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Shumba's Kilimanjaro journey begins

12/26/2014

Chris Herbst writes:
Thank you all for the best wishes, as you can see my extended family also wishing us (me and Shumba). Well just so that everyone is clear hear here is what is gonna happen today. My flight for Nairobi leaves at 13h20 landing at 19h00 then a good old wait of two hours then another flight to Kilimanjaro airport and a two hour drive to Moshi the noisy city at the foot of Kili.

You will probably only hear from me tomorrow in Moshi.

Oh Yes just so that everyone knows Shumba is the only cub I will ever pet.

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Shumba ascends Kilimanjaro

12/24/2014

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Chris wrote: "Greetings all, firstly I would like to wish you, your family and friends a blessed and fantastic Xmas.
Hopefully I will be wishing you a fabulous new year from 5800m up on the summit of the worlds highest free standing mountain, and one of the seven wonders of the world. With my new friend little Shumba spurring me on and reminding me everyday why I am doing this. I will take the spirit of every single lion in captivity waiting to be executed with me, that alone makes me want to sprint up the slopes. Busy with my final checklist making sure I have everything, with little Shumba looking probably wondering where he will fit in between all this equipment."

Bev responds:-
Chris we are with you and Shumba every step of the way. We hope your journey is a fun and exciting one and we look forward to seeing all the photographs you will send us and also reading how you are doing as you make your way to the top. I do not think there has ever been a little Shumba on the top of that mountain. Our sincere thanks for bringing the plight of lions in Africa to the top of Kilimanjaro.

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Kilimanjaro - Climb for Lions

12/22/2014

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Kilimanjaro - Climb for Lions

Greetings Bev.

Hope you are well, my apologies for only coming back to you now. Thank you for the e-mail I am really pleased that you approve of the branding. Thank you for the kind words of encouragement, I am the one to be proud to have you and Chris on board, the work you have been doing is absolutely fantastic.
Africa is under siege, so many people see past the beauty of this fantastic continent we call home, and all they see is a giant shooting range, I firmly believe that those of us who has the intelligence to realise what the consequences are, need to stand together and support each other to get that message to the world.

As far as the climb goes my plan from the beginning was to give a daily report on that particular day`s events and the progress made as it happens. My tablet, camera, and solar charger is coming with to allow me to do so. However I am a bit concerned about the network, there is signal on Kili however it is limited, but I will do my utmost to give this feedback, maybe even video feedback.

As far as the methods is concerned I do have a "climb for lions" fb page which has generated 550 "likes" so far and the website to which I can post this feedback Chris is on my personal fb page, so I can tag him in the posts, or if you prefer I can e-mail you this feedback everyday or I can do both, which ever way you prefer.

I depart on Friday the 26th, my flight to Nairobi is scheduled to depart at 13h20 I will start posting before I leave here, just inform me which method you prefer. I have been looking for the toy lion but I could not find one that would be good enough but I will keep looking and I am sure I will find one somewhere.

Once Again thank you.

Chris Herbst

So watch this space as we follow Chris Herbst on his journey up Kilimanjaro for our Lions. He will be posting updates for us all.
Bev.

2 Comments

CACH Spain going forward

12/21/2014

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CACH SPAIN APDDA Awards Ceremony
CJ writes:
December 17th, we attended the APDDA (Parliamentary Association in Defense of Animal Rights and Welfare) 2014 annual awards ceremony. The awards were for AVTMA, the veterinarian association against bullfighting and animal abuse for their work explaining scientifically animal suffering and opposing to anything that can cause it, and to the digital newspaper eldiario.es for their continuous defense of the animals and for their blog El Caballo de Nietzsche for bringing awareness of those injustices and cruelty cases taking place daily.
You will find here some pictures of a well attended group of dedicated animal rights activist. Seen with us in one of the photos is Senator Capella who has been very positive with her support of CACH SPAIN and our mission to ban canned hunting lions.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Cachspain/646678988701616?ref=br_tf

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Altruism between lion cubs

12/8/2014

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Stavy Anastasion volunteered at Kevin's sanctuary and was fortunate to meet Yame and George.
Her story below.

