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201513Mar21:00

Lions are mak­ing a come­back in Gabon

Infor­ma­tion
pub­lished 13 March 2015 | mod­i­fied 13 March 2015
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Bateke plateaux national parkNew footage out of south­east­ern Gabon has cap­tured a male lion on cam­era in a region where the species was believed by sci­en­tists to be “locally extinct.”

Two cam­era trap videos taken in the same fort­night cap­tured a sin­gle male lion roam­ing along an ele­phant path in the Gabonese region of the Batéké Plateau — a savan­nah land­scape extend­ing across south-​east Gabon and into Congo and the Demo­c­ra­tic Repub­lic of Congo (DRC) where the lion last roamed in any great num­ber in the 1950s. The last obser­va­tion of lions in the area were made in Odzala National Park in north­ern Congo in 1994 and in Batéké Plateau National Park in south-​east Gabon in 2004.

The footage was recorded as part of a chim­panzee study in pdfBatéké Plateau National Park led by Panthera’s part­ners, the Max Planck Insti­tute for Evo­lu­tion­ary Anthropology’s Pan African Pro­gramme: The Cul­tured Chim­panzee and The Aspinall Foun­da­tion.

Watch the incred­i­ble new footage of a lion, thought to be extinct, spot­ted in Batéké Plateau National Park in Gabon, Africa:


(Source: Ken­tAn­i­mal­Park YouTube channel)


Imme­di­ately fol­low­ing this dis­cov­ery, Pan­thera joined with the Max Planck Insti­tute for Evo­lu­tion­ary Anthro­pol­ogy, The Aspinall Foun­da­tion and Gabon’s National Park Author­ity (ANPN) to mount a new, inten­sive lion sur­vey in the Gabonese park.

This footage is truly unex­pected, and yet won­der­ful proof that life for the lions of Gabon and the region still remains a possibility.
Dr. Philipp Hen­schel, Panthera’s Lion Pro­gram Sur­vey Coordinator »

Dr. Hen­schel con­tin­ued, “The videos demon­strate that the efforts of the Gabonese author­i­ties to pro­tect this land­scape, start­ing with the des­ig­na­tion of the Batéké Plateau National Park in 2002 after an ini­tial lion sur­vey in the area, have been successful.”

In 2001 and 2003, Dr. Hen­schel led lion sur­veys on the Gabonese side of the Batéké land­scape, walk­ing sev­eral hun­dred kilo­me­tres in search of Africa’s biggest wild cat. Henschel’s team found almost no wildlife dur­ing the expe­di­tions, and cam­era traps set dur­ing the sur­veys pro­duced more pho­tos of Con­golese poach­ers than of animals.

Habi­tat loss and frag­men­ta­tion, poach­ing and ille­gal hunt­ing of the lion’s prey species con­tributed to the loss of lions in the region by the end of the last cen­tury. Until recently, lions were known to be present on the DRC side of the Batéké Plateau. Dis­pers­ing male lions can also eas­ily travel 300400 kilo­me­tres from their natal area.

The new sur­vey aims to deter­mine if the male lion filmed in Gabon is a soli­tary indi­vid­ual, which may have immi­grated from a rem­nant pop­u­la­tion in the Malebo region of the DRC, or if it is part of a new, breed­ing lion pop­u­la­tion in Gabon.

Sim­i­lar sur­vey efforts are addi­tion­ally war­ranted in pro­tected areas poten­tially har­bour­ing lions in neigh­bour­ing Congo and DRC. Sur­vey data con­firm­ing the num­ber and loca­tion of lions remain­ing in the unique forest-​savannah mosaics of the Batéké Land­scape will allow Pan­thera and part­ners to devise a strate­gic con­ser­va­tion strat­egy and ini­tia­tives for this unique and iso­lated population.

Learn more about Panthera’s lion con­ser­va­tion efforts car­ried out through Project Leonardo.



(Source: Pan­thera press release, 12.03.2015)


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