Lodging with Lions

Lodging with Lions is a reality series that follows volunteers from all over the world as they descend on Antelope Park, Zimbabwe for the ultimate lion volunteer experience.

Each episode follows the volunteers as they lend a hand at the park and we see them going about their daily duties, including taking the lions for walks and hunts, preparing the meat and vitamins for the cubs, cleaning fenced enclosures and assisting in research tasks.

Taking the lions and cubs for walks helps build confidence and enables them to eventually practice hunting and explore their natural habitat. Through these experiences, the volunteers and viewers are able to see unique lion personalities and the development of their characters. The successes and failures of the lions and cubs are highlighted as they explore, play, discover and learn in the open grassland.

We will also reveal how the staff release cubs born within the site back into the wild, build more release areas on land that has been acquired and observe them in some of the lion research work.

The volunteers have to endure very thorough induction sessions and we see how they progress at every stage. Eventually they are able to help feed the cubs, prepare food for the bigger lions and help the larger cubs in their first attempts at hunting. The series captures footage of some young lions on their first zebra hunt in the open savannah grasslands and their attempts to reach the food bales that the volunteers have prepared and hidden to teach the lions a vital lesson in scavenging.

We will also spend time with some of the volunteers who assist the trainers and staff with the rehabilitated elephants orphaned during the 1991-92 droughts that ravaged South Eastern Lowveld.