Alexandra Lamontagne felt she was helping animals when she traveled all the way from Quebec, Canada, to volunteer at a wildlife center in South Africa. When Lamontagne came in 2013, she was told she would be caring for five newborn lions who were purportedly headed to a zoo in Denmark in a few months, despite her initial plans to assist with the organization’s monkeys.
Alexandra Lamontagne felt she was helping animals when she traveled all the way from Quebec, Canada, to volunteer at a wildlife center in South Africa.
When Lamontagne came in 2013, she was told she would be caring for five newborn lions who were purportedly headed to a zoo in Denmark in a few months, despite her initial plans to assist with the organization’s monkeys.
Lamontagne didn’t know what was really going on at the facility where the baby lions were kept. As her stay at the facility progressed, she found herself bonding with the five cubs in her care, especially the youngest, Serabie.
She would often bottle-feed Serabie, who would slowly fall asleep on her lap.
Lamontagne didn’t learn about the lion cubs she’d helped rear, including Serabie, until she returned to Canada.
“Canned hunting” is a heinous crime that Lamontagne had never heard of before. “Canned hunting” entails selling lions that have been reared in “lion farms” to hunters searching for simple but spectacular prey. Hunters may go online and look at photographs of available lions before placing an order for one whose head they’d want to display on their wall.
These paying clients are handed rifles and brought out into a small enclosure where their animal has been herded for them after going to a canned hunting facility in South Africa (or possibly the United States). A lion is occasionally given drugs to make him – the target – easier to shoot. Then there’s the lion, who has learned to trust people after being nurtured by hand.
Baby lions, like Serabie, are often raised by vacationing volunteers, like Lamontagne, who believe they are helping animals and who rarely even know the bloody end that awaits these cubs.
“I tried to find out, but I was never able to know the truth,” Lamontagne said of her time at the facility. She was appalled when she learned Serabie was born just to be shot – and she knew she had to do something.
“She is just wonderful,” Lamontagne said about Serabie as a newborn in an interview with The Dodo. “Now you see how enamored I was.”
She enlisted the support of everyone she knew to save Serabie. “Many individuals were unaware of canned hunting. At first, they were just like me “she stated
After finally accumulating enough money through social media, Lamontagne was able to purchase Serabie’s release, so she returned to South Africa to alter Serabie’s fate.
Serabie was in a cage with 14 other cubs when Lamontagne returned to the institution. As Lamontagne walked around the facility, she realized that there were new, smaller cubs in another cage.
Another contained bigger lions, which Lamontagne suspected would be shipped to a secret canned hunting facility to be slaughtered. So many lion cubs were being reared only for the purpose of allowing hunters to purchase the privilege to shoot them.
“It was very painful because you know you’re taking one, but all the others are going to get shot,” Lamontagne said.
“I just hope that by saving her, I was able to make a small difference in this horrific practice,” Lamontagne said. “I saw so many other lions where Serabie was, and it still hurts that I couldn’t save them all.” “It was critical to demonstrate to the public that murdering an animal is wrong. That animal is aware of your presence and is aware of your sentiments.”
Despite the fact that Lamontagne hasn’t seen Serabie since the rescue, she plans to pay her a visit at the refuge next year.
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