Suspended zookeeper decapitated four lions before burial
Thursday, 28 February 2008
Print
Email
The bodies of four decapitated lions were discovered yesterday at a wildlife park in Northern Ireland where a zookeeper was this week evicted for allowing a child to stroke a tiger.
The decapitated lions were discovered by the Ulster Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (USPCA) after officers moved in to regain control of the Old Causeway Safari Park from Norman Elder, who set up the attraction two years ago.
Mr Elder has admitted removing the heads after the lions were put down humanely by the USPCA and passed to the him for burial. They should have been buried intact.
Police are also investigating reports that an official from the charity was hit by a van and injured during the removal of Mr Elder, which took place on Tuesday.
The USPCA is now seeking an exclusion order through the courts banning Mr Elder from the site in Benvardin, Co Antrim.
The charity acted after seeing a photograph on a website which appeared showing Mr Elder allowing a child to pet a tiger called Sonya. The keeper, who ran the dangerous animals pound at the former safari park, had taken care of 15-year-old big cat for two years.
Confronted this week about the petting incident, Mr Elder said: "[There] is no law against it. At the time, I felt the tiger was behaving well enough for someone to go in."
He has since admitted to the separate incident involving the lions' heads. Mr Elder said he removed the heads because he feared they would be stolen and sold. "When they were put down, there was a gentleman who said they would make good selling to taxidermists," he added.
"I was the only one on site at that time and decapitated them so they could not be dug up and used."
A spokesman for the USPCA said: "The gruesome unearthing of the mutilated remains of four adult lions on the Benvardin site occupied by Wildlife NI confirms [our] worst fears.
"The animals, surrendered to the Environment and Heritage Service under dangerous wild animal legislation and humanely destroyed, have been subjected to crude decapitation."
Mr Elder is licensed to keep wild animals at the site and is contracted by a number of councils in the north of the province to look after animals that they seize.
There appears to have been a running dispute between the USPCA and Mr Elder. The society said it had been unhappy with standards at the sanctuary for six months but did not receive a response to its complaints.
The charity is now looking after Sonya the tiger. Earlier this week, a spokesman for the USPCA, David Wilson, explained the decision to move in on the park, saying: "Unfortunately this decision was deemed necessary because of an inadequate response by Wildlife NI to a number of serious concerns raised by the USPCA regarding procedures and practices.
"The discovery of a photo on a Bebo site of a young child inside a tiger's cage stroking the animal without any responsible health and safety procedures in place forced the charity's board to act swiftly."
In January, Mr Elder told the Belfast Telegraph that Sonya was "docile".
"The only danger for us is if she decides to play," he said. "She is unusually docile. That's probably because she was bred in captivity and doesn't get stressed from contact with humans."
