After the first cautious steps, the young animals were over the moon and let themselves be overwhelmed by all the new space, sounds and smells. Jaia is very alert and takes everything in. Unfortunately, mother Rubine still shows that she suffers greatly from her traumatic past. She is very tense and falls back into old stress behaviour by ‘pacing’. We hope that she will calm down within a few days and also start to enjoy their new environment.
Illegally bred
Until December, the lion cubs and their mothers spent every day locked up in a transport truck as the circus was not allowed to use them in shows anymore. They were all born in the summer of 2024, which means that they were bred illegally according to French animal welfare law. That made it possible to rescue all lions in one operation – the largest big cat rescue in AAP history. In close cooperation with the French authorities and animal welfare organisation Code animal, we brought the nine cubs, two mothers and the 18-year-old male lion Bryan to our rescue centre in Spain.
Getting used to their new home
The lions all suffer various kinds of physical trauma and carried intestinal parasites, which prolonged their quarantine period. To allow the mothers and their nine cubs to calmly get used to their outdoor enclosure, we are limiting the outside space for the time being. This allows the mothers to keep an eye on the cubs and prevents them from becoming stressed when the cubs escape their supervision. As soon as they are used to their outdoor enclosure and our team is confident that everything is going well, they will get access to more outside space.
Bryan
Male lion Bryan has his own enclosure in another part of our rescue centre. Because he lived separately from the lionesses and cubs at the circus, we are keeping him separate here too. He will get access to an outside enclosure soon, where we can see how he responds to neighbouring lions.
A new future
Now that the lions are allowed outside, our team of animal caretakers and behavioural biologists are continuing to work on rehabilitating the animals. At AAP Spain, they are learning to be lions again: to climb and scramble and to search for their food, to relax in the sun and to make contact with other lions. For Bryan in particular, we are looking for a companion to share his enclosure with. At AAP, we are convinced that social animals such as lions are happiest with others of their own kind. Because we do not know what tension there will be between Bryan and the young cubs, we are not placing him with them.
