Lion sanctuary loses bit to stop film
A wild animal rehabilitation centre has lost its battle to halt further screenings of the documentary Blood Lions.
|||Durban - A wild animal rehabilitation and sanctuary centre has lost its battle to halt further screenings of the documentary Blood Lions, which depicts images of two of its lions in the film.
In a short, reserved judgment on Wednesday, Pietermaritzburg High Court Judge Fikile Mokgohloa said she had read all the court papers, considered all arguments and had watched the documentary, and was not satisfied that the centre, Zanchieta, near Bloemfontein, had made a case to warrant an order being granted in its favour. Mokgohloa dismissed Zanchieta’s application with costs.
Zanchieta launched an urgent application in the high court last week to halt further screenings of the documentary and asked the court to order the producers of the film, Regulus Vision, to remove images of two of its lions from the documentary.
Blood Lions has been produced as propaganda material against canned lion hunting, the lion bone trade, and the breeding of lions for these purposes. Zanchieta director, Lizette van Schalkwyk, alleged that members of Regulus Vision came to the sanctuary under false pretences, and that because of the negative association the sanctuary has, based on the documentary, it stands to close down because of a lack of funds and volunteers.
However, in opposition to the application, Philippa Hankinson, sole director of Regulus Vision – which produced the documentary with the Wildlands Conservation Trust – said Zanchieta had bred lions in captivity through its hand-rearing of lion cubs in an active nursery to support breeders in the surrounding area.
In terms of regulations, animal sanctuaries are prohibited from breeding or operating nurseries, as Zanchieta did.
Hankinson referred in her affidavit to excerpts from the documentary quoting an employee of Zanchieta, Jeana Gous. Gous allegedly said the cubs were taken from their mothers 10 days after birth.
In the wild, cubs stayed with their mothers for two years, but when forcibly removed, the lionesses went back into oestrus to facilitate “multiple breeding cycles”, said Hankinson.
She alleged the inescapable conclusion was Zanchieta took the cubs away “for this purpose”.
Gous allegedly said one of Zanchieta’s lionesses, Princess, had three white cubs, of which two were sold to a private reserve in Denmark, and spoke about servals (African wild cats) being sold or given to Letsatsi La Africa game lodge, which had been linked to the bone trade and “wildlife trafficking”.
These allegations were denied in replying papers by Gous and Van Schalkwyk.
Regulus Vision argued that there were only two images of Zanchieta lions in the documentary, depicted for a period of seconds and that all content in the film was protected by Section 16 of the Bill of Rights.
The company said Zanchieta had failed to establish it would suffer irreparable harm as a result of the documentary being screened. Regulus Vision argued further that reasonable people would not automatically associate the images of the lions in cages in the film as being the lions at Zanchieta.
Daily News
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