Woman suffers severe arm injury after being mauled by lion in Aussie zoo
The Darling Downs Zoo, in Queensland, said the woman was watching zookeepers in the carnivore precinct when she was set upon at around 8.20am Sunday.
It's believed she may have lost her arm in the attack, and is now in a stable condition after having surgery Sunday afternoon.
In a statement released late on Sunday, Darling Downs Zoo said the injured woman was 'not one of our immediate family nor a keeper' and was watching zookeepers work in the carnivore precinct.
'This is something that she has done many, many times over the past 20 years,' the statement said.
'She is well versed in safety protocols around potentially dangerous animals.
'Inexplicably, at this stage, one animal grabbed her by one arm and caused severe damage to it.'
The zoo said at no stage did the lion leave its enclosure and there was no risk to staff members or members of the public.
The lion will not be put down or punished in any way, according to the statement.
Darling Downs Zoo's managing director, Steve Robinson, has been keeping African lions and managing their husbandry and welfare for nearly 50 years.
He and his wife, Stephanie, began breeding lions in 1997.
In 2002, they moved their animal collection to the Darling Downs region west of Brisbane and started building the Darling Downs Zoo.
The zoo is home to tawny lions and rare white lions, as well as two lion cubs.
Visitors can pay $150 for an up-close encounter with the lions, tigers and leopards.
The zoo's website said a specially trained keeper accompanied guests as they went behind the scenes to feed the big cats meat using a pair of tongs, billing it as the 'thrill of a lifetime.'
Two weeks ago, the zoo posted that its lionesses enjoyed 'the company of humans immensely.'
'Each day at 10am they are on supervised display to our visitors and are also available for some personalized encounters,' the post read.
'These encounters are strictly monitored to ensure their enjoyment of them and their wellbeing.'
The natural lifespan of lions is usually only up to around 14 years in the wild but in captivity they can live much longer, according to the zoo.
The zoo is home to multiple big cat species including Sumatran tigers, cheetahs and leopards.
Police and Workplace Health and Safety personnel are on site investigating the incident.
The zoo is working with them to establish how this incident occurred but the full details are unlikely to be known until the woman is out of surgery.
The zoo will reopen on Monday after being closed for the day on Sunday.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
10 hours ago
- The Guardian
The mane attraction: How many lions are in Australia and how well are they regulated?
Visitors seeking a 'prey's eye view' can get within 'clawing range' of lions at one Australian zoo. Or they can experience the 'thrill of a lifetime' by standing near enough to a lion to feel its breath as they pass meat through the fence with kitchen tongs. 'Want to feed a lion by hand?' You can do that too if you find the right zoo. Visitors can pay $150 to place meat directly on their palm and feed it to a hungry lion through the bars. A visit to the zoo is usually considered a fun family day out, and lions are a popular drawcard. While details are not yet clear, the recent maiming of a woman related to the zoo owner in a staff-only area at Darling Downs zoo at the weekend has offered a stark reminder that lions are held in facilities across the country, and encounters with the apex predators can come with risk. Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email Zoos can be an important part of conserving the lion as species, officially classed as 'vulnerable', but public fascination with the powerful big cats means they have been the centrepiece of zoos and public spectacle centuries before their status in the wild declined. Lions have been kept in captivity since the Roman empire, skulls belonging to lions have been unearthed in the Tower of London – believed to have been part of the royal menagerie 700 years prior – and in the 1800s live lions were shipped over the oceans to entertain the colonists in Australian zoos. Wallace, one of Melbourne Zoo's first lions, was famous for his love of classical gramophone music. Today these kings of the jungle can be found at wildlife parks dotted around Australia – from the famous big city zoos and their open air counterparts to the south coast of New South Wales, the Darling Downs of Queensland and the Victorian Alps. Which begs the question – just how many lions are there in Australia? And how well are the facilities they are kept in being regulated? 'When people think of zoos, they often think of the big cats – tigers and lions,' says Dr Eduardo J Fernandez, animal behaviour program director at the University of Adelaide and an expert in the family felidae, which includes the big cats. There are about 100 lions in Australian zoos, according to Zoos and Aquarium Association Australasia (ZAAA), along with other big cats. Fernandez says standards and protocols – like those covered by the ZAAA accreditation – are critical for both animal welfare and safety, particularly for 'any animal that poses potential danger', which is every species of big cat. Accreditation for ZAAA, is a self-assessment process. There are now between 75 and 80 accredited operations in Australia, but ZAAA estimates about 200 licensed animal facilities in the country, which range from wildlife shelters and hospitals to zoos, wildlife parks and aquariums. 