Port Elizabeth - Shireen, Lara and Robin, the three orphaned young lions nursed back to health by rangers after their mother died in the Addo Elephant National Park, have taken their next step towards returning to the wild.
The cubs were only a few months old last year when their mother Gina died of a suspected snake bite.
After being found severely malnourished by park staff in January after an extensive search, they were moved for rehabilitation.
This week SANParks said the trio were in good health.
Now weighing 80kg each, they have been moved from their small boma to a 200 hectare camp within the Kuzuko contractual area in the north of the park.
Here they have the “freedom to explore and start hunting small animals for themselves”.
The park’s conservation manager, John Adendorff, said the two females and one male, now nine months old, would be monitored in their new home.
“It may be necessary to supplement their diet until such time that they are able to hunt on their own,” he said.
“It is estimated that they could spend between one and two years in the camp – before being released into the larger Kuzuko section.”
The cubs gained media attention late last year after their mother’s death, when the Eastern Cape park asked tourists to report any sightings of them.
After a visitor posted a photograph on Facebook, tourists joined park staff in searching for signs of them.
“The photographs garnered widespread interest and concern, which saw people coming into the park specifically to look for them,” said the park.
But despite aerial searches, ranger patrols, and “follow-ups on numerous leads”, the trio seemed to have disappeared.
The search was eventually called off.
Left to fend for themselves, they were given little chance of surviving.
Then, on January 10, a guide working in a concession area alerted rangers that he may have spotted them.
“Although sceptical, they still went out and miraculously found the three – albeit severely malnourished and lethargic,” said SANParks.
The cubs were darted and placed in a boma where they received immediate medical attention.
They’ve spent the past four months there, being regularly fed and “bulking up” for the next leg of their adventure.
SANParks said it was likely that the trio were temporarily adopted by another female in the weeks they disappeared from public view.
Lions were only reintroduced to the 180 000 hectare national park, the third largest in South Africa, in 2003, when a group was relocated from the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park.
SANParks said at the time lions from Kgalagadi were chosen for their genetic similarity to the Cape lions which would historically have occurred in the area.
The translocation was so successful that in 2010, lions from Addo Elephant National Park were in turn relocated to the Karoo National Park near Beaufort West. - Sunday Argus