60 Minutes (1968) s47e11 Episode Script

While we're giving thanks for the feast this weekend let's not leave out what may be one of the best ideas that America ever had.
It's called the World Food Programme -- the emergency first responder to hunger anywhere on the globe.
The United Nations launched WFP in today the U.
S.
government pays the biggest part of the bill as the World Food Programme feeds 80 million people a year.
Its greatest challenges come when it confronts war and hunger.
And that's what's happening today in Syria where you will find heroes of the World Food Programme saving the most vulnerable people in what looked to us like the edge of oblivion.
The map said, "no man's land.
" We plowed the border of Jordan and Syria where the Jordanian military told us we would find war refugees.
But considering the wasteland it seemed more likely the map was right -- who could survive here? But after several hours we found them, pouring over the land like a flash flood.
With three hundred miles behind them, these Syrian families made their final steps through a war that nearly killed them and a desert that could have finished the job.
Watch a moment and listen.
Scott Pelley: This berm marks the border between Syria and Jordan.
The refugees that we ran into were coming across the top of the berm and turning themselves in to the safety of Jordanian border officers here.
More than a million have crossed into Jordan so far during the three-year civil war in Syria.
They had been farmers, shopkeepers, office workers.
Now they shared one occupation: saving the children with matted hair and faces covered in ten days of misery.
We noticed the little ones around Halima.
Turns out she's the mother of nine.
Scott Pelley: Why did you come? "There's bombing all around us," she said, "I'm afraid for my children.
But I don't know what will become of us now.
" Scott Pelley: You don't know what's coming next but you know this must be better than where you came from? She had taken five of her children.
Her husband took four by another route.
And they hope to find one another.
Halima said they managed to save everyone in her family.
But as for the fate of others in her town -- no translation was needed.
Andrew Harper: This is happening every day.
Every day we are getting hundreds of people, sometimes up to a thousand people, fleeing the violence, fleeing the deprivation in Syria and coming across into Jordan.
Andrew Harper is in charge in Jordan for the United Nations high commissioner for refugees.
Scott Pelley: What kind of shape are they in when they come at the end of this journey? Andrew Harper: It's horrific.
We're seeing children coming across now without any shoes.
Often they've only got one pair of clothes, some of them are just wearing their pajamas because, when their places were bombed, they had nothing to grab to leave.
The U.
N.
refugee relief agency and Jordanian troops met the families, gave them food and water, and loaded them up for the trip to a U.
N.
camp.
There was room for everyone on the trucks but no mother would take that chance.
They pressed their children in first.
Parents had sacrificed all they had to see this moment.
And a long dead emotion began to stir.
It felt like hope.
Scott Pelley: You know, this war's been going on for three years.
Why are these people still coming now? Andrew Harper: Because it's getting worse.
I think now more than ever there is absolutely no hope for the future at the moment in Syria.
Part of what has stolen hope inside Syria is hunger.
Starvation is a weapon in the war that began as an uprising against the dictator Bashar al Assad.
These words read, "kneel or starve.
" Signed Assad's soldiers.
All sides are laying siege to communities and cutting off the food.
This is what happened in a neighborhood called Yarmouk when a U.
N.
food convoy broke through.
The people had eaten the dogs and the cats and were running low on leaves and grass.
This girl eventually starved to death, five miles or so from a supermarket.
Ertharin Cousin: Are we willing to lose a generation of children to hunger? To lack of access to medicines? To lack of access to water while we wait until the fighting stops? No.
We can't.
Ertharin Cousin is executive director of the World Food Programme.
She's a former food industry executive from Chicago.
WFP is often headed by an American because the U.
S.
donates more than a third of the four billion dollar annual budget.
Ertharin Cousin: The operation in Syria is one of the largest that we have ever operated in WFP.
We have over 3,000 trucks supporting month inside Syria.
Scott Pelley: All of that and your people are getting shot at.
Ertharin Cousin: All of that and people are getting shot at.
