Varty and tigress Julie at Tiger Canyons, South Africa
John Varty (born 27 November 1950) is a South African wildlife filmmaker[3] who has made more than 30 documentaries and one feature film. Varty is also leading a controversial project which aims to create a free-ranging, self-sustaining tiger population outside of Asia.[4]
After his father, Charles, died, John and his brother, Dave Varty, terminated the hunting activities and converted it into a game reserve in 1973.[6] They renamed it Londolozi, which is the Zulu word for "protector of living things". Since then it has become one of the top resorts in the world and was included in Travel and Leisure's world's best 4 times in the late 90s and early 2000s.[7][8]
Varty made several documentaries that were widely distributed: Living with Tigers, Shingalana,[9]Jamu, the Orphaned Leopard.[10]Swift and silent won an American Cable TV award in 1993[11] and The Silent Hunter won The New York Gold Award.[12]
The project was the subject of controversy after accusations by investors and conservationists of manipulating the behaviour of the tigers for the purpose of the production of the film Living with Tigers, with the tigers believed to be unable to hunt.[17][18][19] Stuart Bray, who had originally invested a large sum of money in the project, claimed that he and his wife, Li Quan, watched the film crew "[chase] the prey up against the fence and into the path of the tigers just for the sake of dramatic footage."[17][18][19] Quan and Bray also accused them of financial mismanagement after a legal audit uncovered that he had borrowed R5.7-million of the funds for extraneous and personal expenses.[20] Quan and Bray subsequently established the Save China's TigersLaohu Valley Reserve, also near Philippolis.
Moreover, scientists have also established that the tigers are not genetically pure, which would imply that the project has no conservation value.[21]
On 29 March 2012, Varty was critically injured when one of his tigers attacked him on his farm near Philippolis. He suffered multiple injures and puncture wounds all over his body.[22] He spent approximately one month in hospital.[23]
In January 2014, KIA South Africa released a TV commercial, Tiger in Africa, with Varty's footage shot at Tiger Canyons.[24]
In 2019, Getaway reported there were 18 Bengal tigers at Tiger Canyon.[25]
^Varty, John; Le Roux, Dominique; Hay-Whitton, Lesley (2010). Nine lives: memoirs of a maverick conservationist. Cape Town: Zebra. ISBN978-1-77022-132-1. OCLC696106646.
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