Lioness and her three cubs have been reunited at Yorkshire Wildlife Park after escaping bombs in Ukraine
Category
🐳
AnimalsTranscript
00:00 [Music]
00:24 Hi, my name's Colin and I'm Deputy Head of Carnivores here at Yorkshire Wildlife Park.
00:28 The intention of Lion Country was always to be to rescue lions.
00:32 Back in 2010, we rescued 13 lions from poor conditions in Romania.
00:37 And now, 14 years on, we are now in the midst of Lion Rescue 2.
00:42 We have recently welcomed Asia, Emi, Santa and Teddy to their new home here at Yorkshire Wildlife Park.
00:49 The lions are originally from the Ukraine, but they've been in temporary accommodation in Poland for the last nine months.
00:55 They came to us via road transport, crossing the ferry from Kale to Dover, and finally ended up here in Yorkshire.
01:02 Teddy was first to be introduced to his new home, and he was out within seconds.
01:07 Then we released Emi, and she took about five minutes, so she was a little longer.
01:11 Santa was third, she was much longer, she took around about 20 minutes.
01:16 Then Asia was last to be released, and she was very relaxed and she came out straight away.
01:22 As soon as Asia was in her den, she immediately started exploring and was looking around and looking up at the sky and watching the birds go by.
01:30 Just like any new arrival, they'll take a little while to settle in, but as each day rolls on, they are becoming much more confident.
01:37 On my first visit to Poland, the lions were very, very timid and very scared when I walked in the house.
01:43 I fully expected them to be really, really nervous here, but they've settled down so, so fast. I'm very, very pleased.
01:50 On my second visit to Poznań Zoo, I'm pretty sure that they did actually recognise me, but they certainly recognised me when they arrived here at Yorkshire.
01:58 They were sedated, crated and placed on the lorry to come over.
02:01 Now, ideally, to crate the lions, we would crate train them first, but unfortunately, they don't have the facility over there to be able to do that, so sedation was necessary.
02:11 There's nothing wrong with that, it's just a little bit more impactive.
02:15 Now, Teddy, although he's a male, he's actually the scaredy cat. He's very nervous.
02:20 Then you have Emi. Now, she's a little bit more timid. She likes to be in the middle of the pair of them.
02:28 Santa. Now, she's very brave. She's really brave, but still a little bit timid because she is a youngster.
02:38 And then Mum. Well, Mum is as if she's been here all her life.
02:42 Now, in Poznań, they were really timid and every little bit of noise would scare them.
02:48 They couldn't see their surroundings, so they didn't know what was what.
02:52 And they were really, really scared animals.
02:55 Now, here, it's a world away and there's a lot more noise here, there's a lot more going on, but the big difference is they can see everything that's going on around them.
03:05 And because they can see where the noise is coming from, it doesn't seem to scare them at all.
03:10 And they have settled down so, so fast. It's absolutely fantastic.
03:14 They've settled in so fast and so well that we've already started doing mesh meets between Mum and the cubs.
03:20 We expected a lot of noise and a little bit of argy-bargy at the beginning, but none of that has happened so far.
03:26 And we're really, really pleased and very, very hopeful.
03:29 We've been monitoring this situation and it's gone extremely well, much quicker than we thought that it might happen.
03:36 And we've actually been able to introduce the first lion to Mum.
03:41 This was Emmy and they went in together, a little tiny bit of fraction, but after about two or three minutes, they soon settled down really, really nicely.
03:53 Then we introduced Santa, she's the larger female.
03:57 And again, there's that kind of little bit of, little bit of tension there because obviously it's going to be a new thing for all of them.
04:05 But eventually that soon settled down and once the dust had settled, we then introduced Teddy.
04:11 And being a good little boy that he is, they introduced extremely well.
04:16 And I'm very, very pleased to say that all four lions are now together as one family unit, living very, very happy and hopefully happily ever after.
04:27 Our original lions, Crystal and Carla, are very intrigued as to who their new neighbours are.
04:31 I really can't wait for everyone to meet them because these guys are going to be a massive hit with the public.
04:38 [BLANK_AUDIO]