CJ writes:

We met Stavy Anastasion at Kevin´s sanctuary while we were at Kevin´s sanctuary ourselves. We had just arrived from Madrid. Our mission, of course, was to bring the cub´s to South Africa where Yame and George would make their home with Kevin forever. When I think about all of this today, I get goose bumps - just being moved by what so many of us accomplished out of our love for Yame and George. Team work can sometimes move the biggest mountains.

We have been back to Madrid now more than two weeks. Stavy sent us an email a couple of days ago to let us know that she was in Madrid visiting with her daughter who is a student here studying for a year. We arranged to meet at "The National Geographic Café", (most appropriate meeting place), on Gran Via.

Our visit was wonderful and it was obvious that we would continue being friends in the future thanks to the two inspiring little lion cubs who had brought us together. They have brought so many other people together already, haven´t they? Such amazing little ambassadors.

Stavy showed us some pictures that she had taken while she was at the sanctuary during her second week there. WOW, how they had grown in just such a short time. She then told the following story that I thought you all would like to hear:

Yame and George now come and go from their fenced in play installation and are now walking freely all over their designated areas outside of that installation. They are free to roam here and there totally unannounced, which creates problems now and then with some of the dogs on the property. Never mind. Kevin just keeps encouraging them to be free and have fun!

Kevin has now turned the electric fence off that runs quite a distance around a given area of the property. This fence is designed to keep the wild "wild animals" out and the soon to be someday not so wild animals in. Yame and George have come face to face with the fence on several occasions and have learned that an encounter with the fence is most unpleasant and is to be avoided at all costs. However, while Yame can see the fence very well, which makes it easy for him to avoid it, little George does not. George has been a victim of the fence´s sting far more than Yame because he just doesn´t know it is there until he gets very close. Then, it´s too late. So, Yame has learned to carefully watch his little brother and when he sees George heading in that direction, he rushes forward, wedges his body between the fence and George, cuts him off, and moves him off into another direction.

Now is that not smart? Is that not love? Yame, you are a real super brother and a real star!!!!!

Thanks Stavy for the pictures included here and for the story.

2 Comments

60 Minutes - where have all the lions gone?

12/3/2014

21 Comments

WHERE HAVE ALL THE LIONS GONE – LONG TIME PASSING…………

We have been overwhelmed with the response to the 60 Minutes expose of the Lion Park near Johannesburg. Almost all positive, but one email from a former volunteer at Lion Park needs to be addressed. It is too long and rambling to copy in here, but the gist of it will be clear from my response below:

Hello (X)

Thanks for your lengthy email about the Lion Park and your comments on the expose of its links to canned lion hunting by CBS News 60 Minutes.

As a former volunteer to the Lion Park, it is not surprising that you have strong views on the issue, and that are friendly with Rodney Fuhr, the owner of Lion Park.

You blame the presenter, Clarissa Ward, for an interview, which, you state: “only lasts 3 minutes, we don't have the whole interview and it's not hard to see that Rodney was nervous, and that the journalist forced him to tell what she wanted.”

Actually, Fuhr was not at all nervous to start with. On the contrary, he was arrogant and boastful – until she confronted him with the truth, and reeled off a list of canned lion operators to whom he had sold many lions.

Even then, he did not become nervous – he became angry and started to bluster, because he realised that 60 Minutes had done its home work, and that he was caught in the web of his own lies.
What you are saying is that Fuhr was treated unfairly by 60 Minutes.

You are being grossly unfair to the 60 Minutes team. I have worked with the media for fifteen years in my efforts to ban canned lion hunting, and have not come across a more professional and conscientious team than 60 Minutes. They approached me more than a year ago to get some background for the issue and I have worked closely with producer Randall Joyce for more than a year.

I can assure you that he and his team worked tirelessly to get at the truth. They even employed a local investigative journalist to make perfectly sure that they got the story right.

They flew me up to Johannesburg not once, but twice, for interviews – again, to make quite sure that our facts were correct.

And it was only because 60 Minutes had done its homework so thoroughly that Clarissa was in possession of the proof that Lion Park had sold many lions to canned hunting operators; which proof she used so effectively when interviewing Fuhr.

