Born Free are really excited to be collaborating with British Airways
Holidays to move Alpha and Cora, two lionesses that have come from a failed
zoo, to a brand new life in South Africa where they're going to be living at
Panthera Africa's big cat sanctuary. The lionesses will travel from here over
land to Heathrow where they will have a little bit of a time to wait before they
get on their flight to Cape Town. In fact there's one just coming past now, I don't
know if you're going to be able to film it in the background. There is a short
journey to where we hope their lifetime home is going to be, which is a big cat
sanctuary called Panthera Africa. We're delighted to be partnering with British
Airways Holidays on this initiative, they've been immensely generous and it
wouldn't be possible without them to move these lionesses. They've enabled the
construction of some dedicated sanctuary space for Born Free to use. It's
going to be thanks to them and their partners, and our partners IAG who are
actually undertaking the transport of the animals, that we're able to do this at all.
This is a really exciting start of a journey not just for Alpha and Cora who
will obviously get to enjoy a much better quality of life their sanctuary
in South Africa, but also for British Airways Holidays. It's the start of a
long term partnership with Born Free and the first of what we hope will be many
similar initiatives.
Here we are in the IAG Cargo area and the lionesses have
arrived through the cargo doors there and they've been checked, we've ensured
that they're doing okay, they've now been put on the pallets that you can see.
We're going to leave them alone for a while before it's time to load into the
plane. They have access to water they can stand up, they can turn around, they can
lie down, they can be as comfortable as they possibly can on what is a long
journey but it's worth it in the end for where they're going to spend the rest of
their life.
We've just landed in Cape Town, we're just waiting to get off now. I'm quite excited to
go and check on the two lionesses. Hopefully they've done well in the
journey and we'll be heading over to the customs check now with the paperwork
to collect them and the vehicles - so yeah we're looking forward to checking on them
and making sure that they have had a good journey as well.
We arrived with Alpha and Cora at the end of a very long journey, I was delighted to
see them arrive and I'm even more delighted to see how they've settled in
and they look so relaxed. They look like they're beginning to
enjoy the fruits of our labours, and to see them settling into what is going to
be their home for the rest of their life is really quite quite overwhelming.
Reintroducing animals that have been born and raised in captivity back to the
wild, it's just not feasible, as much as we would like it to be. So where we're
standing right now offers these guys the best and the closest we can get to what
they have evolved to need. Their natural behaviour can be met to as much a degree
as possible, in this purpose-built enclosure.
Alpha and Cora have an incredible relationship, they have a beautiful bond, they are inseparable, they
are always together. Alpha, I would say, is definitely more the courageous one
and she's usually the first to kind of try something new and want to explore.
She'll go back and kind of give her a little head bump and be like 'come on,
let's go' and so they do have a beautiful, beautiful bond.
Attitudes are changing and in years gone by it was seen as being perfectly acceptable to
visit animal performances in circuses and be entertained by animals performing
unnatural acts, so we've responded to that and we've been working with Born
Free to help develop our animal welfare strategy and that's helped shape our
approach in terms of the products that we'll sell and the initiatives that we're
supporting Born Free with. It means the world to be here today to see Alpha and
Cora settle into their new home. So when I last saw them at Heathrow they were at
the start of a long journey, I wanted to tell them that 'it'll be worth it'. Now
we're here, we can see it absolutely is worth it.
These guys are the lucky ones but they are the tip of the iceberg and we need to stop this terrible
industry that creates lives of suffering, because we can only help a few. And
that's what I hope the future brings that Born Free, with our partners, can
work to bring that bad industry to an end.