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    Euro­pean wild­cat (Felis sil­vestris)
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201216Aug08:41

African lions dis­cov­ered as per­ma­nent res­i­dents of rainforests

Infor­ma­tion
pub­lished 16 August 2012 | mod­i­fied 16 August 2012
Archived

Ethiopian lioness1Recently, the Germany-​based Nature and Bio­di­ver­sity Con­ser­va­tion Union (NABU) reported that they, for the first time, suc­cess­fully have doc­u­mented African lions in the rain­for­est. As part of their con­ser­va­tion work in Ethiopia NABU-​people were able to observe and pho­to­graph a lioness in the UNESCO Kafa Bios­phere Reserve, a rain­for­est and cloud­for­est area. To date, accord­ing to the IUCN Red List of Threat­ened Species the African lion (Pan­thera leo leo) is clas­si­fied as vul­ner­a­ble and could only be doc­u­mented out­side of rainforests.

NABU is plan­ning to set up a fund for the pro­tec­tion of lions liv­ing in the Kafa reserve, which will sup­port and com­pen­sate the local pop­u­la­tion in the case their pro­duc­tion ani­mals are attacked by lions.

We are delighted with the first proof and now want to inves­ti­gate the behav­iour of the ani­mals in this unusual habitat
Vice Pres­i­dent Thomas Tennhardt of NABU »

The savan­nah is the pre­ferred habi­tat of the lions. Accord­ing pre­vi­ous pre­vail­ing knowl­edge lions are not per­ma­nent res­i­dents in moist forests. This can now be refuted by NABU. The pres­ence of lions in south­west­ern Ethiopia in the Kafa Bios­phere Reserve has been observed con­tin­u­ously by the peo­ple liv­ing there. To answer the ques­tion whether there really are lions as per­ma­nent res­i­dents in the Kafa Bios­phere Reserve, the wildlife pho­tog­ra­pher Bruno D’Amicis was man­dated by the NABU to lead a photo expe­di­tion, early 2012. To the knowl­edge of NABU, his record­ings are the first suc­cess­ful doc­u­men­ta­tion of the ‘King of the jun­gle’ in a real jun­gle, a rainforest.

Ethiopian lioness2The Kafa Bios­phere Reserve is dis­tin­guished by its mon­tane rain­forests that are con­sid­ered as the source region for Ara­bica cof­fee and also home to many rare wild ani­mal and plant species. Since the south of Ethiopia is con­sid­ered an impor­tant migra­tion route for lions of East and Cen­tral Africa, it is assumed that the ani­mals were just pass­ing through the region dur­ing the dry season.

Across Africa, accord­ing to expert esti­mates, there are only about 23,00039,000 lions left, while in Ethiopia just not more than 1,000 to nearly 1,500 lions live. Their dis­tri­b­u­tion and their pop­u­la­tion size has fallen sharply in recent decades, caused by the loss and the reduc­tion of their habi­tat due to the increas­ing pop­u­la­tion and the decline of prey. Early this year, based on the con­ser­va­tion strat­egy for lions in east­ern and south­ern Africa, the Ethiopia Wildlife Con­ser­va­tion Author­ity, adopted a national action plan to improve liv­ing con­di­tions for the endan­gered lions in Ethiopia.

Founded in 1899, NABU is one of the old­est and largest envi­ron­ment asso­ci­a­tions in Ger­many. NABU has been cam­paign­ing since 2006 for the con­ser­va­tion of wild cof­fee forests in Kafa and has sup­ported the gov­ern­ment in the estab­lish­ment of the Kafa Bios­phere Reserve.

(Source: NABU Press Release, 07.08.2012)

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