'The better zoos in Australia will be part of the [ZAAA] accreditation scheme,' says Assoc. Prof Alex Whittaker, an animal welfare law expert at the University of Adelaide. However, she says, national species-specific regulation or guidance is limited. And while national standards for the care of exhibited animals were endorsed by governments in 2019, they have not yet been adopted across all jurisdictions. The rules and oversight of facilities keeping dangerous animals varies by state and territory. In addition to its own zoo-specific laws, NSW sets minimum standards for exhibiting carnivores, including specifications for lion enclosures – fences at least 4.5m in height with 5mm mesh. Similar, but slightly different, rules apply in Victoria. Will Meikle, a zoo animal welfare expert was involved in developing NSW laws and standards that regulate the keeping of exotic animals. 'From a physical perspective, you obviously have to maintain safety of staff and visitors to the facilities and ensure that the animals are able to be safely held in captivity that they're not going to escape.' But, even carefully designed enclosures aren't impenetrable. In 2022, five lions escaped their enclosure at Sydney's Taronga zoo, forcing visitors to hide in safe zones and triggering a review of zoo safety. Later, footage showed the animals managed to scratch and break through a security fence. Many zoo websites – from large, publicly funded institutions to small regional wildlife parks – promote paid encounters offering the chance to 'hand feed' lions and other dangerous carnivores. Such closeup encounters are common at zoos worldwide and considered safe, with 75% offering some sort of human-animal experience, according to a 2019 study. 'There's a real interest by people who want to feed the animals,' says Meikle. 'If people can't feed the animals, they want to see somebody feeding the animals, and they want to interact with the animals as much as they can.' These sorts of experiences would usually be covered by an internal operating procedure rather than regulation, he says. Fernandez, who has written a book on zoo animal-visitor interactions, says these could be positive from a welfare perspective, but their outcomes are rarely assessed. 'It's critical that we evaluate the impact, because there are many instances of different types of interactions that can be good for the welfare of the animal [and] be enriching. But there's also many instances, historically, that have been detrimental.' Sign up to Breaking News Australia Get the most important news as it breaks after newsletter promotion And there is evidence the public is deeply concerned about animal wellbeing. In 2020-21, researcher Dr Janice Vaz surveyed 375 people, including 164 Australians, for their views on big cats in zoos. She found the public preferred to see animals kept in modern enclosures with naturalistic exhibits, suggesting a deeper concern for animal welfare and generally disapproved of direct interactions like feeding or playing with clubs. 'It can be a hard task even for people caring for their own house cats to get right, let alone trying to meet the needs of a wild, 130kg+ carnivore,' says feline behaviour researcher, Julia Henning. 'Lions have evolved to be excellent hunters, and this behaviour is hard wired into them. This means that it is not enough to simply provide them with food, they require an ability to express the behaviours they would usually associate with the food such as hunting, stalking and ambushing.' Zoos use enrichment activities to mimic aspects of foraging behaviours, like carcass feeding, says Fernandez, but constantly evaluating and adapting practices is essential. There are limitations, and huge variation in the quality of the environment and enrichment provided. Recreating the natural environment is ideal, but a challenge. Fernandez says generally, as lions are a social species, it is good to have a pride of lions held together. In the wild, a lion's home range might extend to 10,000 hectares. The largest enclosure in Australia, at South Australia's Monarto Safari Park, is 11-hectares, while the minimum size in Victoria and NSW is 200 to 300 metres-square. Incidents, while extremely rare, do occur. 'There are inherent risks when working with wildlife and certain behaviours can be unpredictable, however zoos and aquariums have policies in place to minimise these risks,' a ZAAA spokesperson says. 'The sector is continuously improving its standards, and incidents like this [the 6 July incident] will be followed with careful review.' A Biosecurity Queensland spokesperson says authorised animal exhibitors are expected to manage risks with exhibited animals, and the department was 'working to gather further information related to the incident'. Workplace Health and Safety Queensland is also investigating. All incidents should provoke 'deep consideration' of how we 'house, treat and interact with animals in our care', says Henning. 'It should prompt zoos and other organisations to question the need for their encounters.'
