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While we're giving thanks for the feast this weekend let's not leave out what may be one
of the best ideas that America ever had. It's called the World Food Programme -- the emergency
first responder to hunger anywhere on the globe. The United Nations launched WFP in
1961 at the urging of the United States. And today the U.S. government pays the biggest
part of the bill as the World Food Programme feeds 80 million people a year. Its greatest
challenges come when it confronts war and hunger. And that's what's happening today
in Syria where you will find heroes of the World Food Programme saving the most vulnerable
people in what looked to us like the edge of oblivion.
The map said, "no man's land." We plowed the border of Jordan and Syria where the Jordanian
military told us we would find war refugees. But considering the wasteland it seemed more
likely the map was right -- who could survive here?
But after several hours we found them, pouring over the land like a flash flood. With three
hundred miles behind them, these Syrian families made their final steps through a war that
nearly killed them and a desert that could have finished the job. Watch a moment and listen.
Scott Pelley: This berm marks the border between Syria and Jordan. The refugees that we ran
into were coming across the top of the berm and turning themselves in to the safety of
Jordanian border officers here. More than a million have crossed into Jordan so far
during the three-year civil war in Syria.
They had been farmers, shopkeepers, office workers. Now they shared one occupation: saving
the children with matted hair and faces covered in ten days of misery. We noticed the little
ones around Halima. Turns out she's the mother of nine.
Scott Pelley: Why did you come?
"There's bombing all around us," she said, "I'm afraid for my children. But I don't know
what will become of us now."
Scott Pelley: You don't know what's coming next but you know this must be better than
where you came from?
She had taken five of her children. Her husband took four by another route. And they hope
to find one another. Halima said they managed to save everyone in her family. But as for
the fate of others in her town -- no translation was needed.
Andrew Harper: This is happening every day. Every day we are getting hundreds of people,
sometimes up to a thousand people, fleeing the violence, fleeing the deprivation in Syria
and coming across into Jordan.
Andrew Harper is in charge in Jordan for the United Nations high commissioner for refugees.
Scott Pelley: What kind of shape are they in when they come at the end of this journey?
Andrew Harper: It's horrific. We're seeing children coming across now without any shoes.
Often they've only got one pair of clothes, some of them are just wearing their pajamas
because, when their places were bombed, they had nothing to grab to leave.
The U.N. refugee relief agency and Jordanian troops met the families, gave them food and
water, and loaded them up for the trip to a U.N. camp. There was room for everyone on
the trucks but no mother would take that chance. They pressed their children in first. Parents
had sacrificed all they had to see this moment. And a long dead emotion began to stir. It
felt like hope.
Scott Pelley: You know, this war's been going on for three years. Why are these people still
coming now?
Andrew Harper: Because it's getting worse. I think now more than ever there is absolutely
no hope for the future at the moment in Syria.
Part of what has stolen hope inside Syria is hunger. Starvation is a weapon in the war
that began as an uprising against the dictator Bashar al Assad. These words read, "kneel
or starve." Signed Assad's soldiers. All sides are laying siege to communities and cutting
off the food. This is what happened in a neighborhood called Yarmouk when a U.N. food convoy broke
through. The people had eaten the dogs and the cats and were running low on leaves and
grass. This girl eventually starved to death, five miles or so from a supermarket.
Ertharin Cousin: Are we willing to lose a generation of children to hunger? To lack
of access to medicines? To lack of access to water while we wait until the fighting
stops? No. We can't.
Ertharin Cousin is executive director of the World Food Programme. She's a former food
industry executive from Chicago. WFP is often headed by an American because the U.S. donates
more than a third of the four billion dollar annual budget.
Ertharin Cousin: The operation in Syria is one of the largest that we have ever operated
in WFP. We have over 3,000 trucks supporting 45,000 metric tons of food delivered every
month inside Syria.
Scott Pelley: All of that and your people are getting shot at.
