A veteran conservationist in South Africa has been tragically mauled to death by his two beloved white lions, the Mirror reports.
West Mathewson, 69, was playing with his two 400lb big cats named Tanner and Demi when the fun got out of hand. They turned on the man who had saved them from a hunting reserve, mauling him to death in front of his terrified wife.
The same two lions had previously escaped their enclosure in Limpopo Province and mauled a local man in 2017. It is understood that following the recent attack the cats were tranquilized and moved to another conservation centre.
Such incidents are not uncommon in South Africa’s large captive lion industry, with around 40 similar cases recorded over the last decade and a quarter of them involving fatalities. The ‘big cat’ industry was widely popularised in American Netflix series ‘Tiger King’.
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