It's a war zone.
It's a conflict zone.
The world doesn't stop.
The war doesn't stop.
The conflict doesn't end because people need to eat.
The World Food Programme estimates that more than six million Syrians do not know where their next meal is coming from.
Matthew Hollingworth: These are areas where people have nothing.
They really do have nothing.
Matthew Hollingworth heads the World Food Programme mission inside Syria.
In February, he led an armored column into the city of Homs, which had been sealed off by the dictatorship for 600 days.
Matthew Hollingworth: People were skin and bones.
I could lift a grown man because he'd got to about 40 kilos.
Scott Pelley: 85 pounds or so? Matthew Hollingworth: Exactly.
In the city of Homs, months of negotiations had opened a three-day ceasefire to distribute food.
But it turned out the starving residents wanted something else first.
Matthew Hollingworth: The people of Old Homs asked us to evacuate women, children and the sick before any assistance came in.
So we went through the last checkpoint.
And there we could see in front of us 80 or 90 children, women and sick and injured people waiting to come out.
And then the worst thing happened.
The sniping started.
Scott Pelley: People were shooting at you.
Matthew Hollingworth: People started to shoot at us.
So we took the decision then to put the vehicles, the armored vehicles in front of the area where they were shooting down in the alley to allow the people to come out.
It was a hugely moving experience.
And we successfully brought them out.
This opened the way the following day for us to go into Homs and deliver the first assistance and we did that successfully, but halfway through, sadly, the operation, we came under mortar fire.
Matthew Hollingworth: It was panic, chaos.
People screaming, people running everywhere.
The hot metal flying around you.
Scott Pelley: You decided to stay.
And I wonder why.
Matthew Hollingworth: We'd seen the faces of the people who were asking us to help them, asking United Nations to help them in their time of crisis, which is why we're here.
So we again negotiated with all the sides to this time obey the ceasefire, to respect the ceasefire.
And we went in the following day and the next day and the next day, and the rest is history.
History records that in Homs, WFP evacuated feed 2,500 others for a month.
But elsewhere in Syria more than one million remain beyond reach.
[Man in YouTube video: November the fifth We know they're there because we can hear their pleas for help.
A man in a Damascus suburb called Moadamiyeh, put out a series of videos on YouTube.
[Man in YouTube video: In a protest to the world to enter the humanitarian aids to the besieged city of Moadamiyeh.
.]
After several videos begged for someone to break the siege, the man made his way out of Syria.
We found him, but we're not using his name to protect his family.
Man from YouTube video: People are starving to death while food and medicine is only two minutes away behind the Assad checkpoints.
Scott Pelley: Tell me what you witnessed, what you saw with your own eyes.
Man from YouTube video: Even while the regime is bombing, nobody cared.
It seems like if you die from the shelling, it will be a merciful way to die instead of dying from hunger because it will take months to die from hunger.
People lost faith with the world, with their families, even with God.
Nobody understood that we can die from hunger in the 21st century in Syria.
Scott Pelley: The regime shelled Moadamiyeh to rubble, used nerve gas on the population, but it was starvation Man from YouTube video: Yes.
Scott Pelley: that broke the town.
Man from YouTube video: That's absolutely true.
It can destroy your soul, your mind, your beliefs, before it can destroy your body.
Nobody in this world, no matter who he is, deserves to die from hunger.
Nobody.
That is the principle on which the World Food Programme was founded, an idea in the Eisenhower administration, after 70 million people around the world starved to death in the first half of the 20th century.
Today, WFP is in 75 countries plagued by war or weather.
It has an air force, a navy and an army of 14,000 people.
But emergency response is just part of what it does.
The World Food Programme prevents famines by teaching farming.
It uses its vast purchasing power to support small farms.
All of this despite the fact that WFP gets no funding from the United Nations.
It raises its budget entirely from donations by governments, companies and individuals.
But in Syria the need is so great, the money is falling short.
