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201527Oct22:06

African lion pop­u­la­tions face 50 per­cent decline in next 20 years

Infor­ma­tion
pub­lished 27 Octo­ber 2015 | mod­i­fied 27 Octo­ber 2015
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African lion in tree in UgandaA new study shows that lion pop­u­la­tions in much of Africa are in rapid decline. The study esti­mates that lion num­bers in West and Cen­tral Africa are declin­ing sharply and are pro­jected to decline a fur­ther 50% in the next two decades with­out a major con­ser­va­tion effort. Lion num­bers are also declin­ing, albeit less dra­mat­i­cally, in East Africa, long con­sid­ered the main strong­hold of the species. The study also shows that almost all lion pop­u­la­tions that his­tor­i­cally num­bered at least 500 indi­vid­u­als are in decline. The arti­cle was pub­lished online before print yes­ter­day in Pro­ceed­ings of the National Acad­emy of Sci­ences of the United States of Amer­ica (PNAS).

A team of sci­en­tists from global wild cat con­ser­va­tion organ­i­sa­tion Pan­thera, Oxford University’s Wild­CRU, Grimsö Wildlife Research Sta­tion, IUCN Species Sur­vival Com­mis­sion Cat Spe­cial­ist Group, and the Depart­ment of Ecol­ogy, Evo­lu­tion and Behav­ior at the Uni­ver­sity of Min­nesota esti­mated the tra­jec­tory of lion pop­u­la­tions by com­pil­ing and analysing regional pop­u­la­tion trend data for 47 dif­fer­ent lion pop­u­la­tions across Africa. The analy­sis showed that whereas most lion pop­u­la­tions in West, Cen­tral, and East Africa are declin­ing, increases in lion pop­u­la­tions occurred in four south­ern coun­tries: Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe.

If resources for wild lands can­not keep pace with mount­ing lev­els of threat, the flag­ship species of the African con­ti­nent may cease to exist in many countries
Dr. Hans Bauer, lead author, WildCRU »


Bauer noted: “These find­ings clearly indi­cate that the decline of lions can be halted, and indeed reversed as in south­ern Africa. Unfor­tu­nately, lion con­ser­va­tion is not hap­pen­ing at larger scales, lead­ing to a vul­ner­a­ble sta­tus of lions glob­ally. In fact, the declines in many coun­tries are quite severe and have enor­mous implications.”

Glob­ally, lions are listed as Vul­ner­a­ble on the IUCN Red List of Threat­ened Species, though the species is con­sid­ered to be Crit­i­cally Endan­gered in West Africa. The results of this study reaf­firm the lion’s con­ser­va­tion sta­tus in West Africa and fur­ther sug­gest that regional assess­ments yield a more accu­rate pic­ture of lion pop­u­la­tions than do global assess­ments. Based on the data, the authors rec­om­mend that the lion be region­ally uplisted to Endan­gered in Cen­tral and East Africa while pop­u­la­tions in south­ern Africa meet the cri­te­ria for ‘Least Concern.’

Dr. Luke Hunter, Pres­i­dent and Chief Con­ser­va­tion Offi­cer of Pan­thera and a co-​author, urged, “We can­not let progress in south­ern Africa lead us into com­pla­cency. Many lion pop­u­la­tions are either gone or expected to dis­ap­pear within the next few decades. The lion plays a piv­otal role as the continent’s top car­ni­vore,” he con­tin­ued, “and the free-​fall of Africa’s lion pop­u­la­tions we are see­ing today could inex­orably change the land­scape of Africa’s ecosystems.”

An African Wake-​up Call: A Lion Roar­ing


The authors note that con­ser­va­tion efforts in south­ern Africa are suc­cess­ful for a num­ber of rea­sons, includ­ing low human den­sity, sig­nif­i­cant resources, and per­haps most impor­tantly, the rein­tro­duc­tion of lions in small, fenced and inten­sively man­aged and funded reserves. Dr. Paul Fun­ston, Senior Direc­tor of Panthera’s Lion Pro­gram, said, “If we don’t address these declines urgently, and at a mas­sive scale, the inten­sively man­aged pop­u­la­tions in south­ern Africa will be a poor sub­sti­tute for the freely roam­ing lion pop­u­la­tions in the iconic savan­nahs of East Africa. In our view, that’s not an option.”

The study drew on the most com­pre­hen­sive dataset so far com­piled on the lion, which also informed the most recent Red List assess­ment of the species. Senior author Prof. Craig Packer of the Uni­ver­sity of Min­nesota who also serves on Panthera’s Sci­en­tific Coun­cil said: “Esti­mat­ing future pop­u­la­tion trends requires sophis­ti­cated fore­cast­ing tech­niques, and we per­formed one of the most com­pre­hen­sive sta­tis­ti­cal analy­ses of con­ser­va­tion sta­tus over such a large scale. The results clearly indi­cate the need for imme­di­ate action across most of Africa.”


(Source: Pan­thera press release, 26.10.2015)


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