Wild lions require huge landscapes to thrive and once lions covered vast areas of Africa into the Middle East and parts of Asia. Due to habitat fragmentation caused by growing agricultural practices and other changes of land use as well as hunting and poaching their populations have dwindled to small isolated pockets spread throughout the African continent. In these last strongholds, lion populations are often surrounded by community areas, making it harder for lions to disperse. This can in extreme circumstances cause inbreeding which can affect the genetic health of populations over the course of a few generations. Their complex social structure as well requires a lot of space which often now edges into these areas where they may not be tolerated. Nowadays their historic ranges are now also shared by people and livestock. Where lions and people overlap, lions impose significant costs for communities, mainly through attacks on livestock, which are vital economic and cultural assets for the local people. Constant attacks and issues can cause conflict to arise which can ultimately lead to lions and other large carnivores such as leopards and hyenas being killed.

 

Much conservation work in recent times is now based about minimising these potential risks but giving more of an economic and cultural benefit to the presence of these lions rather than them being seen simply as a persistent problem causing personal and community losses. Loss caused by retaliatory killings has grown in recent years as the pressures between rapidly growing human populations has met with lions populations struggling to stay within the set park boundaries and often a loss of wild prey species. These retaliatory killings often occur by poisoning via a carcass, not only does this have an adverse affect on the lion population but can also affect any other scavenging species that may feed from it including jackals and vultures. Trying to increase the tolerance of local people is key to the long term survival of lions in the wild, this can be achieved through better communication with conservation organisations, involvement in these programmes either through benefit schemes or even employment and to ensure that the local people benefit from the presence of lions in their areas. This project aims to support our conservation partners to achieve this objective.