A lion cub found dumped in a cage in a field in Tienhoven in Utrecht five years ago was moved to a sanctuary in South Africa on Sunday.

Remy the lion was about four months old when he was discovered by a passerby and had been looked after by the Stichting Leeuw foundation in Noord Holland ever since.

Animal protection organisation Stichting AAP said at the time the lion cub had been bought from a circus by a Belgian collector and later abandoned. In both Belgium and Netherlands, circuses have been banned from breeding or using wild animals in their acts since 2014 and 2015 respectively. Keeping lions is also illegal.

“Remy had very little space here,” Shoshana Pijnenburg from Stichting Leeuw told local broadcaster RTV Utrecht. “Thanks to the Lions Foundation nature reserve, he will have 1.5 hectares in a 700-hectare nature reserve. I’m really happy for him.”

Remy was accompanied on his journey to South Africa by his mate Luna who was brought to the shelter from Slovakia in 2021. “Luna and Remy have been together for a long time. If we had let him go alone, he would have been very lonely,” Pijnenburg said.