If you truly want to go and see and photograph Lions in the wild, then it’s not that hard – go to one of the more spectacular national parks in East or Southern Africa and you can be guaranteed on seeing lions within 24 hours. Your first sighting is typically a pride lying around in the shade, without a care in the world, most of them will probably be asleep since that is what lions do most of the time. A lioness typically sleeps for about 18 hours a day and the males spend even more time in slumber-land. The animals behave as if they don’t seem to have a care in the world, life appears easy and relaxed and when they get hungry, they can just go off and grab some passing wildebeest for their next meal. In reality, life is not that easy for free living lion populations. A group of scientists led by Hans Bauer from the University of Oxford and Craig Packer from University of Minnesota have been looking at the spatial variation in the state of lion populations and have become increasingly concerned about those in west and central Africa (Figure 1).
The bottom line is that lions are indeed in trouble – overall the lion population in Africa has fallen by 82% over the past 100 years with current numbers estimated at between 23,000 and 32,000 with by far and away the majority of lions restricted to protected areas such as national parks. About 6,000 of these lions are in areas where they are likely to be wiped out in just a few years. In a relatively short time, we could see lion populations much smaller than they were previously and restricted to just a few national parks. This article explores the current knowledge about lion populations and looks to see if the parks that carry reasonable lion numbers could sustain lions in the wild.