# Keeper killed at "Lion mans" park



## SiUK (Feb 15, 2007)

white tiger mauled him, sad to say im not totally surprised but the poor cat got PTS, Craig no longer works there I believe.

White tiger mauls keeper to death - Yahoo! News UK


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## stephenie191 (May 29, 2007)

I watched that show a few times! I love it,


however, i think the employee's must watch the bloke and think. No big deal, i can go into an enclosure with a male tiger and cubs . . . .:gasp:

He knows his stuff - he's always watching them and knows their next move, however the employee clearly didn't :whistling2:


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## Fixx (May 6, 2006)

stephenie191 said:


> I watched that show a few times! I love it,
> 
> 
> however, i think the employee's must watch the bloke and think. No big deal, i can go into an enclosure with a male tiger and cubs . . . .:gasp:
> ...


I think that is a very sweeping statement to be honest, there have been concerns over safety issues at Zion Park before. Plus this is not the first time they have had tigers attack keepers/volunteers. The victim in this case had rescued another keeper attacked by a tiger in February this year. From what I can gather, and to be truthful it is only supposition based on what I have read online, keepers going in with the big cats is normal at Zion Park, so to say that because he saw Mr Busch go in with the big cats and thought it was safe for him to do so is a bit off.


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## trigger (Jan 6, 2009)

oh dear, this place is getting some real bad press at the moment. I read a very unpleasant article just yesterday about some of th lion mans erm, techniques, it was not pleasant reading. From the article it the author who had worked there, said the lion man only has contact with the cats when the cameras are rolling and it is quite normal for the keepers to have contact. Feel sorry for the keeper though, and his family.


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## Bar1 (Feb 20, 2007)

trigger said:


> oh dear, this place is getting some real bad press at the moment. I read a very unpleasant article just yesterday about some of th lion mans erm, techniques, it was not pleasant reading. From the article it the author who had worked there, said the lion man only has contact with the cats when the cameras are rolling and it is quite normal for the keepers to have contact. Feel sorry for the keeper though, and his family.


 

Hi could you pm details of what you read as i am very interested in this please .

Regards 
James: victory:


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## Fixx (May 6, 2006)

Bar1 said:


> Hi could you pm details of what you read as i am very interested in this please .
> 
> Regards
> James: victory:


Try this


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## Gaboon (Jun 20, 2005)

Hes a joke! It is a shame but come on!? That guy was just ''handling'' a LION!!! It was going to happen sooner or later. It sucks they put the male lion down. F'ing retards!!


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## Kerriebaby (May 12, 2009)

So very very sad for the Keeper ( and the tiger tbh )

But having watched the show, I must admit I cringe at some of the enclosures that they have...some of them are shockingly small, and not very "natural" to the species. 

RIP


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## brittone05 (Sep 29, 2006)

This guy was a senior handler according to the article so to assume that he was only trying to do what the Lion man does is a bit of a sweeping statement I agree.

While it is sad, it is just proof that regardless of your relationship with ANY animal - how much time you spend, the disciplines you istill and so on - the animal can return to it's instinctual natures in a flash. Sad that the tiger was PTS because it behaved in the same way that any wild animal would do


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## Talk To The Animals (Jan 10, 2008)

Poor guy. And poor tiger. Apparantly not the first time this particular tiger has attacked someone.

On a slightly more macabre note, I especially like this part; "Zoo officials said that despite the best efforts of the other keeper, the tiger would not let go of Mncube and he died at the scene." What were they doing, standing there saying "Be nice!"?


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## temerist (Feb 1, 2009)

i think its really sad, i dont think ill ever be able to watch the lion man again and feel the same as i used to. i read online yesterday that craig busch hasnt worked there for a while as he lost his license last year, some say its due to an assult on someone and others says its due to a previous death at the park, unsure which if either is true. also read that the tiger is question this time was Jadu (sp) the large male royal white bengal tiger, he was always one of my favourites on the tv show. zion wildlife park however is an amazing and beautiful place and you can have quite a large ammount of interaction with the lions and tigers, which does make the price you pay to get in worth while lol


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## mattm (Jul 18, 2008)

I wouldn't say the person "didn't know what he was doing" or anything along those lines, the way the aricle is written seems to imply that it was a regular thing and this was a freak attack.

