You know, when you think of taking an african adventure naturally you’d go to Africa, right? Well yes, but did you ever consider you could savor an african lion safari adventure in Canada. Yes! Canada.
Nestled about an hour from Toronto and one and a half hours from the mighty Niagara Falls is African Lion Safari… a veritable “jurassic park” situated in Cambridge, Canada. Since 1969, the park has been tantilising visitors with the african safari spirit. With fauna conservation a big issue today, maintaining animal numbers in the wild may be difficult to accomplish however, parks like the African Lion Safari in Canada are doing their level best to help sustain the numbers of those species under some threat.
For 40 years the Canadian park has been making sure wildlife numbers can self sustain. The park was first founded in 1969, in fact, about a month after the first moon walk. Colonel Gordon Dailley was the park’s founder and originally “kicked off” proceedings by purchasing a large chunk of land in Rockton. His first tenants were 23 lions he managed to obtain from a reserve in Florida. Since that initial opening, African Lion Safari Park, while catering for visitors in an entertaining way, has tried hard to focus on the educational qualities of it’s fauna and flora. Visitors are encouraged to learn as much as possible about the park’s tenants.
The beauty of the canadian wildlife set up is that it is not a zoo in the traditional sense. The animals roam around over a large area and in fact, it is the visitors who are caged. Well, for their own safety at least. You see, park visitors are kept in their cars but get the experience of getting as close to the animals in their natural environment. Safety comes into play in a big way and it certainly wouldn’t be a good idea to wind down any windows at this point.
The park hasn’t been without incident though. During an altercation between two elephants in November, 1989, a part time employee was unfortunately killed after being crushed to death. He was trying to calm the two aggressive beasts however, lost his life. There was further incident reported seven years later when news reports at the time, reported a couple who were driving through the game reserve, unfortunately were greeted by a Bengal tiger.
Although known as African Lion Safari, the park plays host to a large number of other animals such as baboons, zebras, white rhino and giraffes.
Since the last incident, African Lion Safari has continued on and prides itself on it’s mission of providing a self sustaining inhabitat for it’s animals.
Dean Caporella is a professional broadcaster with an interest in a wide range of topics including african safaris. Visit: african-safaris-sitedotcom”