Ukutula

On Monday, we visited the Ukutula Lion Education Centre in Brits, North West Province, just a few miles from Ryan's parents' house. The center is open to school groups and other organizations, but not to the general public. Lucky for us, Ryan's mom made a few calls and scheduled a visit for us. We were the only ones there, and we stayed for about three hours. Our fantastic guide, Stiaan, works with the lions every day and taught us a lot about how they are raised and what will happen to them.

At Ukutula - which means "place of quiet" in Zulu - lions are bred to be reintroduced into the wild where populations are declining. They are raised in the sanctuary until they are adults, and then they are tagged and released into areas like Kruger National Park where they are tracked and monitored throughout their lives. The lion population is declining in part because of the continued popularity of hunting lions for sport. There still exist in Africa lodges where tourists can pay lots of money to hunt and kill a lion in a confined area of the "wild."

The cubs we played with at Ukutula were all around 4-5 months old. Once they get to be a year old, the trainers no longer interact with them, as it isn't a good idea for lions to grow up comfortable with humans. But when they are little, all they want to do is play, and they are so incredibly delightful.

Here are some pictures from our time at Ukutula. The center operates from donations, and if you'd like to learn more about it, please follow the link above. You can even adopt a lion cub and then receive updates about its progress over the years. I adopted a little cub and named it Steve in honor of its domestic relative back home. You can see Ryan holding Steve at the end of the short video.




Here is Ryan holding the cub I adopted and named Steve. For those of you who follow Steve America, now there will be a Steve Africa!






The Ukutula center recently rescued this tiger cub from a zoo where he was not being properly cared fo. The cub's name is Roger. He is fourteen weeks old and super lovable.

After I picked him up, Roger promptly fell asleep in my lap.

This is Roger's paw - at fourteen weeks old!

Roger is completely in love with Stiaan, his caretaker and trainer.

The lion cubs loved to chew on my clothes, and once they get a grip, it's really hard to get them to let go! Here you can see a cub hanging onto my shirt, and below, the resulting tatters.



This is Livingston, the adult male lion of the pride that lives at Ukutula. The cubs we were playing with will grow up to have a big mane like this. In a pride of lions, there is only one male, plus several females and many cubs. If another adult male wants to take over, he must fight the other male for the lead position in the pride.