Ertharin Cousin: All of that and people are getting shot at. It's a war zone. It's a conflict
zone. The world doesn't stop. The war doesn't stop. The conflict doesn't end because people
need to eat.
The World Food Programme estimates that more than six million Syrians do not know where
their next meal is coming from.
Matthew Hollingworth: These are areas where people have nothing. They really do have nothing.
Matthew Hollingworth heads the World Food Programme mission inside Syria. In February,
he led an armored column into the city of Homs, which had been sealed off by the dictatorship
for 600 days.
Matthew Hollingworth: People were skin and bones. I could lift a grown man because he'd
got to about 40 kilos.
Scott Pelley: 85 pounds or so?
Matthew Hollingworth: Exactly.
In the city of Homs, months of negotiations had opened a three-day ceasefire to distribute
food. But it turned out the starving residents wanted something else first.
Matthew Hollingworth: The people of Old Homs asked us to evacuate women, children and the
sick before any assistance came in. So we went through the last checkpoint. And there
we could see in front of us 80 or 90 children, women and sick and injured people waiting
to come out. And then the worst thing happened. The sniping started.
Scott Pelley: People were shooting at you.
Matthew Hollingworth: People started to shoot at us. So we took the decision then to put
the vehicles, the armored vehicles in front of the area where they were shooting down
in the alley to allow the people to come out. It was a hugely moving experience. And we
successfully brought them out. This opened the way the following day for us to go into
Homs and deliver the first assistance and we did that successfully, but halfway through,
sadly, the operation, we came under mortar fire.
Matthew Hollingworth: It was panic, chaos. People screaming, people running everywhere.
The hot metal flying around you.
Scott Pelley: You decided to stay. And I wonder why.
Matthew Hollingworth: We'd seen the faces of the people who were asking us to help them,
asking United Nations to help them in their time of crisis, which is why we're here. So
we again negotiated with all the sides to this time obey the ceasefire, to respect the
ceasefire. And we went in the following day and the next day and the next day, and the
rest is history.
History records that in Homs, WFP evacuated 1,300 people and brought in enough food to
feed 2,500 others for a month. But elsewhere in Syria more than one million remain beyond
reach.
[Man in YouTube video: November the fifth 2013...]
We know they're there because we can hear their pleas for help. A man in a Damascus
suburb called Moadamiyeh, put out a series of videos on YouTube.
[Man in YouTube video: In a protest to the world to enter the humanitarian aids to the
besieged city of Moadamiyeh.]
After several videos begged for someone to break the siege, the man made his way out
of Syria. We found him, but we're not using his name to protect his family.
Man from YouTube video: People are starving to death while food and medicine is only two
minutes away behind the Assad checkpoints.
Scott Pelley: Tell me what you witnessed, what you saw with your own eyes.
Man from YouTube video: Even while the regime is bombing, nobody cared. It seems like if
you die from the shelling, it will be a merciful way to die instead of dying from hunger because
it will take months to die from hunger. People lost faith with the world, with their families,
even with God. Nobody understood that we can die from hunger in the 21st century in Syria.
Scott Pelley: The regime shelled Moadamiyeh to rubble, used nerve gas on the population,
but it was starvation...
Man from YouTube video: Yes.
Scott Pelley: ...that broke the town.
Man from YouTube video: That's absolutely true. It can destroy your soul, your mind,
your beliefs, before it can destroy your body. Nobody in this world, no matter who he is,
deserves to die from hunger. Nobody.
That is the principle on which the World Food Programme was founded, an idea in the Eisenhower
administration, after 70 million people around the world starved to death in the first half
of the 20th century. Today, WFP is in 75 countries plagued by war or weather. It has an air force,
a navy and an army of 14,000 people.
But emergency response is just part of what it does. The World Food Programme prevents
famines by teaching farming. It uses its vast purchasing power to support small farms. All
of this despite the fact that WFP gets no funding from the United Nations. It raises
its budget entirely from donations by governments, companies and individuals. But in Syria the
need is so great, the money is falling short. We got a sense of the scale of that need by
flying over the latest U.N. refugee camp with the Jordanian police and the U.N.'s Andrew
Harper.
