Hi everyone,

The Lion park where the owner died is not the same as the reserve we are viewing. It's kind of between a zoo and a park. The ungulates have wide open spaces in which to roam, but the Lions are kept in a separate camp and are fed. You can drive through the camp in your car, but there is still a fence between you and the lions.

It seems Mr. Brink suffered a stroke before the lions got to him.

Source

I read an update of that story that said, according to the autopsy, the lions didn't kill him. He died of a stroke, in the process of which he may have stumbled out of the vehicle. The lions then came along and did...what lions do.

Sungura wrote:

Penny in SA wrote:

The family have apparently asked that the lions are not destroyed.

Sad as that story is, I am so glad they won't kill the lions. We encroach on their space - it's not their fault. They act on instinct. It makes me sad whenever a hiker around here gets attacked by a cougar, and then they go out and kill it. Sometimes they'll kill them even if they've simply been spotted to close to a neighborhood.

Amen, Sungura.

He was the owner of the reserve and apparently, according to the press, got out of his vehicle to test out a new camera, the door to the vehicle was still open. The family have apparently asked that the lions are not destroyed. Tragic but senseless - it shows that you cannot under estimate predators. It is so hard for us to explain to people who come from overseas that these are wild animals and that they cannot leave the confines of their vehicles. In January this year we had two Italian tourists wandering all over the road at a leopard sighting (and she had cubs) - they clearly did not understand that what they were doing was wrong and was endangering their safety, spoiling the sighting for everyone else and might have ended up in the leopard's demise had it attacked.