BBC News
11 hours ago
- BBC News
An Indigenous Australian community is fighting to protect sacred springs from a coal mine
A small ceremonial fire has been burning for more than 1,300 days on a dusty stretch of Wangan and Jagalingou Country in central Queensland, the second largest state in flame marks the site of a protest that has been going on for more than four years. It stands at the heart of a long-running standoff between part of the local Indigenous community and the Carmichael coal mine, one of the country's most controversial mining mine, owned by Indian energy giant Adani which operates locally as Bravus, sits just across the road. It is located on the traditional land of the Wangan and Jagalingou (W&J) Burragubba and his son Coedie McAvoy have been waging a long campaign against Bravus, taking, as they see it, a spiritual stand as well as fighting for cultural survival."Where my land is, there's a mine trying to destroy my country," Adrian says. "That country is the roadmap to my history and knowledge about who I am and my ancestors."At the heart of their resistance is Doongmabulla Springs, a sacred site which they believe was created by the rainbow serpent Mundagudda – a powerful ancestral being in many ancient Aboriginal creation stories, often associated with water, creation and the land. Hydrocarbon traces The Doongmabulla Springs are connected to a bigger underground water system that helps keep the dry land alive. It sits above the Galilee Basin, one of the largest untapped coal reserves in the world, a 247,000-sq-km region containing more than 30 billion tonnes of scientists - which include Prof Matthew Currell, one of Australia's leading hydrogeologists, from Griffith University in Melbourne - say the site is ecologically significant and potentially vulnerable."We started noticing a couple of things, from time to time actually seeing hydrocarbons being detected within the spring waters themselves," says the academic, who has studied the area for several years."If hydrocarbons have only started turning up after mining, then we have to explain why. If it's linked to mining activity, then it's a red flag that the spring water quality is imminently under threat," he says."We're seeing signs that the impact from the mine is greater than what had been predicted when it was approved. I think that needs to prompt a full re-evaluation of that approval."A growing body of evidence suggests that mining activity could be having more impact on groundwater than originally forecast. Prof Currell's findings, co-authored with Dr Angus Campbell and peer-reviewed in 2024, have raised concerns about Adani/Bravus's groundwater modelling. The company rejected the findings and accused some of the article's authors of being anti-coal campaigners, which they national science agency, CSIRO, also reviewed Adani's analysis of the impact of the Carmichael mine on groundwater in the area in 2023. That review, which is part of the evidence being examined in an ongoing court case, concluded that Adani's models were not "fit for the purpose" of assessing the impact of the mine on the springs. People outside the UK can watch here In 2023, following a review of Adani/Bravus's groundwater monitoring data, the government banned their planned underground mining due to uncertainty over the impact it would have on the is challenging this ban in court. The company insists it has complied with environmental and legal standards."There have been no breaches of our groundwater conditions and the Doongmabulla Springs complex is not at risk from any of the mining we are doing now or are authorised to do in the future," it said in a statement to the Environment Minister, Andrew Powell, told the BBC: "We are committed to protecting the cultural and environmental values of the springs by taking appropriate enforcement action." A divided community The government's decision to approve the Carmichael mine has polarised Australia for nearly a Burragubba and his family argue that the mine is threatening their sacred water source, and that their rights, culture and connection to "country", as Indigenous Australians term their ancestral homeland, are being ignored. The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, adopted in 2007, requires "states to obtain free, prior and informed consent before undertaking projects that affect rights to land, including mining". While not legally binding, the declaration serves as a framework for harmonising relations between states and Indigenous controversy surrounding the mine has also long been a flashpoint in the climate debate, attracting both protests across the nation and strong support from local mining communities. The