Eleven days ago, we saw in the news that 50 lions were totally out of food in a safari park in the Crimea region of Ukraine. Some of the information we received was conflicting so our LAEO Ukraine Director, Lionel de Lange, contacted the park officials to see what the real situation was. We found that there were actually 50 lions and 12 tigers and leopards, and they only had 4 more days of food left. Because of the current political turmoil, all Ukrainian bank accounts in Crimea were frozen when Crimea was annexed by Russia.
The park’s Director, Oleg Zubkov, had gone to meet with senior government officials in Moscow in a desperate plea for help. While he received a sympathetic reaction from them, no timeline was given for when help or food might be forthcoming. The Director returned to the park desperate and hopeless. They were forced to start feeding animals from their petting zoo to the lions to keep them alive.
In just three days, Barbara Wiseman and our U.S. LAEO team raised $7,500, and got it to Ukraine. It was enough to purchase 3½ tons of meat, which is one week’s worth of food for the lions. Lionel found a meat supplier that would give us the best price, and arranged for the park to send a truck and meet us at the supplier’s farm.
One of the challenges to overcome was a law passed in Ukraine, 2 days before that no Russian men between the ages of 16 and 60 could come into Ukraine, and no Ukrainian men between 16 and 60 could leave Ukraine – so the park had to find someone over 60 to drive the truck.
The truck they brought was barely big enough to carry all the meat and getting it all loaded proved to be a major engineering feat. Getting through all the checkpoints and border crossing was a diplomatic effort in itself. But 12 hours later we got the call from the Director that the meat had arrived and the lions were eating! The Director was absolutely elated and incredibly relieved knowing that he’d been able to keep his lions from starving for one more week. He called a press conference and stated he is extremely thankful to LAEO for saving his lions and is now working with us to handle the situation. And check out the incredible 30 second footage he sent us of getting the meat to the lions.
Currently, Lawrence Anthony Earth Association is working on diplomatic channels to try and get the park access to their bank accounts and we are still urgently looking for additional funds to keep them going until a full solution can be found. The weeks’ worth of food will be gone tomorrow.
