Why Ukutula?

Dinner time. It is quite an experience to watch. These cute little dumplings turn into aggressive in a millisecond. They eat as fast as cheetahs run.

Everyone has a story… Jim and Lisa and their two boys are here at Ukutula from New York. They lost their home in Hurricane Sandy and came here six months ago for the first time. They have returned here for two weeks to work and stay. Yesterday a dead horse was delivered. They had to butcher it and each day they prepare the food for all the young lions. I will never tire of being here for my four days.

A lion’s life is not at all what you think if you, like me, developed an impression based on the usual childhood sources. All young males are shunned by the pride (the dominant male, really) and have to survive on their own. Sixty percent of them will die in the first two years. In adulthood they struggle as well. Big cats often lose their kills to jackals and hyenas that take over kills in packs. There’s can be a hard life.

The male of each pride provides security and sperm. The females do most of the hunting and their lives too, therefore, are full of risk. And there are poachers, diseases, droughts, floods, fires and so on to contend with.

And all of this is to explain why Ukutula established a wide net to receive lion cubs seized from captive prides (in private reserves or zoos or…). They raise them here and then release them. Consequently, there are several crèches here. The ones we have seen so far, thanks to Jim and Lisa (because my pre-paid education program starts today) were two: one for cubs up to about a month old and the other for cubs from one to several months old. Personality also affects crèche membership—aggressive lions often stay with older cubs.

The program for which we visitors pay, is built on the contact people get with the lion cubs. Some older lions live in Ukutula’s reserve, others are provided to African national parks and reserves and some are on cages; human contact with lion cubs until they are two years old does not interfere with their capacity to return to the wild.

The Ukutula Lion Project is respected and now research is underway to undertake the same style of project for other big cats.