West African Lion Population May Drop By Half In 20 Years

A lion and her cubs at the Masai Mara Game Reserve in Kenya.

An ongoing problem is a lack of funding in many countries for lion conservation and management programs.

The population of African lions now stands around 20,000, however that number could drop by half come 2035, according to a new study. According to a new study, lion numbers in West, Central, and East Africa could shrink by half over the next two decades even as populations in southern Africa hold steady or swell. The study also shows that nearly all lion populations that historically numbered at least 500 individuals are in decline. All four countries spend significant money to enforce anti-poaching laws, and to house many lions on fenced-in reserves.

A lion in an umbrella acacia tree in Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park.

Lions in West Africa, like this one in Senegal’s Niokolo-Koba National Park, have been declining rapidly.

These results yield yet another scientific indication of how imperiled lions are, says Laly Lichtenfeld from the conservation organisation The African People & Wildlife Fund. Yet, she adds, there is little worldwide awareness or recognition that an African icon of the wild is at risk.

Dr Luke Hunter, President and Chief Conservation Officer of Panthera and a co-author, said: ‘We can not let progress in southern Africa lead us into complacency.

In Western and especially East Africa, in contrast, lions roam freely over the countryside as they have done for millennia.

After a series of analysis, researchers found sobering results.

Current estimates say that there are 20,000 lions left in the wild.

In East Africa they estimate there is a 37 per cent chance of lion numbers falling by 50 per cent in the same timescale.

The fate of the lion, one of Africa’s largest predators, may be even bleaker than we thought.

The spread of subsistence farming has encroached on the woodlands, open plains and thick bush where lions hunt and breed.

“You start pulling at the threads of these big complicated ecosystems, and they start unraveling”, Dr Hunter said.

Cecil the lion has become a powerful symbol for the plight of African lions since he was killed by a hunter in July 2015.

However, Laurence Frank, a lion conservation expert and associate research zoologist at the University of California – Berkeley who was not involved with the study, said the news is not that surprising to him. “If we don’t get past ideology and get down to what works, we’re going to lose the whole lot”.

After analyzing the survey data, the researchers found that populations in West, Central and East Africa are all declining, with West and Central Africa being of particular concern.

Second, poachers use wire snares and other traps to indiscriminately capture lions’ traditional prey species – everything from zebra to wildebeest – and then sell that bushmeat in commercial markets in bigger cities.

In June of 2015, the worldwide Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) listed the lion species as part of a “red list”, which features species facing potential survival threats over the long term.

The case has since sparked heated discussions on the ethics of big-game trophy hunting, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is now engaged in final considerations over a set of regulations that would not only list the lion as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act, but also require special permits for hunters to import lion trophies. A final decision on the listing must be made by Thursday.

Dr Packer said that in his view, the agency should list the African lion as endangered in all the countries outside of Southern Africa.

“As the science comes in”, she said, “what ultimately ends up as a final determination can look different from what we proposed”.