We got a sense of the scale of that need by flying over the latest U.
N.
refugee camp with the Jordanian police and the U.
N.
's Andrew Harper.
Andrew Harper: We're looking at probably one of the world's largest refugee camps.
The refugee families we saw earlier at the border were headed here.
Scott Pelley: You have built this for 130,000 refugees.
Do you think you're going to have that many? Andrew Harper: Well if you look it there's about six and a half million people displaced in Syria.
I think we may even need to build more than this.
When the U.
N.
camps opened, the World Food Programme served three meals a day.
But it soon discovered that these families hungered for more than just a meal.
Ertharin Cousin: What they're receiving is not food.
But they're actually receiving a voucher, which will give them the ability to decide what food their family can eat for the month.
Scott Pelley: Why do you do that? Ertharin Cousin: It gives them a choice, more than anything else and it gives them respect.
Respect because the vouchers are a ticket here.
Where there was only desert, the World Food Programme has built supermarkets like any in America.
Osama and his wife led nine children through the desert after their daughter was wounded by a mortar.
Each member of his family now gets a WFP voucher for 29 dollars a month.
Scott Pelley: The difference between being fed out of the back of a truck and cooking your own meal is dignity.
Ertharin Cousin: It's dignity.
It's providing your children with some hope.
Back on the border, in the last moments of the day, we ran into another exodus, families pressing through no man's land on a path marked only by the desperate steps of those who'd come before.
Jordanian troops crossed into Syria to lift a woman who had stopped short saying, "Mother we are on the border.
" In recent weeks, Jordan has been forced to reduce the numbers it can accept.
And the World Food Programme has come perilously close to cutting back rations for lack of funds.
But millions more are on the move and the days of war remain uncounted.
This holiday shopping season you might worry that every time you swipe your credit or debit card some criminal might be swiping your account number and with good reason.
The number of reported, illegal intrusions into the computer systems of U.
S.
companies is at a record high this year and climbing.
The hacking of Target, Home Depot, Staples and other top retailers made headlines.
Behind the headlines are two separate crimes with two sets of criminals.
Sophisticated cyberthieves steal your credit card information.
Common criminals buy it and go on shopping sprees -- racking up billions of dollars in fraudulent purchases.
The cost of the fraud is calculated into the price of every item you buy.
When computer crooks swipe your card number, we all end up paying the price.
data breach.
" The theft of 40 million credit cards from Target late last year was followed by news of a breach at Michaels stores involving more than two million credit cards.
Then came P.
F.
Chang's.
And in September, Home Depot announced that 56 million of its customers' credit card numbers were stolen.
Dave DeWalt: Nearly every company is vulnerable.
Dave DeWalt is CEO of FireEye, a cybersecurity company that gets hired to keep hackers from getting into a company's network or getting them out after there's been a breach.
Dave DeWalt: Even the strongest banks in the world-- banks like JPMorgan, retailers like Home Depot, retailers like Target -- can't spend enough money or hire enough people to solve this problem.
Bill Whitaker: Cybersecurity is a misnomer? There is no cybersecurity it sounds like you're saying.
Dave DeWalt: This isn't a lack of effort.
Most of the large companies are growing their security spend.
Yet 97 percent -- literally breached.
So there's a gap here.
Bill Whitaker: Ninety-seven percent? Dave DeWalt: Ninety-seven percent.
In fact, we Bill Whitaker: That's outrageous.
Dave DeWalt: It is outrageous.
It's pretty amazing.
FireEye tracks assaults on its clients with a real time map showing where computer attacks originate and their targets.
It's an eerie throwback to Cold War illustrations of what a nuclear missile attack might look like, but with cyber attacks Bill Whitaker: This goes on 24 hours a day.
Charles Carmakal: 24 hours a day, yeah.
Charles Carmakal leads teams of first responders for FireEye.
Charles Carmakal: We are seeing hundreds of thousands of attacks on a weekly basis across the globe.