Andrew Harper: We're looking at probably one of the world's largest refugee camps.
The refugee families we saw earlier at the border were headed here.
Scott Pelley: You have built this for 130,000 refugees. Do you think you're going to have
that many?
Andrew Harper: Well if you look it there's about six and a half million people displaced
in Syria. I think we may even need to build more than this.
When the U.N. camps opened, the World Food Programme served three meals a day. But it
soon discovered that these families hungered for more than just a meal.
Ertharin Cousin: What they're receiving is not food. But they're actually receiving a
voucher, which will give them the ability to decide what food their family can eat for
the month.
Scott Pelley: Why do you do that?
Ertharin Cousin: It gives them a choice, more than anything else and it gives them respect.
Respect because the vouchers are a ticket here. Where there was only desert, the World
Food Programme has built supermarkets like any in America. Osama and his wife led nine
children through the desert after their daughter was wounded by a mortar. Each member of his
family now gets a WFP voucher for 29 dollars a month.
Scott Pelley: The difference between being fed out of the back of a truck and cooking
your own meal is dignity.
Ertharin Cousin: It's dignity. It's providing your children with some hope.
Back on the border, in the last moments of the day, we ran into another exodus, families
pressing through no man's land on a path marked only by the desperate steps of those who'd
come before. Jordanian troops crossed into Syria to lift a woman who had stopped short
saying, "Mother we are on the border."
In recent weeks, Jordan has been forced to reduce the numbers it can accept. And the
World Food Programme has come perilously close to cutting back rations for lack of funds.
But millions more are on the move and the days of war remain uncounted.
This holiday shopping season you might worry that every time you swipe your credit or debit
card some criminal might be swiping your account number and with good reason. The number of
reported, illegal intrusions into the computer systems of U.S. companies is at a record high
this year and climbing. The hacking of Target, Home Depot, Staples and other top retailers
made headlines. Behind the headlines are two separate crimes with two sets of criminals.
Sophisticated cyberthieves steal your credit card information. Common criminals buy it
and go on shopping sprees -- racking up billions of dollars in fraudulent purchases. The cost
of the fraud is calculated into the price of every item you buy. When computer crooks
swipe your card number, we all end up paying the price.
2014 is becoming known as the "year of the data breach." The theft of 40 million credit
cards from Target late last year was followed by news of a breach at Michaels stores involving
more than two million credit cards. Then came P.F. Chang's. And in September, Home Depot
announced that 56 million of its customers' credit card numbers were stolen.
Dave DeWalt: Nearly every company is vulnerable.
Dave DeWalt is CEO of FireEye, a cybersecurity company that gets hired to keep hackers from
getting into a company's network or getting them out after there's been a breach.
Dave DeWalt: Even the strongest banks in the world-- banks like JPMorgan, retailers like
Home Depot, retailers like Target -- can't spend enough money or hire enough people to
solve this problem.
Bill Whitaker: Cybersecurity is a misnomer? There is no cybersecurity it sounds like you're
saying.
Dave DeWalt: This isn't a lack of effort. Most of the large companies are growing their
security spend. Yet 97 percent -- literally 97 percent of all companies -- are getting
breached. So there's a gap here.
Bill Whitaker: Ninety-seven percent?
Dave DeWalt: Ninety-seven percent. In fact, we...
Bill Whitaker: That's outrageous.
Dave DeWalt: It is outrageous. It's pretty amazing.
FireEye tracks assaults on its clients with a real time map showing where computer attacks
originate and their targets. It's an eerie throwback to Cold War illustrations of what
a nuclear missile attack might look like, but with cyber attacks...
Bill Whitaker: This goes on 24 hours a day.
Charles Carmakal: 24 hours a day, yeah.
Charles Carmakal leads teams of first responders for FireEye.
Charles Carmakal: We are seeing hundreds of thousands of attacks on a weekly basis across
the globe.
