About Andi

Andi started working with lions in 2011 when she became involved, quite unintentionally, with her friend’s lion farm. She set about trying to transform it from a lion breeding, selling and processing farm into a sanctuary for lions.

The entire farm, including over 50 lions and 500 plains animals, was due to be auctioned in a sale of execution at the time Andi became involved. 

It was fighting to stop the sale and save the lions, that drove Andi to leave her life as she was living it, pack up her kids and move to her friend’s lion farm in the Free State.

Andi and her 3 children along with Andi’s mother Pam and friend Kathy, took over the entire project. 

The farm owner had been declared mentally ill and placed under the curatorship of his daughter in the Cape. 

Aside from staving off the court’s sale in execution, the other important thing Andi did was to separate all breeding lionesses from lions. She immediately realised that the indiscriminate breeding of lion cubs could not continue. The farm had to become a sanctuary for lions and not a production facility.

In 2015, after nearly 4 years of endless endeavour, Andi had to admit defeat when her friend and her father returned to the lion farm and resumed selling lions and breeding.

Andi left to set up her own, proper, ethical sanctuary.

Love Lions Alive Sanctuary is almost as perfect as Andi had wished. 

It is built on a beautiful mountainside affording the lions open vistas, huge boulders, high ground from which to look out from and low ground in which to shelter. 

Unlike on her friend’s farm, the lions at LLA have not been bred at the sanctuary. All the big cats that call LLA home, are previously abused or misused cats who have found a place of refuge and peace at LLA.