A miserable lion cooped up in a tiny cage in which it could barely move had been one of the most saddening sights at the Awash National Park in eastern Ethiopia. The Ethiopian tour guides would proudly tell the tourists how the wild beast had been conquered. An attitude of malice towards wild animals is widespread in theeast African country.
At first the villagers had kept Dolo, the lion, on a one-metre-long chain for four years. Almost blind from malnourishment, the lion was then handed over to the Awash Park, where it languished for three more years in the cage. Two years ago, after numerous protests from the tourists, the Ethiopian wildlife authority had acted and asked an animal protection group, the Born Free Foundation, to take away the lion. Since then, Dolo and Safia, a five-year-old female lion rescued from a similar situation, have lived in a large, wild enclosure of acacia and pine trees. Dolo sometimes jumps at the high fence.
”Then he stretches upwards as much as he can - probably because he couldn’t do that for such a long time. He simply cannot believe that he is able to move now,” says Stephen Brend, Ethiopia country representative and Project Director of the Born Free Foundation. The founder of the Foundation, 83-year-old Virginia McKenna, an actress, has taken this big cat - having poor eyesight and a sparse mane - to heart. “She once told me that Dolo is her favourite lion of all time,” says Brend. The actress became
involved in animal conservation, along with her husband Bill Travers, after starring in the 1966 movie Born Free - which was about a naturalist couple Joy and George Adamson.
The goal of the Born Free Foundation, set up in 1984, is to free wild animals from captivity, enable them a life in dignity and, if possible, return them to the wild.
Today the Foundation is working in almost 20 countries on four continents. They have helped free tigers, bears, whales and many primates. In 2009 the Ethiopian government gave the Foundation a 70-hectare site near the forest area of Menagesha - to help curb illegal wildlife trade, to better protect the wild animals, and to educate the people on how to treat them. Schoolchildren from Addis Ababa regularly visit. Dozens of animals have found a new home in Ensessakotteh, an Amharic word that means ‘animal footprint’. There are now 77 animals in the sprawling enclosures - including seven lions, several cheetahs, giant tortoises, jackals, baboons, monkeys and birds. Visitors are welcome, but Brend wants to avoid too many, so that the animals do not feel disturbed. “After all, we are here for the animals and not for the tourists,”
says the Australian who, prior to coming to Ethiopia, spent seven years in the Indonesian part of Borneo fighting to protect orangutans.
While several monkeys and caracals (also known as the desert lynx) have been rehabilitated and released into the wild with radio collars, the lions won’t get such a chance. “The lions will be here for the rest of their lives, because Ethiopia is too densely populated. It wouldn’t be only
dangerous for the humans but also for the lions,” Brend says. The Foundation, with the help of national authorities, has rescued many animals from miserable conditions in recent years, including baboons chained up in private houses or bars, and cheetahs - mainly from Ethiopia’s Somali region - which were trapped for sale to wealthy Arabs.
”Next week we will pick up another three cheetahs,” says Brend.
There is no shortage of horrific stories at Ensessakotteh. The lion, Kebri, still very aggressive, grew up in a much-too-small cage at a military camp, after farmers, agitated with her for attacking their livestock, poisoned his mother. ”When we rescued him we found stones, bottles and sticks on the floor of the cage,” Brend says. It is no wonder that the big cat still roars and rages when visitors approach the gate of his enclosure. Then there was the case of the hyena discovered at a makeshift zoo at the university in the city of Harar.
Brend says that the condition of the animal was the worst he has ever seen of a wild animal.
The animal was held in a small, barren, concrete cage for years and the zoologist believed that the animal had lost its mind. Yet, the hyena made a rapid recovery once brought to the Foundation’s centre. “Here was an animal that we worried might be permanently insane but, two days later, she was lying in the shade of an acacia tree, free from any fear or distress,” Brend says. “At that moment it occurred to me that, no matter what the cost, theeffort of getting her out of that cage - saving this one ’individual’ - made the world a slightly better place.”
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