Pakistan correspondent in Lahore
The smell hanging in the air is the first sign there’s something unusual about the farmhouse on the outskirts of one of Pakistan’s largest cities, Lahore.
Once inside, the cause becomes clear: the property is home to 26 lions, tigers and cubs – and belongs to Fayyaz.
The rain, he says, has turned the ground into mud.
But the animals are “happy here”, he insists. “When they see us, they come over, they eat… they’re not aggressive.”
Almost instantly, one of the lions roars.
“That one is aggressive, it’s his nature,” Fayyaz says.
Fayyaz loves big cats. From this facility – thought to be the largest of its kind in private hands nationwide – the 38-year-old has sold cubs and breeding pairs for the last 10 years. He is widely considered to be one of the biggest lion dealers in Pakistan.
For decades these animals – lions, tigers, pumas, cheetahs and jaguars – have been a sign of power, status and even political fealty in the country. The tiger, for example, is a symbol of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz.
More recently, with the dawn of short video social media apps like TikTok and Instagram, there’s been a surge in ownership, with lions now sometimes even brought along to wedding events.
But in the wake of a pet lion escaping and attacking a woman and her two children as they walked down the street in Lahore, the government has launched a crackdown – one which is already impacting people like Fayyaz.
Among the new rules, owners must pay a one-time registration fee of 50,000 Pakistani rupees ($176; £129) per animal and farms are to keep a maximum of 10 big cats from no more than two species. The sites must also be open to the public for visits.
Violating new laws could result in a fine of up to 200,000 Pakistani rupees and, for the worst offenders, up to seven years in prison.
At another property on the outskirts of Lahore, five lion cubs – their coats muddied – pace around a cage.
“But where are the parents?” a wildlife official asks himself.
Nearby, there are several empty cages. Wildlife officials are here after receiving a tip-off that a man was holding lions and cubs without a licence, and was breeding them for sale illegally. By the time they arrived, the owner was missing, leaving his caretaker holding the bag.
“I was only hired two weeks ago,” he complains, as he was placed in the back of a truck and taken away for questioning.
The officials suspect the owner may have taken the cubs’ parents away and hidden them.
The rescued cubs have now been transferred to a public zoo in Lahore, and isolated for medical checks.
But in a country where big cats have been sold for decades, officials worry the raids are barely scratching the surface. They believe there are in fact hundreds, if not thousands, of undeclared big cats in the state of Punjab alone.
“This is going to take at least six months,” Mubeen Ellahi, the director general of Wildlife & Parks, tells the BBC. He expects 30-40% of the lions in Punjab will not be voluntarily declared.
There is also another complication. Mubeen explains inbreeding has become a common practice in Pakistan, and some big cats may have to be euthanised. “They have a lot of health problems. We are still considering the policy,” he added.
He pointed to another incident in December last year, when another lion escaped in Lahore, and was then shot and killed.
Back at Fayyaz’s property, he is considering what to do next.
An official told the BBC they’re dissatisfied with the size of the cages, and that the farm needs to convert itself into a zoo. Fayyaz now has three months to comply.
But animal rights groups believe more needs to be done for these animals.
“We’ve been calling for sanctuaries, not zoos,” Altamush Saeed told the BBC. He wants more transparency of the conditions inside the zoos, and for the government to properly address the problem of privately owning big cats.
“We need a systematic solution, not stopgaps.”
Additional reporting by Usman Zahid and Malik Mudassir
