Kenya lions to be extinct within 10 years
By Shanta Barley
Kenya has been losing 100 lions a year for the past seven years, leaving the country with just 2000 of its famous big cats, says the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) – which concludes the country could have no wild lions at all in 20 years. Conservationists have blamed habitat destruction, disease and conflict with humans for the population collapse. But Laurence Frank, a wildlife biologist at cat conservation group Panthera, thinks the KWS estimate is optimistic. “Lions are disappearing so fast from Kenya, as well as the rest of Africa, that I think they will disappear [from Kenya] in less than 10 years if action is not taken very quickly,” says Frank, who runs several lion conservation projects in the country. The IUCN suggests that large lion populations of 50 to 100 prides are necessary to conserve genetic diversity and avoid inbreeding.
Leo horror scope Frank says that the decline of the big cats is due to the inexorable growth in human population and consequent conflict with people over livestock, rather than disease. “Vast areas of Kenyan rangelands that held lions 20 years ago are now devoid of nearly all wildlife,” Frank says. “Predators have been poisoned and speared, herbivores have been snared for meat, and the rangelands themselves have been destroyed by massive overgrazing by domestic stock.” According to Nicholas Oguge, who works for environmental charity Earthwatch Institute in northern Kenya, people lace cattle corpses with insecticide in order to poison entire prides. This ends up killing hyenas and birds of prey too. “In Kenya, the biggest threat to lion conservation lies outside protected areas,” says Oguge. “This is because of increasing cases of poisoning by communities due to livestock loss through carnivore depredation. Typically, the communities use the insecticide Furadan by applying it on livestock carcasses.” …
