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| US Person: Zambia lions |
Each time
US Person travels to Africa he considers his safari a success if he is able to photograph and observe lions
(Panthera leo) in the wild. Each time you see a wild lion is the first time and the sublime of meeting a predator so beautiful and so
potentially deadly never fades. Lions have long disappeared from Europe and the Middle East. They once lived on the edge of ancient Babylon, if the Book of Daniel is an accurate indication. Lions are becoming less and less common on the African landscape. Perhaps as many as 100,000 lived free in Africa as late as the 1960s. Now, only
35,000 or fewer live in 67 distinct areas only ten of which are large and secure enough to be properly called strongholds. They only occupy about 20% of their former African range. Despite the precipitous decline in population, continued loss of habitat, and increased persecution by humans, lioins still have no protected status.
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| US Person: Kenya lions |
A recent controversial paper concluded that if lions were to survive in Africa, they needed to be put behind fences. This was a conclusion that upset many conservationists committed to preserving Africa's king of beasts in the wild because it seemed to be throwing in the towel on the lion's future. A newer study by a Montana State University researcher and others published in
Ecology Letters concludes what is needed is more money to preserve the African lions remaining habitat and protect the species from the effects of burgeoning human populations, not spending money on fencing it in. The study argues that low density populations over a landscape has greater conservation values than high density populations in smaller fenced reserves that are often intensively managed. Fences may reduce lion-human conflict, but come at a high environmental costs such as fragmentation of habitat, severing of animal migration routes, and genetic isolation. Fences require continual maintenance to be effective, and provide material for snare construction by illegal hunters as well.
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| US Person: Tanzania male |
Turning the rural areas of Africa into an outdoor zoo seems to
US Person to be a dystopian vision. African reserves in which lions live are dreadfully underfunded and therefore inadequately protected. Spending international funds on more effective law enforcement, public education about wildlife's rightful place in the world, improved conservation management including an end to trophy hunting, and international legal recognition of the lion's threatened survival is the best way to preserve Earth's greatest living terrestrial carnivore for future generations to encounter in the wild. The way forward is being shown by young Maasai men who once killed lions as a rite of passage--
olamayio. Now they are trained and paid to be
lion guardians at Amboseli National Park, Kenya, a position of prestige within the community. The guardians track lions and prevent livestock attacks. Since 2007 they have succeeded in decreasing the killing of lions. Most lions are killed by other lions for their society is fierce as well as cooperative, and that is the way it should be.