Queensland government had approved the project, citing its potential to generate jobs and boost is already one of the world's top coal producers. The Carmichael mine exports to the Asia-Pacific region, where demand for coal is projected to stay high, even as economies aim to use more renewable says it has invested more than $486m in the town where many of the mine's workers reside. But allegations of poor working conditions have Kim Nguyen, who has spent years covering stories on the Carmichael mine, has spoken to workers who say they have been exposed to unsafe dust levels, made to work in substandard infrastructure and faced a culture of fear when raising concerns. Queensland's mining safety regulator confirmed there were 875 pages worth of serious accident reports from 2019 to 2024, but said the mine's incident rate was "broadly consistent with industry averages".Bravus responded: "We have a zero-fatality record (…) We maintain high standards, comply with all legislation, encourage people to raise concerns anonymously or in person and these are resolved as they arise."After the state government declared it would approve the mine without Indigenous consent, seven out of twelve W&J family groups signed a land agreement with Adani in exchange for a community fund."It's split families," says W&J woman Jackie Broderick. "I feel terrible about the destruction of the land, but if we hadn't agreed [to the mine project], they would have just gone ahead anyway. We got out of it what we could," she believe the deal came at too high a cost. "Mining is God in this country. One mine has divided a whole nation," says a statement, Bravus said: "Adrian Burragubba and his allies in the anti-fossil fuel movement have tried for many years to discredit our company and stop our Carmichael mine, which has been operating safely and responsibly in line with Queensland and Australian law." Land rights claim In 1915, Queensland's Aboriginal Protection Act allowed the forced removal of Aboriginal people from their land. Many W&J people were sent more than 1,000km away. Families were separated and practising Aboriginal culture was 1993, the Native Title Act gave Aboriginal people limited land rights if they could prove continuous connection with it, including the right to negotiate on mining projects. The W&J people lodged a Native Title claim in 2004. With that, they had the right to negotiate with Adani, which offered benefits in exchange for signing an agreement. However, in 2012 and again in 2014, no agreement could be reached, so Adani sought approval through the Native Title Tribunal without Indigenous 2021, after 17 years, a judge dismissed the W&J Native Title claim, removing their right to consultation or compensation for future mines under the law. This was because they failed to establish a sufficient connection to the land."A judge ultimately made a determination that the native title did not exist in the claim area, and it's now subject to application to the High Court of Australia for special leave to appeal," says Tim Wishart, head of the Queensland South Native Title Service."I don't think it's a particularly fair system, but it's all we've got at the moment," he adds. Legal fight continues Adrian is now pursuing a judicial review in Queensland's Supreme Court, arguing that the mine violates his community's human rights by threatening a sacred argument is based on Section 28 of the state's Human Rights Act, which protects the right of Indigenous people to practise their culture and maintain their connection to land and water. It is a case that could set a precedent, says Alison Rose, Adrian and Coedie's lawyer."It will be a really important test case that will be followed by other First Nations [Indigenous] people who are wanting to protect culture and country," she is Adrian's fourth case against the government, using pro bono lawyers. Previously, he became bankrupt after fighting one court case and being hit with $680,000 in despite the bankruptcy, the court losses and internal community rifts, Adrian, his son Coedie and their family remain undeterred."We come from the water," Adrian says. "Without the water, we're all dead. Without land, we've got nothing."The Queensland government has requested the court strike out Adrian's human rights case. The verdict has yet to adapted by Selin Girit and edited by Alexandra Fouché
The Guardian
18 hours ago
- The Guardian
Australia's current childcare funding model risks failing our most precious people