Bill Whitaker: And these are just the ones that your systems are picking up.
Charles Carmakal: That's right.
Dave DeWalt: On average the breaches from the time of infection, from when the bad guys get in to the time they are discovered, is a whopping 229 days.
229 days.
Forensic investigations reveal that 80 percent of security breaches involve stolen and weak passwords.
One of the most common is: 123456.
Dave DeWalt: The days when we have our username and password, which is our son or daughter's name or our cat or our dog is not enough security for, you know, for today's attackers.
Breaches are inevitable.
It's happening.
It's just life that we live in today.
Bill Whitaker: Inevitable? Dave DeWalt: Inevitable.
Bill Whitaker: Just accept that Dave DeWalt: Accept that a little bit Bill Whitaker: they are going to get in.
Dave DeWalt: They're going to get in.
But don't let them access the information that's really important.
Don't let them get back out with that information.
Detect it sooner.
Respond sooner.
And ultimately that exposure is very small.
Maybe they got away with a few credit cards.
Maybe they didn't get away with any credit cards.
But they didn't steal Target declined our request for an on-camera interview, but the breach of its security a year ago is a case study in how hackers operate.
It started when criminals stole the username and password from one of Target's vendors -- a Pennsylvania heating and air conditioning company.
The credentials got them into Target's network without attracting attention.
Once inside they easily spread to thousands of checkout terminals in nearly every store.
The hackers then installed malicious software, or malware, to record card swipes.
Dave DeWalt: The company invested a lot of money in security.
It wasn't like they weren't trying to stop the bad guys.
It's just the bad guys were really good, number one.
Number two, they're very persistent.
A security system Target recently bought from Dave DeWalt's company, did detect the intrusion, and triggered alarms.
But Target's older security systems were still in place, generating millions of alerts similar to these.
Most were for minor technical glitches and the warnings from FireEye were lost in the noise.
Bill Whitaker: So alarms were going off? Dave DeWalt: Alarms were going off.
And when you get millions of alerts a day and there's one or two alerts that are the ones blinking red, "There's a problem.
There's a problem.
" You can miss it and it's very hard to find the needle in the haystack.
So Target's problem ultimately became, "I couldn't find the needle.
I couldn't see the one alert that was bright red.
" Last December 18, a week before Christmas, a cybersecurity blogger named Brian Krebs first reported the story publicly.
Brian Krebs: The breach lasted for a little more than three weeks.
But they actually managed to hit Target at the busiest time of year for them.
Krebs' office is like a computerized crow's nest: a high-tech perch from which he scours the cyberworld for early signs of underworld activity.
Over the past year he broke the news on his blog that criminals had hacked into a dozen retailers and chain restaurants including Dairy Queen and The Home Depot.
Brian Krebs: A lot of times those companies have already been notified by law enforcement, by Secret Service or the FBI.
Bill Whitaker: But it sounds like it's usually discovered by people outside of the company.
Brian Krebs: That's almost universally true.
Yes.
Bill Whitaker: Why is that? Brian Krebs: A lot of times the first indicators that you get that one of these organizations is comprised is when their customers' financial information goes up for sale in the underground.
You know, they're running a business.
And frankly they're not focused on cybersecurity.
There are scores of sinister online shopping bazaars where cyberthieves put their goods up for sale.
Think Amazon.
com for thieves.
This is where Krebs does his detective work.
Bill Whitaker: They're just right on the Web? You can buy stolen cards by just going to this site? Brian Krebs: Absolutely.
Big batches of stolen card numbers are called dumps.
Krebs figures out which banks have customers' stolen cards up for sale and alerts them.
The banks then check to see which merchant is the common link.
Brian Krebs: If they're willing to share that information with me, I can take that and go back to other banks and say, "Look, this is the pattern they're seeing.
What are you seeing?" The bulk of cards sell for anywhere from 10 to 50 dollars, depending on things like the expiration date, or the credit limit.
