Dean Schneider Helps Showcase The Exploitation of Lion ALERT
Dean Schneider has proof that captive bred lions can be released back into the wild!
Just kidding, that’s a lie.
It was a lie when we typed it just now, and it was a lie when Dean Schneider said it on his video.
Dean hasn’t seen any proof that captive bred lions have been successfully released into the wild.
No one has.
What Dean’s actually done, is take a note from The Real Tarzann, and visited an exploitive breeding facility which presents itself as being part of conservation. Readers might remember Tarzann “saving” rhinos from poaching a couple of months ago. It caused his follower count to fly up to the millions. The rhinos involved weren’t wild, though. They were owned by private rhino ranchers. The same ranchers who are lobbying to reinstate the trade of rhino horn because they have warehouses of horn harvested from their cattle rhinos, and they need to be able to sell it somewhere. Yeah, nothing is ever as good as it seems with shysters like Tarzann and Schneider.
In Schneider’s case, he paid a visit (probably literally) to Lion ALERT/Antelope Park in Zimbabwe. For those inside lion conservation, Lion ALERT has been a millstone of exploitation for over a decade now, slickly presented, with just enough scientific lingo that anyone without a solid grasp of ecology, biology, and conservation, buys into their bullshit hook line and sinker. It could be suggested that Eduardo Serio might have studied Lion ALERT before founding Black Jaguar White Tiger. After all, Lion ALERT has 4 Stages for it’s captive raised lions to be reintroduced into the wild. Just like BJWT, however, Lion ALERT has never actually used all of its much-discussed “stages”. Just like Serio’s pets always stall out at “Stage 2”, none of Lion ALERT’s cats have ever made it beyond Stage 2. Not in over ten years.
If you go looking for the history of Lion ALERT, don’t be surprised if you can’t find a concise timeline. That’s because they’ve shuffled themselves around like a huge live version of the shell game. Be aware that Lion ALERT and Antelope Park attempt to keep distance between themselves but are indelibly linked and partnered. Lion Alert was founded in 2005 by Andrew Connolly. Connolly had already been working in the African tourism industry, arranging animal encounters for tourists since 1998, and in 1999 he developed the “African Lion Rehabilitation & Release into the Wild Program.” That last sounds pretty awesome, but when you look at the actuality, it just represents multiple “walk with lions” and “cub petting” ventures which all claim that the cubs being held by tourists will later be released into the wild. Because we’ve never heard that one before….
Since it was founded in 2005, Lion ALERT has bred a whole bunch of lions, hosted thousands of tourists to handle, play with and walk with those lions, and has released precisely zero lions into the wild. Yes, the lions seen in Dean’s video seem to be out in open areas, but Dean himself states that the lions are in a 200 hectare enclosure.
To give readers some perspective on this, 200 hectares is about 494 acres. Central Park, in New York City is 840 square acres. So look at this photo:
Now, cut the Park in half, and you have the area of land Dean is referring to where, according to Dean, captive bred lions have been successfully released into the “wild” and are living and hunting and breeding in the “wild.”
Yes, it’s all about spinning reality to sound like a good lie. Lion ALERT places breeding pairs into larger enclosures and allows them to breed. So does Ukutula, Lion Park, and every other predator encounter in South Africa. It doesn’t mean that the captive bred lions are living in the wild, and it doesn’t mean they’ve been successfully released into the wild. For every snazzy publicity stunt like this where Lion ALERT is touted as leading the way in lions conservation, there are dozens of issues spanning from shortly after they were founded, to the present.
There have been situations of selling surplus lions as covered in this 2008 post (prepare to read a little, there are multiple responses from the involved parties)
Please note that the statement issued in reply to an article criticizing ALERT, made by the PR Manager of Antelope Park (where ALERT is situated) states that:
“No lion from Antelope Park has ever been, and never will be, intentionally sold for canned hunting.”
This is basic PR maneuvering. There is no actual promise that lions who have been sold won’t end up in the canned hunting industry, there’s just the promise that the part won’t intentionally sell them into canned hunting. The PR manager goes on to make a point of how the export documents has a pre-condition declaring that the lions could not be used for canned hunting, and that they were “monitored by the relevant wildlife authorities” to assure the provisions of this sale were upheld.
