the agriculture department, she directed me back to the environment department, saying that it focuses on lion hunting. As a result, conservationists and NSPCA officials believe that lions and other animals are languishing every day in subpar conditions on any number of the hundreds of wildlife farms around the country.
Lions in the wild have disappeared from 94 percent of their historic range in Africa, and continent-wide during the past 25 years, their numbers have halved to fewer than an estimated 25, In , the U. Fish and Wildlife Service, which regulates imports and exports of wildlife and wildlife products, listed two subspecies of lions as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.
This means that if a hunter wants to bring home a trophy from a wild lion, he must show how that would help conserve lions in general. The service evaluates import requests for lion trophies on a case-by-case basis. The same rule applies to trophies from hunts of captive lions on farms, but because the service determined in that breeding lions in captivity has no conservation benefit, imports of captive-lion trophies effectively were banned.
From to , according to a report by the Humane Society , South Africa exported nearly 4, lion trophies to the U. During that time, U. South Africa is one of the only countries that exports a legal supply of lion or any big cat body parts. The annual lion-bone quota, set by the environment department, nearly doubled from skeletons in to 1, in Later that year, in response to international opposition to the trade, the quota was reduced back to On September 13, , the NSPCA filed a lawsuit against the environment department, the South African Predator Association, and others in the High Court of South Africa for establishing lion-bone quotas without taking animal welfare into consideration.
The quotas usually come into force around the middle of each year, but this year, on August 6, the court ruled in favor of the NSPCA, halting exports of lion bones until welfare is accounted for. Unlike livestock killed in slaughterhouses that use prescribed, regulated methods, farmed lions are killed in pop-up facilities with little or no oversight, Trendler says.
Once the lions have been shot, their carcasses processed, and the bones dried, the operators pack up and move to another farm. People hated it when the set came out and threw it away The way that the game mechanic functions makes it as powerful as it is. Legacy decks like Dredge and Storm use it for broken T1 plays that often bury the opponent under card advantage.
In though? Probably total garbage. Legacy wouldn't become a "thing" for another 5 years, and most of the decks are powered by cards printed later than that.
I had a few when it first came out and it was shite. It went into the binder with the rest of the rares but I never used it once. Color me shocked when, starting collecting back a year ago, that it was an insanely pricey and valued card. Yes, it was garbage until the wishes were printed in Judgment I remember psychatog decks wishing for silver bullets with it.
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