Brian Krebs: In the case of Target they stole they managed to sell? About five percent of those.
Bill Whitaker: That's still a lot of cards.
Brian Krebs: It's still a lot.
And I say "only" because each of those cards, the average price was about 20 dollars per card.
So that's a lot of money any way you slice it.
The thieves offer volume discounts and sales and customer service includes refunds if the cards have been cancelled.
Brian Krebs: If you buy from them and it comes back as declined, they'll automatically credit the amount that you bought for that card cost.
So they'll automatically credit your account.
Bill Whitaker: You're kidding.
This stolen card will work or you'll get your money back? Brian Krebs: Yeah, absolutely.
Customers are told to make payments with Western Union or other money transfer methods.
Credit cards are not accepted.
The masterminds behind the hacking and selling of stolen card data are sophisticated crime syndicates.
Most are in Russia and Eastern Europe -- primarily Ukraine -- and out of the easy reach of American law enforcement.
Ed Lowery heads the criminal division of the U.
S.
Secret Service, which investigates financial cybercrimes.
Bill Whitaker: The fairly big breaches we've been seeing -- Target, Home Depot.
Who's behind that? Ed Lowery: Well, those are professional cybercriminals.
Those individuals, they make their living -- and a very good living, at times -- attacking the U.
S.
financial infrastructure.
That level of cybercriminal.
That is the new-age cartel, as it were.
Secret Service arrests have led to the convictions of 14 people, but there are plenty of others to take their places.
The criminals buying the stolen numbers don't have to be that sophisticated.
Bill Whitaker: Is it fairly easy to turn those numbers you buy online into one of these cards? Ed Lowery: Now, I really don't want the general public to think that they should go out and start committing fraud.
But obviously, the encoding and all takes a little higher level of sophistication.
And you have to have the criminal drive to do it.
But is it highly technical? In light of the intrusions we're speaking about, and the rest, it's not nearly that sophisticated.
Buyers are all over the world.
In the U.
S.
, street gangs are among the crooks to use stolen cards.
They buy gift cards, which are like cash, and electronics, which they resell for quick profits.
Brian Krebs: If you buy a card for 20 bucks and you can make 400 dollars off each card, that's a pretty good return on your investment.
Bill Whitaker: Pretty good.
For many banks, news of a breach from Brian Krebs is the first sign they have of a problem.
Two of his regular readers are Barry Abramowitz, chief information officer for Liberty Bank in Connecticut, and Linda Swartz, who heads up security for Westfield Bank in Massachusetts.
Bill Whitaker: So you don't hear about it until Brian Krebs breaks it? Linda Swartz: Pretty much.
Barry Abramowitz: That's what makes his work so valuable.
Linda Swartz: Exactly.
If you know there's a problem, you can stop it from occurring or stop the bleeding before it gets too bad.
But you need to know that information.
Most banks and credit unions rely on MasterCard, Visa and other card companies to notify them when a customers' account may have been stolen, but they're not told which retailer was hacked or when.
Bill Whitaker: Why don't they tell you which retailer is responsible or involved? Barry Abramowitz: I don't know.
Linda Swartz: Probably so it doesn't place the blame on the merchant who was compromised.
They don't want us to go back to that merchant and say, "You know, your system was compromised.
You lost my customers' information.
" Bill Whitaker: Why not? Linda Swartz: It's business.
I mean, I hate actually saying that it was Home Depot and Target, but those are the ones that are in the media.
Bill Whitaker: How big a problem are these security breaches for the banks? Barry Abramowitz: Huge.
Linda Swartz: Yeah.
Barry Abramowitz: Huge.
In 2013, stolen credit cards led to estimates as high as 11 billion dollars in fraud in the U.
S.
That doesn't include the cost to banks of replacing millions of cards and monitoring customers' accounts for suspicious activity.
Bill Whitaker: So when the customer is told that he's not going to lose anything out of his pocket.
The customers not going to pay for the fraud, somebody's paying for it.
