Escape from Lebanon Baby lion Sara is safe after an adventurous journey

The big cat was being kept illegally in Beirut. An adventurous journey gives her a new life in a South African reserve.

DPA

15.11.2024, 21:06

dpa

Sick and tired, Sara arrived at the home of her rescuers. The body of the four-and-a-half-month-old lioness is marked by ringworm and signs of mistreatment. But after eight weeks in the small apartment of an animal welfare organization in Beirut, Sara has made it: she arrives by boat and plane in a wildlife sanctuary in South Africa on Friday. She has left both the Israeli air raids and her vindictive owner behind her.

Sara is the fifth lion cub to be evacuated from Lebanon by the group Animals Lebanon since the Hezbollah militia entered the conflict one day after the Hamas terror attack on southern Israel on October 7. Animals Lebanon first discovered Sara on social media channels in July. Her owner, a Lebanese man from the city of Baalbek, posted videos of himself with the little lion cub on TikTok and Instagram. Under Lebanese law, it is illegal to keep wild and exotic animals.

Lion cub to show off

The lion cub was used for showing off, said Animals Lebanon CEO Jason Mier. The group was finally able to retrieve the animal from the household in mid-September after filing a police report. Officers interrogated the owner and forced him to surrender the big cat.

Soon afterwards, after almost a year of constant skirmishes on the border, Israel launched an offensive against the militant Islamist Hezbollah militia. Baalbek also became the target of attacks. Mier and his team were able to get Sara out of Baalbek weeks before the Israeli air raid on the ancient city and took her to an apartment in Beirut's Hamra business district. From there she was supposed to fly to South Africa in October, but international airlines suspended their flights to Lebanon in the face of the Israeli attacks.

Air strikes hinder rescue

Before the conflict, Animals Lebanon was working to stop the smuggling of animals and the trade in exotic pets. The activists rescued more than two dozen big cats from captivity in private homes and brought them to sanctuaries.

Since the start of the war, Animals Lebanon has also been caring for pets stuck in damaged homes while hundreds of thousands of Lebanese flee air strikes. "Many are still in our care because the owners of these animals are still displaced," says Mier.

Sara was unaware of all the suffering in her environment. She thrived and gained 40 kilograms thanks to a generous supply of meat. Every morning she cuddled with Mier's wife Maggie, who is also an animal rights activist. But the activists were faced with a major obstacle: how should things continue with Sara? After all, the fighting was no longer confined to southern Lebanon, which made movement in the country more difficult.

Curious escape route

Animals Lebanon collected donations from all over the world to get the lioness onto a small motor yacht that would take her to Cyprus. From there, Sara flew to the United Arab Emirates before her long journey ended in Cape Town. Days before her evacuation, Sara was playing in one of the bedrooms in Mier's apartment, where pillows and chew toys lay scattered about.

On Thursday morning, she arrives at the port of Dbayeh, north of Beirut. Mier and his team are relieved, but can barely hold back tears as they leave. Mier assumes that Sara will initially be kept alone for monitoring and to protect her from disease transmission, but will soon be part of a community of other lions.

"Then she will be brought together with two new lions that we have sent from Lebanon, so hopefully they will form a nice group of three," he says. "That's where she'll spend the rest of her life. That's the best option for her."