Bill Whitaker: And these are just the ones that your systems are picking up.
Charles Carmakal: That's right.
Dave DeWalt: On average the breaches from the time of infection, from when the bad guys
get in to the time they are discovered, is a whopping 229 days. 229 days.
Forensic investigations reveal that 80 percent of security breaches involve stolen and weak
passwords. One of the most common is: 123456.
Dave DeWalt: The days when we have our username and password, which is our son or daughter's
name or our cat or our dog is not enough security for, you know, for today's attackers. Breaches
are inevitable. It's happening. It's just life that we live in today.
Bill Whitaker: Inevitable?
Dave DeWalt: Inevitable.
Bill Whitaker: Just accept that...
Dave DeWalt: Accept that a little bit...
Bill Whitaker: ...they are going to get in.
Dave DeWalt: They're going to get in. But don't let them access the information that's
really important. Don't let them get back out with that information. Detect it sooner.
Respond sooner. And ultimately that exposure is very small. Maybe they got away with a
few credit cards. Maybe they didn't get away with any credit cards. But they didn't steal
56 million of them or 40 million of them.
Target declined our request for an on-camera interview, but the breach of its security
a year ago is a case study in how hackers operate. It started when criminals stole the
username and password from one of Target's vendors -- a Pennsylvania heating and air
conditioning company. The credentials got them into Target's network without attracting
attention. Once inside they easily spread to thousands of checkout terminals in nearly
every store. The hackers then installed malicious software, or malware, to record card swipes.
Dave DeWalt: The company invested a lot of money in security. It wasn't like they weren't
trying to stop the bad guys. It's just the bad guys were really good, number one. Number
two, they're very persistent.
A security system Target recently bought from Dave DeWalt's company, did detect the intrusion,
and triggered alarms. But Target's older security systems were still in place, generating millions
of alerts similar to these. Most were for minor technical glitches and the warnings
from FireEye were lost in the noise.
Bill Whitaker: So alarms were going off?
Dave DeWalt: Alarms were going off. And when you get millions of alerts a day and there's
one or two alerts that are the ones blinking red, "There's a problem. There's a problem."
You can miss it and it's very hard to find the needle in the haystack. So Target's problem
ultimately became, "I couldn't find the needle. I couldn't see the one alert that was bright
red."
Last December 18, a week before Christmas, a cybersecurity blogger named Brian Krebs
first reported the story publicly.
Brian Krebs: The breach lasted for a little more than three weeks. But they actually managed
to hit Target at the busiest time of year for them.
Krebs' office is like a computerized crow's nest: a high-tech perch from which he scours
the cyberworld for early signs of underworld activity. Over the past year he broke the
news on his blog that criminals had hacked into a dozen retailers and chain restaurants
including Dairy Queen and The Home Depot.
Brian Krebs: A lot of times those companies have already been notified by law enforcement,
by Secret Service or the FBI.
Bill Whitaker: But it sounds like it's usually discovered by people outside of the company.
Brian Krebs: That's almost universally true. Yes.
Bill Whitaker: Why is that?
Brian Krebs: A lot of times the first indicators that you get that one of these organizations
is comprised is when their customers' financial information goes up for sale in the underground.
You know, they're running a business. And frankly they're not focused on cybersecurity.
There are scores of sinister online shopping bazaars where cyberthieves put their goods
up for sale. Think Amazon.com for thieves. This is where Krebs does his detective work.
Bill Whitaker: They're just right on the Web? You can buy stolen cards by just going to
this site?
Brian Krebs: Absolutely.
Big batches of stolen card numbers are called dumps. Krebs figures out which banks have
customers' stolen cards up for sale and alerts them. The banks then check to see which merchant
is the common link.
Brian Krebs: If they're willing to share that information with me, I can take that and go
back to other banks and say, "Look, this is the pattern they're seeing. What are you seeing?"
The bulk of cards sell for anywhere from 10 to 50 dollars, depending on things like the
expiration date, or the credit limit.