It doesn't matter how experienced someone is or what "gift" they believe they have to be able to read tigers - a wild animal is a wild animal. And for it to be put down because of its instincts is sad.


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## darloLee (Apr 9, 2009)

SiUK said:


> white tiger mauled him, sad to say im not totally surprised but the poor cat got PTS, Craig no longer works there I believe.
> 
> White tiger mauls keeper to death - Yahoo! News UK


A.B.A what a load of b:censorks


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## Nicquita (Mar 14, 2009)

Gaboon said:


> Hes a joke! It is a shame but come on!? That guy was just ''handling'' a LION!!! It was going to happen sooner or later. It sucks they put the male lion down. F'ing retards!!


how is someone's death a joke exactly? that's a really unfair and heartless comment. plus, it was a tiger, not much difference really, but you shouldn't post if you're not even going to read it. yes it sucks that the animal was pur down, but chances are, it couldn't have successfully been introduced into the wild, and they can hardly keep it if it has a track record of attacks. i believe they're prioritising, and in all honesty, you'd have to be daft to think the tiger should be kept after it had _killed _somebody. if wild tigers attack and kill people in villages etc, the tigers are hunted and killed. it's the same principle.


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## darloLee (Apr 9, 2009)

this thread is a f:censor:n joke! so yas are sayin basicaly its his fault he got mauled by a tiger eh oryt so then its steve irwins fault he got stabbed by by a ray eh...a dont think so....every one goes on about oh poor steve yehh the guy was a legend and i watched his show all the time but this is the same thing u mess with nature and its only a matter if time before something like this happens! 
its sad for all involved but thats life deal with it! :2wallbang: the risks are there and they obviusly understand them!


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## Nebbz (Jan 27, 2008)

i watch this, and i know the tiger it means, that tiger even craig wouldnt go in with cus he was a beast...literally! even kept him separate from the tigress exsept for breeding

why is craig not working there????? seems obsurd considering he knew his stuff!


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## stephenie191 (May 29, 2007)

Dogs, have become damesticated (sp?) they've come along way from their wolf days.

Cats, reptiles, 

we keep alsorts now.

It's fair to say that we had to start some where in the domestication process, 

i belive most things can be tamed, it's just like dog training, you must treat an animal with respect and if you know its body language, you should be ok.

There again, you go in with a male tiger who has cubs :bash:


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## Zoo-Man (Apr 12, 2008)

I had watched the programme a few times & had always thought that the cat's enclosures looked rather small. I was also a bit shocked that the 'lion man' took some lions & tigers to a country fair & stuck them in a pen for crowds to gawp at. Risky if you ask me!

As for the tiger in question being put to sleep, could they just not go in with it in future instead of killing it???


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## SNAKEWISPERA (Aug 27, 2007)

Bet that hurt


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## Amoa123 (Oct 6, 2008)

they are very trained there and the guy who died was trained by lion man before he left three months ago (on the new story it said he had a fight with his mum who owns the park i believe) but although trained working with such animals no matter how carefull at some point 1 will get you there still wild after all.


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## Patthecat12 (Mar 28, 2008)

That whole park has a dark story behind it, from Craig beating his wife, to being kicked of the park by his mother who owned it and employed others, Then craig getting charged with mistreatment. then this.....


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## blackberry (Jan 14, 2009)

poor tiger, i have never seen this programme, why are they having all these lions and wild cats there, is it just for TV?


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## clair74 (Feb 20, 2009)

It is sad that they try to domesticate a wild animal and then punish it for its natural behaviour.This happens so many times in on hand zoos and wildlife parks and it make s me so sad :-(


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## DeviantPelican (Oct 9, 2008)

I'm living in NZ just now, I work in the animal behaviour/welfare field, and the people I work with know a lot about the park... the old 'lion man' has been banned from the park & lost his license, to be honest he has a real bad reputation here, he seems like a complete nut job, and his methods of 'taming' the animals were far from right and he was apparently very different with them off camera. All the tigers/lions in the park have been declawed (the top joint of each toe taken off) just so that they aren't such a threat and so that he could do his whole play thing with them, and the guy that died recently was a friend of a guy I work with, unfortunately it was a pretty slow death, lets just say ripping apart. The new guy running the park seems much more on the ball though, I've not been up there myself, but I hear the enclosures are/have been upgraded. I guess when you work with powerful animals like that you never know when then can snap, I doubt its anyones fault as such
anyways, just thought I'd let you know the story from this end of the world!


