A mountain lion named Mufasa, chained to the back of a truck for 20 years, has finally taken his first steps to freedom. Likely sold illegally as a cub, he spent his life performing in a Peruvian circus, sleeping among tent poles without even a cage.
“It was heartbreaking to see Mufasa chained among the circus equipment, living on the back of a pickup truck,” said Jan Creamer, president of Animal Defenders International (ADI). “A heavy harness and chains were wrapped around his body and as we cut them away, he stretched, free, for the first time.”
Mufasa was rescued during ADI’s Operation Spirit of Freedom, a yearlong effort to shut down illegal circuses after Peru banned performing animals in 2011. The mission included an eight-hour standoff with his owners. When found, he was underweight, nervous, and afraid of people.
At ADI’s rescue center in Lima, his health and appetite improved with veterinary care. Later, he was moved to the Taricaya Ecological Reserve, where a special enclosure in the Amazon rainforest became his permanent home.
“Mufasa was torn from the wild and has endured the worst possible life,” Creamer said. “It is magical to see him moving about in and out of the trees in his own piece of protected forest.”
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