The Lion Whisperer: Kevin Richardson plays with white lions at a game park in South Africa[/align]
Each year, lions are raised in captivity in South Africa and then set loose in enclosed areas where hunters, many from the United States, gun them down. The toll in what one filmmaker calls slaughter, not sport: about 1,000 lions each year. Kevin Richardson hopes a new movie, White Lion, will give people second thoughts about participating in such hunts. "I just can't understand how anyone would want to shoot a lion that is clearly confined to a finite space with absolutely no hope in hell of ever escaping the so-called hunter," said Richardson, a self-taught "Lion Whisperer" and first-time film producer.
The film White Lion is about a rare white lion, who as a cub is cast out of his pride because of his colour. He is near starvation when he befriends an older lion who teaches him the ways of the wild. John Kani, a Tony Award-winning actor and playwright, is the storyteller.
Richardson, the movie's producer, first befriended a pair of lion cubs at the Lion Park outside Johannesburg 12 years ago, when the cubs were 6 months and he was 23. He began shortening his hours as a therapist in postoperative rehabilitation to play with his new friends. Soon, park owner Rodney Fuhr offered him a part-time job which became full time
Trophy hunting is big business in South Africa, worth more than 90 million dollars (£60 million) a year, according to the Professional Hunters Association of South Africa. Foreign tourists pay up to $40,000 (£25,000) to shoot a lion. The government promotes hunting as a revenue source and calls it a "sustainable utilization of natural resources." The hunters' association says 16,394 foreign hunters - more than half from the United States - killed more than 46,000 animals in the year ending September 2007.
