Uday Hussein's Lions May Be Freed in African Wilds

Leon Marshall in Johannesburg
for National Geographic News

June 4, 2003

War-traumatized lions which Sadam Hussein's son Uday kept in a private zoo in one of the family's Baghdad palaces could soon be roaming free in the South African bush.

If all goes well with the rescue operation put together by a number of charities—and a final decision is made to go ahead with the plan—a lioness and her six cubs, and a couple of one-year-olds, will be airlifted to their new home early next month.

The animals, along with a blind bear and two cheetahs, were neglected and living in terrible conditions when U.S. troops found them towards the end of the Iraq war. The soldiers using the palace as a base took care of them and, according to reports, were delighted on a day towards the end of April to find the lioness had given birth to six cubs.

Once in South Africa, an intensive program is planned to get them accustomed to life in the wild and to fend for themselves. Wildlife experts are hopeful that their natural instincts will prevail and that they will join with other lions to form prides.

The project to bring them to South Africa was initiated by Louise Joubert, founder of SanWild Wildlife Sanctuary, an organization based in the country's northern Limpopo Province near the Kruger National Park, which cares for and rehabilitates into the wild animals that have been orphaned, injured, or held in captivity.

Joubert saw the news about the discovery of the animals in a Hussein palace on television. She was raising a zebra foal at the time and, being kept up late into the night, she was watching television to pass the time.

"The television reporter said it was a wonder the animals had survived the fighting that had taken place in the palace grounds. They showed the animals, and it took one look into their eyes for me to take my decision," Joubert said. "I immediately phoned Dr. Barbara Maas, chief executive of Care for the Wild International, in London, and we agreed that we should get to Baghdad as soon as possible to see what we could do."

Things moved quickly. It was decided that SanWild could accommodate the animals if they could be brought out of Iraq. But the first priority was to stabilize their situation in Baghdad. That meant making sure the animals were safe and properly cared for.

"Barbara played a big role. She went into Baghdad while the bullets were still flying. In negotiations with the Baghdad Zoo Committee it was decided that they had the facilities to keep the cheetahs, but that it would be better for the lions to come to South Africa," said Joubert.

Maas said there was still much gunfire when she arrived in Baghdad. It was decided to leave the lioness and her cubs at the palace for fear that any attempt at moving them might in the already tense conditions cause her to kill the cubs, she said. They are being cared for by the Baghdad Zoo, which is being assisted by a South African, Lawrence Anthony of Thula Thula Reserve in KwaZulu Natal province, who went there when he learned about the animals' plight.

The two other lions have been moved to a small indoor enclosure at the zoo. They could not be put into the open enclosure as the lions being housed there would most likely have killed them, and there is no other place to keep them, Maas said.

She said the Baghdad Zoo officials were very helpful. They, too, had been traumatized, with the zoo having been stripped of computers, furniture, and even door handles by looters. But a good understanding was soon built up which led to them willing to have the lions go to South Africa, Maas said.

It has been agreed that the bear should go to Greece, and that a South African veterinarian would do an operation there to remove cataracts from its eyes.

Joubert says that in addition to the work done by Maas and her organization, the help that had been offered to bring the lions to South Africa has been wonderful.

Emirates Airlines has offered to fly the animals to Johannesburg International Airport at 75 percent discount. And to spare them the additional five-hour journey it would have taken by road to the SanWild Sanctuary, a group of pilots who fly for conservation and are called the Bateleurs, have offered to fly them there.

A special crate will be built for the lioness and her cubs for the journey to South Africa. Like the two one-year-olds, she will be sedated. The cubs will not be sedated. The idea is that they should be separated from her but still close enough for her to see them and for them to see and smell her.

Joubert said the U.S. soldiers named the lioness Xena, and from all accounts there is hardly reason to fear she will not get through the trauma of the flight. "She gave perfect birth despite the bad conditions and the trauma suffered from the war around her. And that to six cubs, which is an unusually large litter. This seems a very special animal," she said.

At SanWild, the lioness would be allowed to raise her cubs away from people. Everything possible will be done to see that they grow up in the way they would have had they been born in the wild.

Plans are for her and the cubs to be transferred after a year or so to a community game reserve in South Africa's KwaZulu Natal province on the eastern seaboard of the country. The 6,500-hectare (16,000-acre) Ngome Reserve belonging to the Zondi clan of the Zulu Kingdom has no lions at present, and the intention is to eventually bring in a male lion. It would only be done when the cubs are reasonably grown, however. It would also have to be a male that is not yet sexually mature, so that there is no danger of it killing the young ones.

The two other lions from Baghdad, the one-year-olds, are to be placed in an enclosure adjacent to a camp housing a brother and sister pair that came to SanWild as eight-week-olds. Now 14 months, and having been raised with minimum human contact, they have between feeds started hunting small game like birds, monkey, and warthog.

Only once the two pairs started showing an interest in each other and there is a good possibility that they will form a coalition would they be allowed together. The hope is that the two older inhabitants would then teach the new arrivals to hunt. But the latter would still be fitted with tracking collars to see whether they were hunting or not.

Joubert is not concerned about returning the animals to the wild. "There is no reason why they shouldn't learn to hunt quite quickly. But they have to get fit first. Sitting in a zoo is not good for a lion's endurance."

Maas says there could not be a better solution for the lions than to bring them to South Africa. "It feels like they are going home." But she says funds are desperately needed.

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