Linda Swartz: The bank.
Barry Abramowitz: The banks are the victims who are actually paying for the breaches, rather than the retailers that have had the information compromised.
The Home Depot, like other recently breached retailers, declined our request for an on-camera interview, citing ongoing investigations.
Mallory Duncan is with the National Retail Federation, the industry's largest trade group.
He says the magnetic stripe cards are just too easy to counterfeit.
Mallory Duncan: The underlying problem is that we have cards that were designed for the 1960s, '70s and '80s but we now have hackers who are using 21st century tools to break in.
Bill Whitaker: Are the retailers really doing everything they can to secure customers' information? Mallory Duncan: We're doing everything we possibly can to secure it.
Bill Whitaker: What does that mean "possibly can"? Mallory Duncan: Well, because the problem is you're trying to secure a house of straw.
The cards themselves are fundamentally fraud-prone.
After a year of relentless breaches, bankers, retailers and security companies all agree the technology behind credit cards is broken and needs to change.
Visa and MasterCard declined to be interviewed, but said the roll out of credit cards with computer chip technology next year will make counterfeiting cards almost impossible.
Bill Whitaker: Apple and Google are promoting their own payment systems to protect account information and retailers, like The Home Depot, are encrypting the data.
The changes will cost billions of dollars and take years to implement.
Bill Whitaker: This Christmas shopping season, you're expecting this to happen again.
Linda Swartz: Absolutely.
We know it's going to.
It's inevitable.
We feel like we're just kind of sitting and waiting for it to happen.
There's not a lot we can do to stop it.
The African Lion is the most feared predator in the wild.
It is designed to kill.
But tonight we'll show you a very different side of these awe-inspiring animals.
Our guide is South Africa's self-taught animal behaviourist, Kevin Richardson.
Getting up close and personal with lions is his life's work.
It has earned him the nickname "The Lion Whisperer.
" We visited his sanctuary, a few hours outside of Johannesburg, where Richardson spends most of his days with his 26 adopted lions.
But the story of how he ended up with an extended family of huge cats reveals some disturbing truths about a South African tourism industry with a sinister side.
We strapped a couple of small cameras onto Kevin Richardson to get a good look at the unique relationship he has with these animals.
First stop this morning: finding two of his lions, Gabby and Bobcat.
When they hear his call they rush out to greet him like a long lost friend.
This emotional bond is incredibly rare.
[Kevin Richardson: How was last night? Did you enjoy? Did you have a good time?.]
His ability to interact with them so freely is a result of the fact that he has known them since they were cubs -- when Richardson worked at a lion park for tourists.
All of these animals were born in captivity and can never be released into the wild.
But they are far from tame and wouldn't accept any other human being getting this close to them.
[Kevin Richardson: Have you had a long day today? It's been horrible.
It's been a terrible day.
You had to spend the entire day out in the bush.
What a nightmare.
You're very heavy my boy.
Can you get off me? Thank you.
.]
Richardson himself acknowledges that the boundaries are different with each animal.
A lesson he learned the hard way when he was bitten by a lion he didn't know well.
We kept our cameras at a safe distance and at times shot from a drone hovering overhead.
Clarissa Ward: You don't get nervous at all when she's licking your face like that? Kevin Richardson: No.
You've got to have trust that she's not going to do anything except to tend to bite you like that.
Clarissa Ward: So right now she's just playing? Kevin Richardson: She's just playing, yeah.
It all depends on how you roll with them.
If you kind of stiffen up and pretend that you're all nervous, then they stiffen up.
And they want to grab you.
And they want to claw you.
And they want to bite you, even if you know them.
Clarissa Ward: Does she know that she's stronger than you? Kevin Richardson: I don't know if she consciously thinks that she's stronger than me.
I think she just respects the fact that, you know, I'm part of her group.
And she wants me on my back now.
Oh, my gorgeous.
Oh, you're a nightmare, you lions.
This is not a circus act.
