Lionel de Lange has been rescuing wildlife from unsafe conditions in Ukraine for years. But doing it in fear of Russian missiles presented altogether new challenges
De Lange has lived in Ukraine since 2014, rescuing bears, wolves and lions from unsafe conditions through the organisation Warriors of
He decided to travel through Moldova, requiring a new set of paperwork under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species to approve cross-border travel, and a new round of negotiations with both Moldova and“That wasn’t to protect us against Russians,” De Lange says. The police were on hand to shoot the lions in case of an accident.
The rescue crew, a collection of British army veterans and a veterinarian, arrived in Odesa at 4pm last Monday, too late to begin the seven-hour long sedation and loading process. The zoo owner paid for them to spend the night in a five-star seaside hotel, where the lights were turned out at 9pm so that Russian missiles could not target them.
The next morning the lions were sedated, given a health check and vaccinated before being lifted pallbearer-style into travelling crates, where they were woken up before the journey began. Four were loaded into a Ford Transit van driven by De Lange, another four were placed on the back of an ex-military truck, and one was in the back of a converted ambulance.“It’s stressful from the first moment you see them when you realise ‘I am going to knock them down’,” De Lange says.
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