When you attach profit to caring, you create a problem. We don't need yet another series of reviews and reports to tell us that when you rely on the blunt-force of the market, you will see profiteering from government subsidies, lack of quality in service delivery dressed up as 'efficiency' to maximise profits, and next to no services in areas where there's little money to be made. Australia's current funding model, the childcare subsidy (CCS), has facilitated the rapid expansion of for-profit providers, who now operate nearly 75% of all childcare services across the country. Research shows that for-profit providers typically deliver lower quality care while charging higher fees than not-for-profit services. Individual providers who are failing in their care for our most precious people should be held to account, but this is a systemic failure, and the broader fix will be a big, complicated job. Many of those who work in the early childhood education sector will tell you that they struggle to provide quality education to our children and to keep them safe amid sometimes shocking lack of oversight and adherence to existing rules. In a recent national survey of 2,000 members from the AWU, conducted before charges were laid against a worker in Victoria, one staff member from that state said 'I can't even guarantee the safety of the children and myself'. Of the educators surveyed, 77% said they were operating below minimum staffing requirements at least weekly, and 42% said it was happening daily. The early childhood educators who I have met have been hard-working, kind, mostly women, who work for low pay to do incredibly important work. Some private centres are exceeding requirements and standards. But most are not, and the system is failing not only children and families, but the staff and organisations who are doing the right thing. The ABC's Four Corners report in March revealed that one in 10 childcare centres in Australia have never been rated by regulators and pointed out that only 14% of for-profit centres meet national standards. Those standards are set by the Australian Children's Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA), but it has no power to enforce them across a system which is managed by states and territories. So how do we fix it? This question needs to be tackled now, especially if the government is serious about implementing a universal early childhood education and care system, which it should be. Evidence shows that children do most of their formative development under age five, and that quality early childhood education enables them to reach their full potential. That opportunity must be offered to all children in an equitable society. Quality, accessible, affordable care also enables women to work. It begins to remove the innate disadvantages for women who begin a lifelong slide into lower wages, less superannuation and higher financial risk almost as soon as they walk out of school or tertiary education. For those reading along who will now default to the simplistic just stay home with the kids position, get a grip. Single parents don't have a choice. Nor do couples who are struggling with the price of housing. This generation of parents may not have the option of one parent staying at home. Do not blame families for this. Safe, quality, accessible, affordable care for our children is essential for families, women, children and the economy. But protecting profit for private providers should not be guiding policy. What we need is better oversight and better regulation. Governments like being presented with solutions, so here are two. First, as the National children's commissioner, Anne Hollonds, says, 'National cabinet must make 'child safety and wellbeing' a key priority.' 'Currently the word 'children' is entirely missing from the list of priorities for National Cabinet.' We need a cabinet minister for Children. A minister would prioritise the litany of issues afflicting our kids, from the transformative opportunity to implement a universal early childhood education system, to youth safety and mental health, to the impact of social media and so on. Secondly, we need an Early Childhood Commission to set a national approach to regulatory standards, so that everyone is meeting them, including the for-profit providers. Earlier this year I joined The Parenthood, Goodstart Early Learning, Early Childhood Australia and Royal Far West calling for a national commission to set a national standard and weed out unscrupulous operators. It would also oversee the rolling out of a universal early childhood education system, a policy shift that could be as transformative as the introduction of Medicare for families, children and the nation. Labor has the numbers and the mandate to leave this legacy. Never waste a crisis. Zoe Daniel is a three-time ABC foreign correspondent and former independent member for Goldstein
