Qualifications

1. There is no interaction (direct contact) with the animals and visitors/volunteers.
2. They do not breed with the animals, unless it can be justified for the preservation of the species.
3. Animals are not for sale. Buying encourages the trade even when meant to save an animal from unsuitable conditions. A negotiated ‘surrendering’ of the animal by the owner is always the preferred option.
4. Guaranteed lifetime, unconditional and professional care for the animals is a must.
5. There are no cubs, and certainly not all year round. When there are cubs, they are rescued from places like circuses, breeding farms or from private facilities.
6. Logs of each and every present animal, from birth till death, are at any time available upon request.
7. Each park should have a management plan for (safe-) keeping of the animals, with protocols, vision and mission statements, contingency plans, husbandry, animal welfare, veterinary and feeding plans.

PLEASE NOTE: the people/organizations/foundations, only signed our guidelines and are not responsible for the list of the animal parks we visited.

It is also not clear where the cubs go to when they are too big, usually when they are around 2 years and older. This is the age when the lions are not manageable anymore and to dangerous for the tourist and volunteers. The animal keepers often tell the story that they put the animals back into the wild, but this is not possible and never happened before. A lot of these breeding facilities also have animals that do not live in Africa, like tigers, these never survive in the wild when they release them. So these stories are not true. And if the animals aren’t sold to hunters, they will live in a small cage for the rest of their life.

Breeding facilities advertise with cub petting, on their website you see pictures with tourists petting cubs. Realize that when you pet a cub you are enriching and supporting the canned lion industry. The same applies to any other interaction with wild animals.

When you visit a breeding facility, there are always a lot of cubs around which you can pet, walk and make pictures with. Also they have a lot of old male lions, because hunters love the big male lions with their manes. And a breeding facility often has a lot of volunteers walking around. Lionesses are forced to breed repetitively at such a facility and when the cubs are born they are removed from their mothers when they are around 3-10 days old. A true sanctuary will never have breeding animals and never have cubs all year around; they only have cubs when they needed to be rescued. Also there is never a possibility to interact with any animal.

Not only we want to certify the parks, but all branches in this industry. The branches we want to contact are:

• Airlines
• Travel agencies and tour operators
• Hotels and lodges in the Southern African countries
• Bus and taxi companies
• Travel consultants
• Travel books publishing houses
• Stage agencies and volunteers sites

All of the above will be approached with the request to openly distance them from ‘ the evil industry ‘ and to promote a better life for wildlife.

The companies that openly distance themselves from the industry and want to follow our advice can carry the Moomba certified and use the logo on all their travel papers. We will follow these companies but also help them to point out places of interest that are certified because they do good work for the wildlife and the support of the tourists is desperately needed in order to survive.

The environmentally aware conscious tourist of today, will probably and hopefully rather choose for a hotel with these flyers and will not visit lion breeding farms, but the parks we recommend.

Only in this way the good companies and good animal parks can survive and the bad companies/parks will not (eventually). The breeding will decrease and hopefully eventually stop or be at a minimum.

This ‘ stop ‘ is certainly not overnight, I expect a long and difficult process with a lot of opposition from the ‘ evil industry ‘ but the wildlife has my word that I am willing to do anything for their wellbeing!

Of course this does not say that if we encounter animals in terrible conditions that we do not buy more animals to ensure them a better life. On the contrary! We are available day and night for each animal in need and will do everything within our ability to alleviate suffering. And of course we can use financially support and volunteers that want to help us give the all the wild animals living in captivity in Africa a better life.