The majority of African lion populations have been cut in half over the past 20 years, and the at-risk big cats likely face yet another 50 percent reduction over the next two decades, according to research published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Luke Hunter, president of the conservation group Panthera and one of the new study’s authors, reviewed data from 47 of the 67 African lion populations, tracking more than 8,200 lions in all, the New York Times reported on Monday. They found significant reductions in West and Central African populations, and that lions had all but vanished from two parks.
Their population models found that there’s a 67 percent chance of a 50 percent decline in West and Central African populations by 2035, and a 37 percent chance that East African big cats will also experience a similar decline. Some smaller populations, Hunter told Scientific American, are all but doomed to disappear because, as he put it, “the human pressure is too great.”
The bushmeat trade in the region, he explained, has left lions without access to their traditional prey, forcing them to either starve or turn to livestock for sustenance. However, by doing so the big cats open themselves up to retaliatory killings by locals looking to protect their farms.
How can we prevent this?
Hunter’s group and others like it reportedly have had some success reducing retaliatory deaths by building lion-proof corrals where livestock could be left overnight, Scientific American said. This also reduced such lion deaths in one part of Namibia from 18 in 2013 to one in 2014, and none of the big cats have been killed by farmers in that region so far this year, Hunter said.
The study authors also point toward the successful measures utilized by the southern countries of Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe, where most lion populations either stayed the same or actually increased over the same time region in most areas. Experts attribute this trend to a higher quantity of reserves and a much lower density of humans, the New York Times noted.
In their study, the authors wrote that they recommended separate regional assessments of lions in the area by the World Conservation Union (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species. Since the big cats are already recognized as critically endangered in West Africa, they said that, based on these findings, they should also be listed as regionally endangered in Central and East Africa.
“These findings clearly indicate that the decline of lions can be halted, and indeed reversed as in southern Africa,” lead author Hans Bauer of the UK’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit said in a statement. “Unfortunately, lion conservation is not happening at larger scales,” a trend which could ultimately cause the creatures to “cease to exist in many countries” if not reversed.
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Feature Image: Thinkstock
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