Buzz, Thor or Sherkhan were bought illegally and then abandoned by their owners: victims of a fashion trend promoted by certain influencers, these servals, small felines from Africa, were taken in by a shelter in the Loire.
“There was fashion for baby tigers and baby lions. For two years it has been fashion for servals,” laments Jean-Christophe Gérard, 52, to AFP.
On board his electric cart, this veterinarian daily takes the winding path that leads from his workplace, the Saint-Martin-la-Plaine zoo, to the cages of the Tonga Terre d’Accueil association.
Established in 2008, this two-hectare area serves as a refuge for nearly a hundred felines and primates abandoned by individuals or circuses, sometimes fearing the wrath of the law.
Of the five Leptailurus servals welcomed in 2021, “about thirty” have found asylum there over the past two years, the vet explains.
He currently oversees about ten of these small felines, distant cousins of the cat, with large ears and a long neck. The others were placed in zoos. The association is also working to bring them back to their natural habitat, in Africa.
But “as soon as one animal goes, another immediately takes its place,” he continues. Because “it is not at all an animal adapted to living in an apartment”, but a wild species with “an instinct that remains strong and rooted”.
– “Big Request” –
Clinging to the window of his enclosure, a young one-year-old serval stares at him before spitting at him as he approaches. Tall on its legs, with its slender silhouette and its black spots on a golden yellow dress, this African cat seduces on social networks, often presented in the arms of stars that contribute to its popularity.
Thus, the Canadian singer Justin Bieber shows on Instagram his two Savannahs, which are the result of the hybridization of a serval with a cat.
“People show up near a serval and there is a great demand,” complains Pierre Thivillon, 79, who founded the Saint-Martin-La-Plaine zoo in 1972.
Smuggled from farms in Russia, Belarus or the Czech Republic, servals are sold in France for 4,000 to 10,000 euros, most often under the counter.
Dealers supply them as small as house cats, often with an electronic chip that fraudulently presents them as such. The similarity of their spotted fur to kittens of the breed “Egyptian Mau, Bengal or Savannah” fuels the confusion of the control authorities, who struggle to identify them, according to the Loire vet.
As they grow, their weight can reach 20 kilograms, and it becomes bad for owners who are not familiar with the habits of this carnivorous wild species. The animals end up being abandoned when they are not seized directly.
The association collects and identifies them in collaboration with the companies Labofarm and Genome-Recherche&Diagnostic to find out if they are “pure” or hybrid servals.
– Imprisonment and fines –
In addition to illegal trade, this cat is “threatened in Africa by the disappearance of its habitat and poaching for its fur”, explains Bérengère Monvoisin, environmental inspector at the French Biodiversity Office (OFB), to AFP.
“Since 2017, there have been an average of six seizures of servals per year with a peak in 2020 during Covid, but since the start of the year there have been more than ten,” she laments.
In France, their detention is subject to strict administrative permits for both individuals and professionals, who otherwise face a maximum penalty of three years in prison and a fine of 150,000 euros.
On 20 November, a nightclub manager in Valenciennes (North) was given a suspended fine of 500 euros for illegally detaining a waiter on the establishment’s premises.
In July 2021, the courts sentenced a serval owner known as the “king of the jungle” on YouTube to 10 months in prison and a fine of 15,000 euros, praising this “only feline that has the same ancestor as the lion”.
published on July 14 at 9:59, AFP