Unlike the vast majority of people who work with captive lions, Kevin Richardson doesn't carry a stick or a stun gun and he doesn't control his animals through fear.
In this relationship the lions are his equals.
And they rarely take orders.
[Kevin Richardson: You're naughty.
A naughty cat.
.]
That means he can break every one of the established rules for interacting with these big cats.
He looks them in the eye, gets down to their level, lies down on the ground with them.
And people who know lions say you should never, ever, turn your back on one.
But seen from the drone that same incident reveals Kevin's secret.
The lioness goes on to do exactly the same thing to the male lion.
Richardson is just one of the pride.
Kevin Richardson: They do seem to be attached in a way.
Because when you go away they do miss you.
And they do lovingly greet you when you come back.
They're the only social cat, as we know, a truly social cat.
So that's quite important to lions.
Clarissa Ward: What do you think the biggest misconception about lions is? Kevin Richardson: Biggest misconception is mindless, man-eating killer.
In fact, they are really just big, scared animals that are designed to kill, because that's how they've evolved.
But the truth be known, they'd rather run away than confront.
Kevin Richardson: There we go.
That's not so bad.
We were told we would probably be ok sitting in an open truck.
But when a lion weighing more than 400 pounds sidles up for a closer look, that doesn't seem like much of a guarantee.
Kevin Richardson: You're fine, you're fine, you're fine, you're fine, you're fine.
Clarissa Ward: They're just so big.
Kevin Richardson: Yeah.
I suppose something that always struck me was the first time I saw a lion, it was a big boy like him.
And I was driving to this camp.
And he started roaring next to the window.
But he looked me in the eyes.
I was in quite a low-slung car.
And that's a memory I'll never forget, you know, just the power of the roar but also the sheer size.
I was like, "Whoa.
" I didn't realize they were that big.
Clarissa Ward: How many people are there who can do what you do? Kevin Richardson: There are many people around the world who have amazing relationships with animals and with lions, you know? I'm not going to claim it as, like, something unique to Kevin Richardson.
Clarissa Ward: But would you say you have a gift? Kevin Richardson: I think the gift really is to maybe explore the boundaries, where most people would be bitten or scratched or, you know, be in such a vulnerable position, where they think, "Well, why would I ever want to put myself in that situation?" And you've got to do it once.
You know, it's an amazing thing to suddenly be able to turn your back on a full-grown lion and not worry that he's gonna come and grab you on the back of the neck.
So I suppose, from that perspective, it is a bit of -- maybe it's ballsiness.
I don't know.
And the gift that goes with it, I suppose, is knowing when to leave them alone.
Kevin Richardson started this sanctuary to protect his lions from a multi-million dollar industry that he was once a part of.
For years, Richardson worked at The Lion Park, one of dozens of places in South Africa where tourists, many of them Americans, pay top dollar for the privilege of petting lion cubs.
The parks breed their lions constantly to ensure a supply of cubs year round, but once the lions reach maturity, they are too dangerous to be near tourists.
Places like The Lion Park claim that their older cats are sent to live out the rest of their days in good homes.
Kevin Richardson: Well, the question I have is where are these good homes? Because I'd like to visit a few of those good homes myself, and maybe even some of my cats could go to these good homes.
The reality is there aren't any.
This is where many of those cubs actually end up: in something called a canned hunt.
Where for prices up to 100,000 dollars you can go into an enclosure and shoot a lion.
It's entirely legal but online videos from animal rights groups and hunting operations show how brutal it can be.
An animal that has been petted and fed by humans since birth makes a pretty easy target.
Chris Mercer runs a campaign to try to get canned hunting banned.
Chris Mercer: You put the lion into the enclosure.
And then the hunter comes and shoots it and takes it out.
Clarissa Ward: So essentially, it's like shooting fish in a barrel.
Chris Mercer: Oh, there's no skill involved at all.
It's not hunting at all.
Your canned lion hunter is actually a collector.
