Humans, Lions Struggle To Co-Exist In Africa

A male lion in early 2014 walked shortly after being shot 

with tranquilizer darts, in order to fit a GPS-tracking 

collar, by a team led by the Kenya Wildlife Service in 

Nairobi National Park in Kenya. Photo: Ben Curtis/AP

The killing of a lion named Cecil in Zimbabwe has sparked world-wide outrage, but the largest threat to Africa’s big cats is a human-population boom that is shrinking the animal’s habitat and posing worrying questions about its future in the wild.

The wild African lion population has declined 42% over 21 years, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, to fewer than 20,000 lions. The African lion isn’t at immediate risk of disappearing, but conservationists say that if the trend continues, there may soon be few truly wild lions left on the continent.

Africa’s human population, meanwhile, is the fastest-growing in the world. In roughly the same period as the lion decline, the number of Africans has nearly doubled, to 1.2 billion people. The population will double again to 2.5 billion by 2050, according to the United Nations. At that point, one out of every four humans will live in Africa.

CLICK MAP to ENLARGE

Much discussion about Africa’s population boom has centered on increasingly crowded cities and migrants risking their lives for better opportunities on other continents. But the population surge is also stressing rural populations, who are subdividing land to fit more families and pushing into new areas previously occupied by lions and other wildlife.

More people has meant more forests being turned into pastures, more locals hunting the lion’s prey for their own meals and more herders killing lions rather than risk losing cattle.

Read the rest of the story HERE.

If you like what you see, please "Like" us on Facebook either here or here. Please follow us on Twitter here.