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Cape Town - KwaCheetah, a cheetah breeding project that offers tourists that opportunity to interact with the African cheetah in KwaZulu-Natal, remains closed while investigations into recent attacks take place, reports the Tourism Update.
Three visitors have been attacked in the past 90 days.
In June this year, a guest was attacked on the arm and required stitches. A month after that, a senior KZN woman was pulled to the ground by a cheetah, bitten on the head and arms while inside an enclosure in the park. The woman suffered serious injuries. A broken hip and had to undergo reconstructive surgery to her ear, reported News24.
The following day, a 10-year-old schoolboy was suffered injury to his shoulder after a male cheetah forced its way through a wire enclosure, attacking the boy’s backpack, while scratching and biting the boy at the same time. The cheetah's handler tried to get the cheetah off the young boy by beating it with a stick, but cheetah carried on attacking the child, reported News24.
The handler was then forced to shove his fingers up the cheetahs nose, shocking the animal, and releasing its hold on the young boy. The parents of the young boy were enraged at the manner in which the park handled the attack, claiming they 'downplayed' the incident on social media.
The last two attacks have involved the same cheetah.
READ: I tried to punch the cheetah in the face - injured boy
Spokesperson for the KwaCheetah park, Clarke Smith said in a press release that the cheetah’s behavior was out of character and could possibly have been behaving playfully.
“Safety precautions at Kwa Cheetah are rigorous. None of the cheetah at the project has displayed behaviour of this nature before and it is contrary to their usual demeanour.”
Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife has suspended all commercial operations in the park, and set off investigations in August this year.
READ: Cheetah project slammed
Acting Ezemvelo CEO, Dr David Mabunda, says that Ezemvelo continues to provide advice to KwaCheetah until all issues have been seen to and the park will stay closed until the issues have been dealt with. Ezemvelo said it would only release further information to the public, once the investigation was complete.
In another incident, Joburg's famous Lion Park announced that from 2016 it would no longer be offering guests the opportunity to interact with lion cubs.
READ: Joburg's Lion Park cans lion cub petting
The change will coincide with the park’s move to a new location in the Magaliesberg Mountains early in 2016, about 15-minutes' drive past its current location.
The Lion Park said that this comes after negative media coverage and ongoing campaigns by animal activist groups, who alleged that the petting of cubs is directly related to canned lion hunting.
“It is against the background of this negative media coverage and the ongoing campaigns against us by certain animal activist groups that the decision has been reached to cease the cub interaction and the breeding of lions at the new park,” Spokesperson for the park Scott Simpson said.
However, for the next few months, lion cub interaction is still available at the existing Lion Park.
READ: Five lies you need to stop believing about the lion cub petting industry
The issue of wildlife petting at rehabilitation and breeding centres has been in the spotlight more and more following the release of wildlife documentary BLOOD LIONS.
The release of Ian Michler’s film at the Durban Film festival in July, blew the lid off all the conservation claims made by the predator breeding and canned hunting industries in South Africa.
The release of the film also coincided with the news that one of Zimbabwe’s most famous lions, Cecil, was shot in a supposed legal hunt on a private reserve just outside of Hwange National Park - globally fueling debate around the practice.
For 15 years Michler has researched and campaigned against the canned lion hunting industry in South Africa, with cub petting and volunteer work only serving as an outlet for the dubious industry, says Michler.
Michler states that unethical lion breeders are confusing the message and are in fact high jacking potential conservation funding. He says organisations such as Panthera, Endangered Wildlife Trust, Wilderness Foundation, Wildlands Conservation Trust are at the heart of conservation in South Africa and not a single one of them work with these breeding or petting facilities.
It is important for volunteers and those seeking to have an enriching, eco-tourism experience to ask those uncomfortable questions if they have any doubts about the conservation practices at the establishment they're visiting.
“Ask to speak to their resident lion ecologist, ask which conservation programmes they're working with,” suggests Michler, "You'll very soon discover they don't have one."