He's not a hunter.
Clarissa Ward: A collector of trophies? Chris Mercer: He's a collector of trophies.
Most of the tourists who pay to play with cubs believe that they're helping the animals.
Chris Mercer: Whenever you pet a lion cub, you are directly enriching the canned lion hunting industry.
And I hope that anybody watching this program takes this to heart.
Clarissa Ward: What percentage of cubs in these facilities do you think end up in hunting operations? Chris Mercer: Virtually all the cubs that are petted in this country are going to be shot sooner or later.
Clarissa Ward: How do you know that? Chris Mercer: Well, we know that there is no other market for adult lions other than the hunting industry.
Lions eat meat.
Meat's expensive.
So every day that that huntable lion remains with the breeder is money lost.
They have to get rid of it.
And it's the hunting operation that takes it.
The cub-petting business has spent years trying to hide that fact.
We went to The Lion Park where Kevin Richardson started out.
His former boss, Rodney Fuhr, claims that parks like his aid conservation by allowing people to interact with the lions, he said, it raises interest in the species.
Clarissa Ward: I can definitely see the appeal.
They are beautiful animals.
We asked Fuhr where these lions would end up.
Rodney Fuhr: We try and sell them to credible zoos and parks around the world.
Clarissa Ward: So you would claim right now that no lions that are bred here end up in a hunting facility? Rodney Fuhr: Yeah.
Now, that under oath, you know.
Clarissa Ward: Because we've been given a few names of people who you've allegedly sold lions to, all of whom are associated with hunting operations: Nazir Cajee, Kobus Van Der Westhuizen, Kobus Jakobs, Ben Duminy.
Rodney Fuhr: Yeah, well, let me interrupt you there.
Now, that's true.
But like I said, we haven't done that for the last couple of years.
Clarissa Ward: Even within the last 18 months, though, we've been told you've sold one batch of 17 lions to Nazir Cajee and another batch of 17 lions to Joanne Hulley, who resells lions to hunt operators.
Is that correct or not? Rodney Fuhr: I'm surprised it's 18 months because I thought it was longer.
Like I said, you know, we were doing it.
We were selling it to traders and of course zoos as well.
Clarissa Ward: So some of your lions have ended up Rodney Fuhr: I thought it was more than 18 months.
Clarissa Ward: But the reality is some of your lions have ended up in hunting operations.
And it's very difficult for you to guarantee that they won't continue to end up in these hunting operations.
Rodney Fuhr: Well they won't do it while I'm here.
This whole thing about canned hunting.
What is canned hunting, you know? And I think it's grossly exaggerated.
What are the jobs that we're providing and the hunting industry? Thousands of jobs.
This has got to be weighed up against the odd lion that may be sold when he's eight years old, you know.
In the wild, he wouldn't probably even live to eight.
[Kevin Richardson: This way.
This way.
.]
For Kevin Richardson, the idea that the lions he had worked with since birth might end up in a canned hunt was too much.
So he teamed up with a partner to buy all 26 of them and move them to his sanctuary.
Clarissa Ward: So you couldn't leave without taking your lions with you.
Kevin Richardson: Exactly.
Clarissa Ward: And the logistics of getting Kevin Richardson: That's been a struggle.
Put it that way, yeah.
Wildlife documentary work and a paid volunteer program are covering the bills for now, but lions can live for more than 20 years.
Clarissa Ward: So these lions are almost, like, your adopted family now.
Kevin Richardson: 100 percent.
Clarissa Ward: You're stuck with them.
Kevin Richardson: I am.
And some are good and some are bad, you know? You got to take the good with the bad.
Clarissa Ward: Like family.
Kevin Richardson: Exactly.
You can't pick and choose.
I formed relationships with a bunch of lions, unknowingly at the time what the consequences potentially later on down the line would be.
Not really knowing what I was actually getting involved with.
But I'll be the first to admit that it's an emotional connection that I have.
And I can't just turn my back on them now.