Brian Krebs: In the case of Target they stole 40 million cards. But you know how many cards
they managed to sell? About five percent of those.
Bill Whitaker: That's still a lot of cards.
Brian Krebs: It's still a lot. And I say "only" because each of those cards, the average price
was about 20 dollars per card. So that's a lot of money any way you slice it.
The thieves offer volume discounts and sales and customer service includes refunds if the
cards have been cancelled.
Brian Krebs: If you buy from them and it comes back as declined, they'll automatically credit
the amount that you bought for that card cost. So they'll automatically credit your account.
Bill Whitaker: You're kidding. This stolen card will work or you'll get your money back?
Brian Krebs: Yeah, absolutely.
Customers are told to make payments with Western Union or other money transfer methods. Credit
cards are not accepted. The masterminds behind the hacking and selling of stolen card data
are sophisticated crime syndicates. Most are in Russia and Eastern Europe -- primarily
Ukraine -- and out of the easy reach of American law enforcement. Ed Lowery heads the criminal
division of the U.S. Secret Service, which investigates financial cybercrimes.
Bill Whitaker: The fairly big breaches we've been seeing -- Target, Home Depot. Who's behind
that?
Ed Lowery: Well, those are professional cybercriminals. Those individuals, they make their living
-- and a very good living, at times -- attacking the U.S. financial infrastructure. That level
of cybercriminal. That is the new-age cartel, as it were.
Secret Service arrests have led to the convictions of 14 people, but there are plenty of others
to take their places. The criminals buying the stolen numbers don't have to be that sophisticated.
Bill Whitaker: Is it fairly easy to turn those numbers you buy online into one of these cards?
Ed Lowery: Now, I really don't want the general public to think that they should go out and
start committing fraud. But obviously, the encoding and all takes a little higher level
of sophistication. And you have to have the criminal drive to do it. But is it highly
technical? In light of the intrusions we're speaking about, and the rest, it's not nearly
that sophisticated.
Buyers are all over the world. In the U.S., street gangs are among the crooks to use stolen
cards. They buy gift cards, which are like cash, and electronics, which they resell for
quick profits.
Brian Krebs: If you buy a card for 20 bucks and you can make 400 dollars off each card,
that's a pretty good return on your investment.
Bill Whitaker: Pretty good.
For many banks, news of a breach from Brian Krebs is the first sign they have of a problem.
Two of his regular readers are Barry Abramowitz, chief information officer for Liberty Bank
in Connecticut, and Linda Swartz, who heads up security for Westfield Bank in Massachusetts.
Bill Whitaker: So you don't hear about it until Brian Krebs breaks it?
Linda Swartz: Pretty much.
Barry Abramowitz: That's what makes his work so valuable.
Linda Swartz: Exactly. If you know there's a problem, you can stop it from occurring
or stop the bleeding before it gets too bad. But you need to know that information.
Most banks and credit unions rely on MasterCard, Visa and other card companies to notify them
when a customers' account may have been stolen, but they're not told which retailer was hacked
or when.
Bill Whitaker: Why don't they tell you which retailer is responsible or involved?
Barry Abramowitz: I don't know.
Linda Swartz: Probably so it doesn't place the blame on the merchant who was compromised.
They don't want us to go back to that merchant and say, "You know, your system was compromised.
You lost my customers' information."
Bill Whitaker: Why not?
Linda Swartz: It's business. I mean, I hate actually saying that it was Home Depot and
Target, but those are the ones that are in the media.
Bill Whitaker: How big a problem are these security breaches for the banks?
Barry Abramowitz: Huge.
Linda Swartz: Yeah.
Barry Abramowitz: Huge.
In 2013, stolen credit cards led to estimates as high as 11 billion dollars in fraud in
the U.S. That doesn't include the cost to banks of replacing millions of cards and monitoring
customers' accounts for suspicious activity.
