My name is Maxine Prins and I live in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. I’ve established the Moomba Foundation with as corporate target the wellbeing of ‘wild animals’ living in captivity. Besides that, I want to show the world the truth about the cruelties of the canned hunting industry, and what can be done against it, or at least how we can reduce it.

For me all this started about five years ago when I, as young unknown volunteered at the lion-park in Johannesburg. A video of me playing with two lions at that park went viral on Youtube, for the wrong reason of course.

Few years after that I heard about their involvement in the canned hunting industry and I felt angry and abused. For that reason I went back to SA last year to do some wildlife courses, to learn more about the animals kept and breaded in captivity and what is really going on behind the curtains of this evil industry. During a wildlife course I met a very sad white lion cub, living all alone at a breeding facility. I just couldn’t witness her state and so I saved her by moving her to one of the good parks, in this case Jukani. This was the start of my mission, the Moomba foundation, to help as much sad animals as possible.

I am convinced we must start preventing that more and future volunteers and tourists will make the same mistake as I did. I believe we can make a difference if we start creating awareness by the people who intent visiting wildlife parks as we instead guide them to the parks where the owners not only think about their income but really care for their animals.

That is why I am building up a database of the good and ethical parks where tourists and volunteers can go to without concerns. Only that way we can create travel routes that people can follow so they can enjoy a vacation and still positively contribute to all South African animals. My ultimate target is to create a Mobile App that visitors can use to find a (good) park nearby.

To decide if these parks are good for their animals, I have to visit them and they have to satisfy certain points. Our foundation made a list of requirements we stand for together with people and/organisations and/or foundations that have experience with and knowledge in this field, and helped to accomplish the list of requirements. They have given us their support and agreed with our aim. When the parks satisfy all these points, we want to give them a certificate of being a good ethical park.

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.