The brevity of the interview with Fulhr was caused by editing constraints, not, as you imply, by mala fides. The whole story had to be squeezed in to 15 minutes. In fact, the editors were more than generous to Fuhr, leaving out his damning outburst at Clarissa when he realised that the game was up: ‘Well if making money is a crime, then condemn me…”

Save your sympathy for a more worthy cause than Mr Fuhr.

You say you were free to look around the office at Lion Park, and imply that this proves Fuhr’s bona fides. The naivete of most volunteers continues to surprise me; so few of them calculate the cub numbers and then ask themselves “where have all the lions gone?”

You yourself have calculated that something like 400 lions must have passed through Lion Park, yet you cannot bring yourself to answer the obvious question: “Where have all the lions gone?”

To their lion farm called “The Kingdom?” Yes, and where to from there? Clearly the “Kingdom” has been used to hold “surplus” lions until they could be sold for canned hunting.

Finally you complain that it has taken us all so long to expose the Lion Park for what it is, that this delay somehow makes our motives questionable.

Again, the opposite is true.   It has taken us years to expose the Lion Park because we needed to get the proof before we could do so.   60 Minutes have been wanting to come out and shoot the story for a long time, but decided to hold back until they were sure that they had all the facts.

The truth is that you are in denial; that you were duped in to volunteering at Lion Park believing, wrongly, you were “helping conservation” or “helping lions in need of care at a Sanctuary.”
Instead, your money was feeding one of the cruellest industries in the world, the South African canned lion industry.

Now logically, you should be angry with Lion Park for deceiving you. Logically, you should be angry with your volunteer placement firm for sending you to a lion farm when you wanted to go to a sanctuary.

Instead, you twist the facts to suit your pre-conception – making fatuous allegations like poor Rodney was ‘nervous’, that he was ‘forced to say what Clarissa wanted him to say.’

The truth is that the Lion Park is only one of many lion farms in SA that breed lions for the canned hunting industry, and that cub petting and volunteering are a very profitable spin-off for captive lion breeders. And they all lie to conceal the fate of the cubs. They know that volunteers and tourists would never visit lion breeding facilities if they were told upfront that the cubs that were petted today were destined to be sold for canned hunting.

                I have answered your complaints at some length, and posted this response to our website and social media, because I hope that volunteers to South Africa, and tourists who visit cub petting facilities, as well as tour operators and travel agents who book clients in to cub petting facilities in SA, will be better educated.

                Then they can look around at all the adorable cubs, calculate how many hundreds of lions have passed through this facility over the years, and ask themselves the question that cries out for an answer:
“Where have all the lions gone? Long time passing. When will they ever learn?”

Now watch and see how Lion Park gets in to a huddle with its lawyers and crafts another slick public relations press release to fool the unwary.

21 Comments

A tribute to CJ & Luis

12/2/2014

7 Comments

I received a lovely surprise yesterday, news of Yame & George. But to add to this wonderful surprise, I also received these gorgeous pictures from Dee.
Here is a report from Dee Roelofsz who visited Welgedacht:

Unfortunately we only got to spend about 10-15 minutes with them which was purely by chance when we stopped to pick up 2 guests for the game drive. The rangers had them in that camp at the time, which Lozanne (our ranger for the day) explained is part of the process of getting them used to be being moved around & familiar with the different camps.

They are really too precious & looking so good & happy. As per your story of them thus far, George is much shyer then Yame & literally shadows Yame wherever he goes. I was so happy to see how well his face has healed & he looks so much healthier but still got a little tired trying to keep up with Yame so he had to rest now & then. Yame is a real little character, very mischievous & does not sit still for 2 seconds!!

It was a treat to get to see them personally & it warms my heart knowing their story & I hope they go from strength to strength.

They are absolutely beautiful & had I been given the choice I would have happily missed the game drive and spent the entire time at Welgedacht with these two little souls & taken hundreds of photo's!!
Best regards
Dee

https://www.facebook.com/deeroelofszthroughmylens

7 Comments

Shumba's Kilimanjaro journey begins

Shumba ascends Kilimanjaro

Kilimanjaro - Climb for Lions

CACH Spain going forward

Altruism between lion cubs

60 Minutes - where have all the lions gone?

A tribute to CJ & Luis

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