VIDEO: He Loves Playing with Lions

Kevin Richardson has spent most of his life among wild beasts and he’s dedicating his entire existence to them.

The Kevin Richardson Wildlife Sanctuary’s mission is to provide a self-sustaining African carnivore sanctuary for the purposes of wild species preservation through education, awareness and funding, especially pertaining to the rapid decline of large carnivores in Africa due to habitat loss, human-predator conflict, unscrupulous hunting, disease and their illegal trade.

According to Wikipedia, Kevin Richardson was born in the Nightingale Clinic on 8 October 1974 in Johannesburg, South Africa. He spent his childhood in the neighbourhood of Orange Grove. His mother, Patricia, worked for Barclays Bank and was also born in South Africa.

Richardson’s father, who worked for a pharmaceutical company, was born in the United Kingdom and moved to South Africa from Reading, Berkshire. Kevin Richardson is the youngest of four children: he has an older brother and two sisters who are twins.

His father died when Richardson was thirteen years old. When he was about sixteen, he met Stan Schmidt and began his career as a “self-taught behaviourist.”

Richardson went to college and studied zoology, but quit following two years of repetitive lessons on marine biology instead of mammals. As an adult, Richardson believed that he would never have a career working with animals and that it would remain a hobby of his.

He started taking courses in physiology and anatomy in college and started a career in exercise physiology and became an exercise physiologist.

When he was twenty-three, he had the opportunity to work with two six-month-old lion cubs, Tau and Napoleon, at the Lion Park near the outskirts of his home in Johannesburg. He still works with the grown cubs. The facility owner, Rodney Fuhr, started him off with a part-time job at the Lion Park.

Richardson and his team work with animals for the commercial filming industry and make documentaries to generate income to fund the facility. They also have a volunteer programme which generates income and volunteers who help to run the sanctuary.

Richardson worked in a 1600-acre Lion Park in Broederstroom, a town 35 miles north of his hometown, Johannesburg, in South Africa. While specializing in lions, he also interacted with hyenas and leopards. He spent the first part of his lion career at the Lion Park before moving to the Kingdom of the White Lion.

Richardson has a special facility called the Kingdom of the White Lion in Broederstroom. The park, which was set up with the help of Rodney Fuhr, is 800 hectares (2,000 acres) and was built for the set of the movie White Lion. Richardson cares for thirty-nine lions at this facility. Currently, the facility is private, but there are plans to open it to the public.

As of 2015, the Kevin Richardson Wildlife Sanctuary relocated to Welgedacht Private Game Reserve near Pretoria.

Richardson has worked with big cats and relies on intuition rather than static rules. He has slept next to, fed, and lived with lions. Along with lions, he has worked with cheetahs, leopards, and hyenas. He prefers lions to any other big cat.