Unfair Game by Michael Ashcroft

Unfair Game by Michael Ashcroft

Author:Michael Ashcroft
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
Published: 2020-06-18T16:00:00+00:00


CHAPTER 7

AFTER SIMBA

Operation Simba was an undoubted success in its own right. To have saved just one out of a possible 12,000 captive-bred lions from certain death felt like a small but crucial victory in the war to end what must surely rank as one of South Africa’s darkest industries. Equally pleasing was that the case sparked an enormous amount of media coverage in Britain and further afield. Having completed the project, I contacted Ted Verity, the editor of the Mail on Sunday, to ask if he would be interested in publishing its results. We reached a gentleman’s agreement that I would offer the project to him on the basis that he would give it ‘at least four pages’. It was immediately apparent that he also recognises the importance of exposing the abuse and cruelty involved in breeding and keeping captive lions in South Africa, and the fact that unscrupulous individuals profit from their killing and their body parts. For he decided that an unprecedented eleven pages in a single edition of the newspaper should be reserved to tell the story of Operation Simba and much else to do with this sickening trade besides. And so, on 28 April 2019, starting with the all-important front page splash, I was able to disclose the truth.

It is highly unusual for a national newspaper in Britain to devote more than a few pages to one specific issue on any given day. For a weekly newspaper to take such a close interest in a controversy of this nature, thousands of miles away from the UK, and to give it sufficient space so that the topic could be examined in such depth through a series of revelatory articles and an opinion piece, was extraordinary. Spread over two pages there was also a sequence of sixteen frame-by-frame photographs depicting Miles Wakefield’s grotesque parody of a hunt which felled Simba. As a result of the prominence which the Mail on Sunday and its website gave to Operation Simba, many other media outlets in Britain and around the world picked up the story, gaining the scandal of breeding and slaughtering lions the prominence which I believe it warrants.

Under the headline ‘Exposed: Horror of Lion Farms’, I was able to inform readers who would not otherwise have been aware of the captive-bred lion industry how it has quickly morphed into such a slick, though deeply unpleasant, business. I explained that I had commissioned a year-long undercover investigation involving former Special Forces and security operatives and that the result was a profoundly disturbing insight into the full horrors and illegal practices linked to lion farming and the gruesome bone trade.

I told how wealthy clients are sent brochures with photographs of captive male lions via WhatsApp so that they can choose which one to kill in exchange for high five-figure sums of money, depending on the size and quality of the animal’s mane. Having exposed Miles Wakefield’s experiences of shooting Simba with tranquilliser darts on an illegal so-called green hunt, I am given to understand that there were consequences for him personally.



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