<
https://news.mongabay.com/2023/06/return-of-the-lions-large-protected-areas-in-africa-attract-apex-predator/>
"When Bernard van Lente, the Peace Parks Foundation project manager for Zinave
National Park, first arrived at the Mozambican conservation area in 2015, he
was struck by the silence. Zinave was stunningly beautiful, he recalls, with
huge trees and tall grasses, but it was deathly quiet — like a graveyard.
Zinave had been protected just before the outbreak of the Mozambican civil war
in 1977, and the ensuing chaos caused the new national park to collapse. Few
animal species survived as insects, birds, antelopes and top predators were
extinguished.
Things have changed dramatically since then, van Lente says. In 2021, a lion
appeared in Zinave for the first time in many decades, the crowning jewel of
renewed conservation efforts. But Zinave isn’t the only place lions are making
a comeback. Examples are emerging at protected areas across Africa, from
Mozambique to Chad, Zambia to Senegal.
The successes come at a critical time for conservation of the species. Lion
populations are declining in Africa, plummeting to around 20,000 in the past
five decades or so, says Kim Young-Overton, director of Panthera’s KAZA
program. According to the IUCN Red List,
Panthera leo is vulnerable, with the
global lion population shrinking by about 43% over the past 21 years (a
timespan covering just three lion generations, from 1993 to 2014)."
Via
Future Crunch:
https://futurecrunch.com/good-news-clean-energy-aids-big-cats-africa/
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