Bill Whitaker: So when the customer is told that he's not going to lose anything out of
his pocket. The customers not going to pay for the fraud, somebody's paying for it.
Linda Swartz: The bank.
Barry Abramowitz: The banks are the victims who are actually paying for the breaches,
rather than the retailers that have had the information compromised.
The Home Depot, like other recently breached retailers, declined our request for an on-camera
interview, citing ongoing investigations. Mallory Duncan is with the National Retail
Federation, the industry's largest trade group. He says the magnetic stripe cards are just
too easy to counterfeit.
Mallory Duncan: The underlying problem is that we have cards that were designed for
the 1960s, '70s and '80s but we now have hackers who are using 21st century tools to break
in.
Bill Whitaker: Are the retailers really doing everything they can to secure customers' information?
Mallory Duncan: We're doing everything we possibly can to secure it.
Bill Whitaker: What does that mean "possibly can"?
Mallory Duncan: Well, because the problem is you're trying to secure a house of straw.
The cards themselves are fundamentally fraud-prone.
After a year of relentless breaches, bankers, retailers and security companies all agree
the technology behind credit cards is broken and needs to change. Visa and MasterCard declined
to be interviewed, but said the roll out of credit cards with computer chip technology
next year will make counterfeiting cards almost impossible.
Bill Whitaker: Apple and Google are promoting their own payment systems to protect account
information and retailers, like The Home Depot, are encrypting the data. The changes will
cost billions of dollars and take years to implement.
Bill Whitaker: This Christmas shopping season, you're expecting this to happen again.
Linda Swartz: Absolutely. We know it's going to. It's inevitable. We feel like we're just
kind of sitting and waiting for it to happen. There's not a lot we can do to stop it.
The African Lion is the most feared predator in the wild. It is designed to kill. But tonight
we'll show you a very different side of these awe-inspiring animals. Our guide is South
Africa's self-taught animal behaviourist, Kevin Richardson. Getting up close and personal
with lions is his life's work. It has earned him the nickname "The Lion Whisperer." We
visited his sanctuary, a few hours outside of Johannesburg, where Richardson spends most
of his days with his 26 adopted lions. But the story of how he ended up with an extended
family of huge cats reveals some disturbing truths about a South African tourism industry
with a sinister side.
We strapped a couple of small cameras onto Kevin Richardson to get a good look at the
unique relationship he has with these animals. First stop this morning: finding two of his
lions, Gabby and Bobcat. When they hear his call they rush out to greet him like a long
lost friend. This emotional bond is incredibly rare.
[Kevin Richardson: How was last night? Did you enjoy? Did you have a good time?]
His ability to interact with them so freely is a result of the fact that he has known
them since they were cubs -- when Richardson worked at a lion park for tourists. All of
these animals were born in captivity and can never be released into the wild. But they
are far from tame and wouldn't accept any other human being getting this close to them.
[Kevin Richardson: Have you had a long day today? It's been horrible. It's been a terrible
day. You had to spend the entire day out in the bush. What a nightmare. You're very heavy
my boy. Can you get off me? Thank you.]
Richardson himself acknowledges that the boundaries are different with each animal. A lesson he
learned the hard way when he was bitten by a lion he didn't know well. We kept our cameras
at a safe distance and at times shot from a drone hovering overhead.
Clarissa Ward: You don't get nervous at all when she's licking your face like that?
Kevin Richardson: No. You've got to have trust that she's not going to do anything except
to tend to bite you like that.
Clarissa Ward: So right now she's just playing?
Kevin Richardson: She's just playing, yeah. It all depends on how you roll with them.
If you kind of stiffen up and pretend that you're all nervous, then they stiffen up.
And they want to grab you. And they want to claw you. And they want to bite you, even
if you know them.
Clarissa Ward: Does she know that she's stronger than you?
Kevin Richardson: I don't know if she consciously thinks that she's stronger than me. I think
she just respects the fact that, you know, I'm part of her group. And she wants me on
my back now. Oh, my gorgeous. Oh, you're a nightmare, you lions.
