We wanted to share this fantastic article written by our friends at Giltedge Travel. We hope you find it an interesting read. If you ever want to know more or discuss an African Safari please contact the Adventure Specialists at North South Travel to arrange a complimentary consultation. Contact Jane or Anne by calling 604-736-7447 or contacting us through this website by pressing "Get Prices & Schedule" above.
Safety with Lions on Safari
Written by: Onne Vegter
Following the unfortunateincident at a lion parkin Johannesburg recently where a woman wasdragged from her vehicle and killed by a lion, the world’s media has been abuzz.
On social media, concerned tourists are asking whether it is safe to go on safari. Many have criticized the poor woman for leaving her car windows open in spite of the many signs warning her not to doso. However, if an open window is so dangerous, is it safe to go on a safari that uses open vehicles for gamedrives?
When we posted the photo above on our Facebook page a while ago, we received some comments abouthow crazy and stupid these people were to be sitting in an open vehicle so close to a pride of wild lions.
Yet this kind of sighting happens every day all over southern Africa. These concerns about safetystem from a lack of understanding about where the recent tragedy occurred, and how the lion parkdiffers from a regular wildlife safari.
Confusing potential tourists even more, news headlines around the world proclaimed: “Lion killsAmerican tourist at a game park in South Africa”. We’ve seen the words game reserve, game park,nature reserve and safari park all used in connection with this incident. The truth is that this was notan African safari and did not happen in a game reserve. This attack happened at a small lion park,which is very different from a normal African game reserve. It is not the first time an incident like thishas occurred in a lion park yet you never hear of lions dragging tourists off open safari vehicles inbigger game reserves like the Kruger National Park. Why is that?
A typical lion park is nothing like a game reserve such as theSabi Sand Game ReserveorKrugerNational Park. It is more like a glorified zoo that is big enough to drive through. The key issue in this case is that these lions are not entirely wild. These lions are kept in enclosures and have been raisedin captivity (or in some cases rescued from abusive conditions). As cubs, they have probably beenhandled and photographed by humans.Lion cub interactions have received increasing criticismin recent times, and rightly so.However, such activities have traditionally been a key source of income for certain lion parks. When lions are raised like this and fed by humans, they lose their natural fear ofhumans and they learn to associate humans with food.
This is the critical difference between lions in a lion park and wild lions in a gamereserve. Ingame reserves, wild lions donot associate human beings with food.They are naturally fearful of humans and, unless you runaway, they will not see humans as prey. They also do not associate vehicles with humans or withfood.
For this reason, thousands of tourist game drives are conducted every day across Africa in open safari vehicles and involve many close encounters with wild lions and other predators. However, you never hear of tourists being attacked or dragged from their open safari vehicle.
A leopard like this can walk right past an open safari vehicle and does not even take a second look atthe people in the vehicle – they are not seen as a threat and they are not seen as food. I’ve watchedlions and leopards walk so close to the tracker sitting on the front that he could have reached outand touched the animal if he so wished.
The lion park has had similar incidents before, and the management is well aware of the dangerousnature of captive lions. This is why there are clear signs all over the park warning visitors not toalight from their vehicle or even to open their windows. Unfortunately, this tourist did not heed thosewarnings. Yet in the Kruger National Park, visitors have been driving around with open windows formany decades, and thousands have enjoyed close-up encounters with wild lions from the back of anopen safari vehicle. Millions of tourists have safely visited Kruger in their own vehicles, and younever hear of lions dragging people from their cars there. Of course, there are rules in Kruger too. Do not alight from your vehicle. Do not disturb the animals. Do not feed the animals. Do notstand up or hang out of the vehicle. If you heed these rules, you will be perfectly safe.
After a tragic incident like this, misguided and hysterical reporting about the dangers of going on safaridoes incredible damage to tourism and, by extension, to wildlife conservation as so much ofAfrica’s conservation effort depends on income from tourism. African safaris have an excellent safetyrecord and millions of people visit Africa every year to go on safari. As long as touristsobey the rules of the park they are visiting, it is absolutely safe to go on an open vehicle safari.
To find out more about lion parks in South Africa, read: Lion King or Commodity