What the PR doesn’t clarify is what happened to the lions after ALERT’s Antelope Park sold them. The only stipulations involved that first sale, and there was no clause forbidding the receiver from turning around and immediately selling the lions to various canned hunting outfits. This is what’s known as the middleman highway. So long as ALERT can declare that they, personally, have never sold lions into canned hunting, they can state that they don’t support the industry. But the truth is, dozens of their homebred lions could well be hanging on the walls of trophy hunters. Once lions are sold to a middleman, they stop being ALERT’s problem.
There are numerous other articles informed by lion conservation experts which repeatedly point out the fact that Lion ALERT literally breeds lions to use in tourist petting schemes, then places the lions in “Stages” which it claims will end in wild release. According to Lion ALERT, it utilizes 4 Stages:
Stage 1: Around 3 months and upwards until 18 months old: the cubs are taken on walks in the bush to help them become familiar with their natural surroundings. At 18 months to 2½ years human contact is removed and they are given the opportunity to hone their hunting skills by taking part in Night and Day Encounters in a safe and secure environment (fenced off, no humans).
Stage 2: The lions are released in a pride into a large enclosure where they can start to live as a wild pride, hunting and fending for themselves. They are closely monitored for research purposes; there is no human contact or intervention.
Stage 3: The pride is relocated to a larger area, where they will spend the rest of their lives. This area is big enough to have many different species in it, including competitive ones. In this stage, the pride breeds cubs which will experience no human intervention.
Stage 4: Cubs born in Stage 3 will be raised by the pride in a totally natural environment, and when old enough, can be relocated into those areas of Africa that need them.
The problems here are numerous. For one, these stages sound good, but “Stage 1” starts with cubs that are 3 months old, without explaining where those cubs come from. They’re bred onsite, but that detail is strategically left out because admitting to breeding lions in captivity is bad for business. Then there’s the fact that in ten years, Lion ALERT has never gotten any lions beyond “Stage 2” where Dean filmed them. As we’ve already established, “Stage 2 is half the size of Central Park in New York City. And Dean calls the cubs there “wild born” but according to Lion ALERT’s own website, only the cubs born in Stage 3 will be “raised by the pride in a totally natural environment” and will eventually be released into the wild. But if the cubs in Dean’s video are in “Stage 4” (which is where Lion ALERT says cubs destined for the wild will be raised) that would mean that “Stage 4” the “totally natural environment” is only half the size of Central Park. The other option, of course, is that the cubs Dean is calling “wild born” are just cubs that were born onsite, and which will later be used to breed more animals, and/or sold off to middlemen and end up who knows where. Neither option has anything to do with functional lion conservation.
And experts agree with that fact.
This screenshot showcases just a handful of the problems experts have with Lion ALERT. Yes, we underlined a few pointed sentences which specify that no captive raised lions have ever successfully been released into the wild. Because, you know, it’s nice when experts back up the facts we’ve presented that people just don’t want to acknowledge.
You can read the very long, but very informative thread from whence the above screenshot was taken here.
There is only one “scientific” paper associated with Lion ALERT and it was written by one of their own staff back in 2013. Furthermore, the article only discusses the proposal of a framework for the release of captive bred lions, it doesn’t document any actual release.
There’s even evidence that Lion ALERT has intentionally thwarted screenings of Blood Lions because BL shows that breeding lions for tourism is not functional conservation.
The rest of these articles all raise the same concerns and issues over and over again, all pointing out that Lion ALERT is just another breeding facility with better PR to create facade of lion conservation. Spend some time researching Lion ALERT for yourself. Pay close attention to dates and details, however, as multiple articles put out by Lion ALERT itself, or supported by them, which praise ALERT discuss the fact that “next year” lions are due to be released into the wild. The problem is, these articles range in date from around 2013-2018, and all of them state that Lion ALERT is planning on releasing captive bred lions into the wild “next year”. Which, of course, never happens.
Nice going, Dean. You helped showcase fellow exploiters very nicely there. Well done.