Safari health and safety mistakes - Tips by Howard Hillman

Safari health & safety
mistakes

Safari tips you can trust

Worrying that lions will
jump into your vehicle

It's extremely unlikely

You are more likely to be in an automobile accident back home than being attacked by a lion. Unless a lion's traditional food (game) is scarce, it will seldom seek human meat, for various reasons, including the following.

Odor

We humans smell awful to lions. So do the gas fumes of your safari vehicle.

We're not a menu priority

The flesh of safari animals like elands, wildebeests and wart hogs is considerably meatier and more abundant than that of humans in safari parks. It's also tastier.

Provocation

In rare cases when a lion does attack humans in a game preserve, it is almost always because the beast was provoked or cornered.

Exception to the rule

Over the last few decades in Tanzania, lions have ended the lives of over 500 villagers, herders and farmers outside the animal-rich safari reserves. The primary reason is that the population of the animals such as elands and zebras that lions traditionally eat is quite low (due to hunting by the natives) in those human-inhabited areas. Hungry, the lions attack humans and their cattle.

Ignoring warnings

Be escorted at night

If you are instructed to call the main lodge for an employee to escort you between your cottage or tent and main lodge building at night, do it. Sometimes unescorted guests are knocked down, trampled, or at least severely frightened by elephants and other wild animals that pass through the grounds in the dark.

Stay in your vehicle

Don't get out of your private vehicle if the reserve forbids it. You don't know what might be lurking in the bushes.