This is not a circus act. Unlike the vast majority of people who work with captive lions,
Kevin Richardson doesn't carry a stick or a stun gun and he doesn't control his animals
through fear. In this relationship the lions are his equals. And they rarely take orders.
[Kevin Richardson: You're naughty. A naughty cat.]
That means he can break every one of the established rules for interacting with these big cats.
He looks them in the eye, gets down to their level, lies down on the ground with them.
And people who know lions say you should never, ever, turn your back on one.
But seen from the drone that same incident reveals Kevin's secret. The lioness goes on
to do exactly the same thing to the male lion. Richardson is just one of the pride.
Kevin Richardson: They do seem to be attached in a way. Because when you go away they do
miss you. And they do lovingly greet you when you come back. They're the only social cat,
as we know, a truly social cat. So that's quite important to lions.
Clarissa Ward: What do you think the biggest misconception about lions is?
Kevin Richardson: Biggest misconception is mindless, man-eating killer. In fact, they
are really just big, scared animals that are designed to kill, because that's how they've
evolved. But the truth be known, they'd rather run away than confront.
Kevin Richardson: There we go. That's not so bad.
We were told we would probably be ok sitting in an open truck. But when a lion weighing
more than 400 pounds sidles up for a closer look, that doesn't seem like much of a guarantee.
Kevin Richardson: You're fine, you're fine, you're fine, you're fine, you're fine.
Clarissa Ward: They're just so big.
Kevin Richardson: Yeah. I suppose something that always struck me was the first time I
saw a lion, it was a big boy like him. And I was driving to this camp. And he started
roaring next to the window. But he looked me in the eyes. I was in quite a low-slung
car. And that's a memory I'll never forget, you know, just the power of the roar but also
the sheer size. I was like, "Whoa." I didn't realize they were that big.
Clarissa Ward: How many people are there who can do what you do?
Kevin Richardson: There are many people around the world who have amazing relationships with
animals and with lions, you know? I'm not going to claim it as, like, something unique
to Kevin Richardson.
Clarissa Ward: But would you say you have a gift?
Kevin Richardson: I think the gift really is to maybe explore the boundaries, where
most people would be bitten or scratched or, you know, be in such a vulnerable position,
where they think, "Well, why would I ever want to put myself in that situation?" And
you've got to do it once. You know, it's an amazing thing to suddenly be able to turn
your back on a full-grown lion and not worry that he's gonna come and grab you on the back
of the neck. So I suppose, from that perspective, it is a bit of -- maybe it's ballsiness. I
don't know. And the gift that goes with it, I suppose, is knowing when to leave them alone.
Kevin Richardson started this sanctuary to protect his lions from a multi-million dollar
industry that he was once a part of. For years, Richardson worked at The Lion Park, one of
dozens of places in South Africa where tourists, many of them Americans, pay top dollar for
the privilege of petting lion cubs. The parks breed their lions constantly to ensure a supply
of cubs year round, but once the lions reach maturity, they are too dangerous to be near
tourists. Places like The Lion Park claim that their older cats are sent to live out
the rest of their days in good homes.
Kevin Richardson: Well, the question I have is where are these good homes? Because I'd
like to visit a few of those good homes myself, and maybe even some of my cats could go to
these good homes. The reality is there aren't any.
This is where many of those cubs actually end up: in something called a canned hunt.
Where for prices up to 100,000 dollars you can go into an enclosure and shoot a lion.
It's entirely legal but online videos from animal rights groups and hunting operations
show how brutal it can be. An animal that has been petted and fed by humans since birth
makes a pretty easy target. Chris Mercer runs a campaign to try to get canned hunting banned.
Chris Mercer: You put the lion into the enclosure. And then the hunter comes and shoots it and
takes it out.
Clarissa Ward: So essentially, it's like shooting fish in a barrel.
Chris Mercer: Oh, there's no skill involved at all. It's not hunting at all. Your canned
lion hunter is actually a collector. He's not a hunter.
