Urgent race to save embattled lions
Ahead of World Lion Day on August 10, looks at the fragile state of Africa’s lion population
IN THE fading afternoon sunlight, the two male lions lay stretched out regally alongside each other on a bed of burnt, blackened grass in the Pilanseberg National Park.
Holding up a pair of binoculars, Samantha Page-nicholson watched the brothers closely. For hours, park rangers had been scouring the park for any signs of lions in the dense thicket.
The co-ordinator of the African Lion Database, run by the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT), looked pleased. “I always get excited when I see lions,” she smiled. “But as charismatic as they are and as much as everyone loves them, lions are among some of our carnivore species that are most in trouble.”
In South Africa, wild lions are listed as a conservation species of “least concern” – the country is home to around 2000 wild lions.
“We’re doing very well with lion conservation and our populations are increasing. We’re actually running out of space for lions,” she explains.
But in many regions across the continent, the picture is far bleaker: the iconic species is quietly slipping into extinction.
Today, there are more wild rhinos than wild lions and 14 times more African elephants and wild gorillas than lions. There’s one lion for every 350000 people on earth.
Consider that since the The Lion King first premiered 25 years ago, lion numbers have halved.
“We estimate there are fewer than 60 wild lion populations left, and nearly half of those have fewer than 50 lions so lions are extremely vulnerable to disappearing,” explains Dr Amy Dickman, a research fellow at the Oxford Wildlife Conservation Research Unit and the co-author of a new draft report, “State of the Lion 2019: Fragility of a Flagship Species”. (see left)
African lion populations, even in protected areas, are hugely underfunded and face a plethora of ecological and socio-political challenges, Dickman says.
“We will need far more funding, considered thinking and political will to secure remaining lion populations and to do it in a way that is equitable both for wildlife and the people in lion range countries.”
Habitat loss and degradation, bushmeat snaring, which leads to prey loss as well as lion killings, human-lion conflict, targeted poaching for body parts and excessive trophy hunting in some instances are pushing lions to the brink, experts say.
“This is one of the most globally iconic species, which has immense economic, ecological and cultural value at an international scale,” says Dickman.
“However, at a local scale, lions often incur major costs on rural people who see virtually none of those wider benefits. We have to develop better mechanisms to translate that global value down to a local level.”
Developed countries need to pay far more than they do presently to help safeguard lions both within and outside protected areas.
“But, despite the great interest in these species in the West in particular, currently there seems to be little political will to invest at the scale we need to maintain lions and improve the status of communities co-existing with them.”
Dr Paul Funston, lion programme senior director and southern Africa regional director for Panthera, the global wild cat conservation organisation, says in pre-colonial times Africa might have supported 500 000 to a million lions.
“Today the figure of about 20 000 is perhaps the most universally accepted, although it could be lower… In Africa lions no longer occur over 95% of their former range and are largely restricted to protected areas.”
Panthera’s work seeks to increase the species to at least 30 000 individuals across Africa. “The latest release of The Lion King and all of the fanfare around it is helping put a much-needed spotlight on the threat to embattled lions and why, now more than ever, we need the support of the global community, international corporations, nation states and others to move the line forward for lions.”
But Funston wonders if the film is largely “preaching to the converted” and whether the global hype can be used as a “defining moment” to attract global attention and resources to lion conservation.
“The $3 million (R44m) that Disney has committed helps, but it’s going to take far, far more than that to save the species. Africa’s governments need to be sensitised and financial support for landscape scale conservation efforts is desperately needed in most areas.”
To adequately protect the savanna protected areas of Africa to support sufficient prey for lions and keep lions and other high value species safe will cost $1 billion a year, Funston says.
“Across most of Africa’s protected areas, lions are not faring well and are in decline, as they are outside of protected areas in landscapes where they co-exist with people. There are examples of success – protection and tolerance here and there – but largely across the continent lions are in steep decline.”
In a handful of protected areas – Kruger, Etosha, Moremi, Chobe, Gorongosa and Serengeti National Parks – lions are thriving, are common and can be readily viewed by tourists. These “must be held onto at all costs”, he believes.
“Lions are likely to persist a long time in these protected areas, even with challenges of poaching and human-lion conflict.”
Poaching is a significant new threat, linked to South Africa’s legal export of lion body parts from captive breeding farms to feed a growing market in the Far East.
“Now lions both in South Africa and in Mozambique (and other countries) are being poisoned and snared by poachers at unprecedented rates with faces and feet hacked off just in the same way as the grizzly images we have seen of rhinos and elephants,” says Funston.
“Indeed, our work in Limpopo National Park in Mozambique suggested that the same poaching syndicates that target rhinos and elephants are responsible for the rise in lion killings. There the lion population has declined from 70 individuals to about 17 individuals within the last five years due mostly to targeted poaching for lion body parts.”
This threat is huge and rising, he warns. “(It) will no doubt wipe out many of the smaller remaining lion populations in parks not adequately funded to defend their lions, just as what we saw happen decades ago already to rhinos. Lions will soon be gone from all but the bigger and better financed protected areas, or the few communal areas where co-existence with lions can be fostered.”
To save lions, Funston believes protected areas need to be better-resourced and government awareness of lions and wilderness areas must be improved.
Better science is needed to link the value of protected areas with lions to human well-being while all forms of trade in lion body parts and all forms of petting tourism and captive breeding of lions must be stopped.
The future survival of lions hinges on their co-existence with humans.
“Lions are dangerous animals and will always impose some costs on people living alongside them,” says Dickman.
“There are many effective ways of reducing those costs, such as protecting livestock in fortified enclosures or by using specialised guarding dogs. However, the aim is to move towards a situation where tangible benefits substantially outweigh any such costs, and where those benefits are directly linked to wildlife presence.”
For Page-nicholson, the unfolding work of the 10-month-old African Lion Database, offers hope.
This is a first of its kind platform, supported by National Geographic and the Lion Recovery Fund, that seeks to consolidate lion population and distribution data from across the continent. It’s being undertaken for the conservation community and IUCN Cat Specialist Group.
Though lions are the big cat species most researched, there is still uncertainty about how many animals there are and where they occur, she says. Data is often “siloed” in various institutions with little conservation impact.
“Once we know more know about lions, we’ll be better able to protect them and guide conservation that is effective.” In recent months, Page-nicholson has gleaned new out of range records for lions in Cameroon, Malawi and Angola. “Populations may be higher than what we have thought so this is really positive.”