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## exotic_girl (Dec 11, 2008)

i was devasted when i heard about this. Jadu was one of the more aggressive tigers, so greater precautions hsould have been taken, not on just the keepers part, but on whoever owns the park now. 

i hate the fact that this endangered species has been put down. End of day, if in animals it is a life for a life, why is it not the same for humans? If a human killed another human, they get 12 -25 years, if a wild animal atacks a human, they get shot, whether they endangered or not. Animals act on instinct, and whether that cat was in captivity or not, he was a wild animal!

i think that Craig Busch has put alot of bad publicity to this place,. i think his intentions were good, but he couldnt carry it out. and to be frank, if i wanted ot open a park to save big cats, i would build the enclourses first and then get the cats, instead of putting the cats in "temporary" enclosures that they were in for at least three series of the Lion Man, while they take their time building the enclosures. The animals were probalbly so stressed and bored being in their tiny enclourses it provoked this attack. 

I think thats enough from me! :whistling2:


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## blood and guts (May 30, 2007)

Ive watched the show a fare few times and always thought this would happen at some point soon. The enclosures in my mind where to small and lacking in enricment for the animals for starters and it also diddent look like it was safe for visitors either if they got to close.

As for white tigers, there just a colour morph and as such not really a conservation animal. Lots of inbreeding and the like so while there stunning he was not breeding them because they where endangered, its because there diffrent and worth money.

Some of the worst zoos ive seen in the canaries made this place look poor and with the off camera stuff we have now herd the guy needs shooting!


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## exotic_girl (Dec 11, 2008)

yeah i always got the impression he was more in for the money then the well being of the animals. That bengal with the white tiger gene seemed to be constantly popping cubs out!

i meant tigers themselves are endangered Blood and Guts, not just the white tiger carryon.


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## atum (Jun 1, 2009)

looks like this thread is throwing up a lot of personal opinions

personally i think having the tiger put down isn't right. yes he killed someone. but from what i've read on this thread it was known that this tiger was aggressive and had attacked before. surely more precautions should have been taken with this particular animal. if you know one burmese, common boa, royal, right down to a corn snake is more temperamental than 'normal', you take precautions to make sure you don't get stuck with a snake on the end of your hand

i've never heard of this park, or the program, but it sounds like there is a lot of controversy surrounding it, but the animals shouldn't be suffering because of it. at the end of the day it is a wild animal. instincts take over, the male may have seen the keeper as a threat and was acting in self defense.


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## Mr.Monty (Jun 6, 2007)

Patthecat12 said:


> That whole park has a dark story behind it, from Craig beating his wife.


have you heard why he was ment to have done this


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## exotic_girl (Dec 11, 2008)

you know that blonde that worked at the park when the first two white tiger cubs were born? Hermes? well appantly, Ctraig walked in on his girlfriend or wife, whatever, Karen sleeping with Hermes and Hermes husband.


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## atum (Jun 1, 2009)

so the park has a dodgy setting around it because this craig caught his girlfriend 'sleeping' with a new keeper and her wife and he decided to beat her over it?


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## exotic_girl (Dec 11, 2008)

not really. there is also alot of reports of suspicion over his treatment of the animals when he is "training " them, and also the tiny enclosures that they are kept in. 

there is also alot of debate over his involvement with the babies. he takes them away from the mother at 10 days old and handrears them. Not just with the "bad" mothers, but also with the good mothers, and that sparks off a few debates over his ethics there too.


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## donstapley (Jul 28, 2008)

how this thread has gone from talking about a poor guy being killed by a tiger......to craig beating his wife (which personally i think is irrelivant).

i think this whole happening simply need to be put down to experience. YES the tiger was acting on natural instict, but at the same time the poor guy was only doing his job. every time things like this happen everyone kicks up a fuss trying to blame someone....when actually it was all an unforunate accident. Tigers are WILD creatures, and their natural instict shoud never be under-estimated even by these professionals.


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