Clarissa Ward: A collector of trophies?
Chris Mercer: He's a collector of trophies.
Most of the tourists who pay to play with cubs believe that they're helping the animals.
Chris Mercer: Whenever you pet a lion cub, you are directly enriching the canned lion
hunting industry. And I hope that anybody watching this program takes this to heart.
Clarissa Ward: What percentage of cubs in these facilities do you think end up in hunting
operations?
Chris Mercer: Virtually all the cubs that are petted in this country are going to be
shot sooner or later.
Clarissa Ward: How do you know that?
Chris Mercer: Well, we know that there is no other market for adult lions other than
the hunting industry. Lions eat meat. Meat's expensive. So every day that that huntable
lion remains with the breeder is money lost. They have to get rid of it. And it's the hunting
operation that takes it.
The cub-petting business has spent years trying to hide that fact. We went to The Lion Park
where Kevin Richardson started out. His former boss, Rodney Fuhr, claims that parks like
his aid conservation by allowing people to interact with the lions, he said, it raises
interest in the species.
Clarissa Ward: I can definitely see the appeal. They are beautiful animals.
We asked Fuhr where these lions would end up.
Rodney Fuhr: We try and sell them to credible zoos and parks around the world.
Clarissa Ward: So you would claim right now that no lions that are bred here end up in
a hunting facility?
Rodney Fuhr: Yeah. Now, that under oath, you know.
Clarissa Ward: Because we've been given a few names of people who you've allegedly sold
lions to, all of whom are associated with hunting operations: Nazir Cajee, Kobus Van
Der Westhuizen, Kobus Jakobs, Ben Duminy.
Rodney Fuhr: Yeah, well, let me interrupt you there. Now, that's true. But like I said,
we haven't done that for the last couple of years.
Clarissa Ward: Even within the last 18 months, though, we've been told you've sold one batch
of 17 lions to Nazir Cajee and another batch of 17 lions to Joanne Hulley, who resells
lions to hunt operators. Is that correct or not?
Rodney Fuhr: I'm surprised it's 18 months because I thought it was longer. Like I said,
you know, we were doing it. We were selling it to traders and of course zoos as well.
Clarissa Ward: So some of your lions have ended up...
Rodney Fuhr: I thought it was more than 18 months.
Clarissa Ward: But the reality is some of your lions have ended up in hunting operations.
And it's very difficult for you to guarantee that they won't continue to end up in these
hunting operations.
Rodney Fuhr: Well they won't do it while I'm here. This whole thing about canned hunting.
What is canned hunting, you know? And I think it's grossly exaggerated. What are the jobs
that we're providing and the hunting industry? Thousands of jobs. This has got to be weighed
up against the odd lion that may be sold when he's eight years old, you know. In the wild,
he wouldn't probably even live to eight.
[Kevin Richardson: This way. This way.]
For Kevin Richardson, the idea that the lions he had worked with since birth might end up
in a canned hunt was too much. So he teamed up with a partner to buy all 26 of them and
move them to his sanctuary.
Clarissa Ward: So you couldn't leave without taking your lions with you.
Kevin Richardson: Exactly.
Clarissa Ward: And the logistics of getting 26 lions...
Kevin Richardson: That's been a struggle. Put it that way, yeah.
Wildlife documentary work and a paid volunteer program are covering the bills for now, but
lions can live for more than 20 years.
Clarissa Ward: So these lions are almost, like, your adopted family now.
Kevin Richardson: 100 percent.
Clarissa Ward: You're stuck with them.
Kevin Richardson: I am. And some are good and some are bad, you know? You got to take
the good with the bad.
Clarissa Ward: Like family.
Kevin Richardson: Exactly. You can't pick and choose. I formed relationships with a
bunch of lions, unknowingly at the time what the consequences potentially later on down
the line would be. Not really knowing what I was actually getting involved with. But
I'll be the first to admit that it's an emotional connection that I have. And I can't just turn
my back on them now.