{"id":275512,"date":"2025-11-06T16:52:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T16:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/275512\/"},"modified":"2025-11-06T16:52:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T16:52:10","slug":"cash-strapped-wildlife-park-ready-to-kill-its-last-five-lions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/275512\/","title":{"rendered":"Cash-strapped wildlife park ready to kill its last five lions"},"content":{"rendered":"

A New Zealand wildlife park experiencing financial difficulties has provoked an outcry after euthanising two lions and planning to kill five more.<\/p>\n

The privately owned Kamo Wildlife Sanctuary, in the city of Whangarei in the north of New Zealand\u2019s north island, has been for sale since August.<\/p>\n

The sanctuary said it had been left with no choice but to end the lives of the ageing big cats, which had \u201cserious health conditions that were not treatable and were deteriorating\u201d.<\/p>\n

The fate of the five remaining lions at the park remained unclear on Thursday but the park operator, Janette Vallance, said in a statement on Facebook that the park was exploring \u201cevery possibility\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"Janette<\/p>\n

Vallance said the owners, Bolton Equities, had initially said they would have to euthanise all seven big cats at the sanctuary after their last weekend of trade. Vallance said the animals were all between 18 and 21 years old, and that there were \u201cno real options left\u201d.<\/p>\n

After the first two lions were euthanised, Vallance said she acknowledged the significant backlash from the public, many of whom were pleading for the remaining five lions \u2014 the females Shikira, 21, and Cleo, 19, and males Abdullah, 19, Timba, 18, and Themba, 18 \u2014 to be relocated.<\/p>\n

\"Entrance<\/p>\n

The park\u2019s actions follow that of a zoo in the southern German city of Nuremberg that shot 12 Guinea baboons<\/a> in July due to overcrowding, after which their remains were fed to predators.<\/p>\n

Seven animal rights activists were arrested after they entered Tiergarten N\u00fcrnberg zoo in protest, including a woman glueing her hands to the ground near the entrance. Animal rights groups filed a criminal complaint against the zoo for culling baboons they said were in \u201cperfect health\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u2022 American zoos don\u2019t feed ponies to the lions \u2014 should they?<\/a><\/p>\n

Late on Thursday a New Zealand charitable trust, Huha NZ, which has rescued circus monkeys and crocodiles from the Solomon Islands, said it wanted a chance to save the remaining lions.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re kind of doing a little hustle to see if we can pull off a miracle,\u201d the trust\u2019s chief executive, Carolyn Press-McKenzie, told the Northern Advocate. \u201cWe just don\u2019t know if we\u2019re going to pull it off but we haven\u2019t run out of puff yet. We\u2019re going for it,\u201d Press-McKenzie said.<\/p>\n

Bolton Equities took ownership of the sanctuary in 2014, shortly after the park was closed to the public by the authorities for failing to meet the requirements for animal enclosures. It remained shut for seven years, before reopening in 2021. It was put into involuntary liquidation in 2023.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A New Zealand wildlife park experiencing financial difficulties has provoked an outcry after euthanising two lions and planning…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275513,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[79,201],"class_list":{"0":"post-275512","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}