Send Them Back Alive

Lions may be a vanishing species in some African countries, but just 30 miles west of Paris Viscount Paul de La Panouse finds himself beset by too many of the beasts. La Panouse, 27, whose family coat of arms portrays--naturally--a lion, founded a wild-game park three years ago. On the spacious grounds around his family's Renaissance Chateau de Thoiry, he started out with a score of lions. Obviously French food and the sweeping savannas of the Ile-de-France region agreed with the animals. They proliferated so rapidly that the desperate viscount is now trying to export his surplus. To where? Where else? Africa.

West African Shortage. Today the 20 lions have multiplied to 57 adults and 45 cubs, with 25 more cubs en route. Laments La Panouse: "I have given away a lot of my surplus lions to European zoos. But now these zoos are breeding their own lions. Of course I could sell lion cubs for $500 or $600 apiece to itinerant photographers who exploit and mistreat them, or to publicity seekers as pets, but I'm dead set against that sort of thing." Instead La Panouse started a send-them-back-alive project, concentrating on West Africa, which just happens to be short of lions. One cub went to Dakar and two to Mauretania, as well as another to Madagascar. In December, La Panouse plans to ship a pride of twelve to Senegal's Niokolo Koba National Park.

The lions at Thoiry, meanwhile, have become so bored with the million visitors who come to see them each year, with tearing apart rubber tires supplied by the viscount or with hunting rabbits that the prides think of little more than their passions. "The lovemaking record is held by a lion who had 64 couplings in one day --with the same lioness," La Panouse claims. When an understandably skeptical visitor asked, "Who counted?" the viscount replied, "One of the keepers. They don't have much to do all day long." Even if they are French cats, that kind of performance is still hard to believe. Somebody must be lion.

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