BEIRUT — It's hours before dawn and the marina in Beirut's Dbayeh district is deserted apart from a small group of men lifting a metal cage labeled "live lion" onto a yacht. The passenger is a cub rescued by a Lebanese animal welfare organization from its life as a TikTok video prop. The group from Animals Lebanon has driven to the waterfront in a small convoy of vehicles, joined by NPR, spaced widely apart to avoid being seen as a threat by Israeli drones overhead.
As the sun began to rise, columns of smoke from an Israeli airstrike in Beirut's southern suburbs hung over the city. The boat trip to Cyprus on Thursday was the first part of a journey to deliver the animal to a wildlife refuge in South Africa. After flights to Dubai and then Cape Town, Animals Lebanon cofounder Jason Meier and the lion cub arrived at the Drakenstein Lion Park sanctuary Friday.
A video sent from there shows the animal, named Sara, in a wire fenced enclosure looking at two lions on the other side that will be part of her new family. Animals Lebanon says the cub is the fifth lion it has rescued and transported from Lebanon since fighting erupted between the Lebanese militia Hezbollah and Israel last year. That fighting has escalated into all-out war since Israel's assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in September.
Since Animals Lebanon was founded in 2008, it has rescued and transported 25 lions, tigers and other big cats from Lebanon to sanctuaries around the world. Before Septembe.
