The End of the Road? The Truth about Lions

The most iconic of all the big cats.

Lions have attracted our attention throughout history.

I'm Jonathan Scott and for me,

the lion's the main reason I came to Africa over three decades ago.

Human beings have painted, sculpted and photographed this big cat

perhaps more than any other.

Across the world and across our cultures, we've recorded the lion's story in considerable detail.

But, for how much longer can their story continue?

With perhaps as few as 25,000 lions left in Africa,

could this be the final chapter?

For over 30 years, the world's leading lion scientist Craig Packer

has headed the Serengeti Lion Project.

And he has a stark warning.

The lion is in trouble.

In the last dozen years, the lion population has declined anywhere between 20 and 50%.

We're reaching a threshold where we might pass the point of no return.

The lion is the uniquely social cat.

The only one to live in prides.

I want to understand what role it could be playing in their decline.

Using the latest scientific research and by watching my pride's trials and tribulations,

I want to reveal The Truth About Lions.

From a balloon, the sight of Kenya's world-famous Maasai Mara Game Reserve is breathtaking.

And it's just the northern tip of a vast, wild ecosystem

of 25,000 square kilometres

stretching all the way south into Serengeti National Park.

I've spent much of my adult life here,

recording the fascinating stories of its lions, leopards and cheetahs.

One area in particular has always stood out for me as a hot-spot for wildlife -

the Musiara Marsh.

It's home to a family of lions I've come to know intimately...

the Marsh pride.

The fact that I've been able to watch this pride for so long

is witness to what a great territory they have within this landscape

and is the reason for their continued success,

and right now we've got hundreds of thousands of wildebeest

streaming into the area,

so it's just an amazing place to be a lion.

September.

The time for the 28 members of the Marsh pride to feast.

Their tolerance of human observers allows us to film them

even under the cover of darkness.

This is a sight that can only be seen with lions.

A whole family of related animals,

all part of the same pride all feeding together.

This family living, this social way of life,

makes lions the most conspicuous, the most often seen,

of all the world's big cats.

Far more regularly sighted than the traditionally secretive leopard.

Yet there are, perhaps, 20 times as many wild leopards left on Earth as there are lions.

The lion's familiarity masks a dark truth.

A truth brought home to me when I met the world's foremost lion scientist Craig Packer

in Tanzania, by a rather unusual slide-show.

This is amongst the oldest art in the world.

Projected on a rock, these slides, of 35,000-year-old cave paintings

from Southern France, depict lions in incredible detail

and show that humans have had a surprisingly close relationship

with this particular cat for millennia.

When I first saw these paintings I was profoundly moved.

It gave me chills.

And to see these paintings by fellow lionologists from 35,000 years ago

made me realise that maybe we're not so eccentric

watching these animals, that this is something that's very deep in our nature.

But the truth they reveal is just how widespread lions once were.

The lion had a representation across Europe.

It went across Alaska, across Asia.

At one point the lion was the most widely-distributed mammal across the entire planet.

Today, lions are a species in frightening decline,

restricted now almost exclusively to Africa.

Craig and his team at the Serengeti Lion Project have spent

over 30 years investigating the lion,

gaining a unique scientific insight into its world.

A world which Craig is only too aware is shrinking.

If you look at where the last remaining large populations of

lions are found, Kruger Park in South Africa, the Okavango in Botswana,

and then four places here in Tanzania

and between those half-dozen populations, there's probably half,

at least, maybe more, of all the lions left in Africa.

The Marsh pride, my lions, are part of one of these populations -

the Serengeti Mara population.

To understand the risks they face and the causes of the lion's decline

I need to see life from a lion's perspective.

The unique perspective of the only social-living cat.

Lions need to be together.

The lion's historic success shows that pride-living has been a good strategy.

Now, through watching the Marsh pride with fresh eyes

and armed with Craig's wider research,

I want to discover if the lion's sociality

may be contributing to its downfall.

Having studied them closely for many years, I know them all as individuals.

Right now the pride consists of a core of adult females -

White-Eye, Bibi and Lispy.

There's some new arrivals who,

at just three months old, are the pride's future.

And finally the two pride males,

who have been with this pride for almost three years.

But whose fortunes, right now, differ widely.

Romeo is about nine or ten years old. He's a male in his prime.

Marking ownership of the territory

and obviously showing interest towards in-season females.

Looking to father more offspring.

His buddy, the other pride male, is Clawed...

..who at 12 years old is showing his age.

At best, Clawed could perhaps reach 14 years old.

But that's looking increasingly unlikely.

He's obviously in poor condition.

His teeth are worn down

and he's struggling to get enough food at times.

Yet, without him, Romeo would find it almost impossible

to hold onto the pride and raise any more offspring.

In the wild, males die much younger than females,

mostly through violent encounters with other males -

males who want to take over their territory.

Clawed is at risk,

even from the lion's own prey.

Buffalo are big animals.

At almost 700 kilos, they're over three times the weight of a lion.

Lions and buffalo are mortal enemies and buffalo will actively chase lions.

If they discover cubs, or a lion is unable to get out of the way,

they'll kill them.

The pride begin to move away, to protect the cubs.

But, old and weak, Clawed has to try a different tactic.

Hide and seek initially works well.

But the buffalo's keen sense of smell eventually prevails.

Clawed has a bad leg,

but still manages to muster up enough energy to run for his life.

He only just manages to reach safety in time.

Hopefully, the buffalo will lose interest.

In situations like this, the pride focus on keeping the cubs safe.

Adult lions must fend for themselves,

and there's little chance the others will come to Clawed's help.

Eventually Clawed is able to rejoin the pride.

He's had a lucky escape.

I've seen lions killed by buffalo,

indeed, many lions die as a result of a violent attack.

Sometimes by buffalo, but more often at the jaws of other lions.

Clawed is clearly vulnerable not just to attack,

but also from a more silent threat.

The threat of disease.

Most lions die a violent death, but it's very easy to forget the role that disease can play.

And of course the danger in a social animal such as this

is that it could spread amongst the whole group.

Clawed's poor condition

makes him potentially the most vulnerable to disease.

Disease is something I've seen affect individual lion prides like the Marsh pride.

But just how dramatically it can affect whole populations

is something Craig had a chance to discover in 1994.

At the beginning of 1994, various people saw lions suddenly

with really strange disease symptoms that had never been seen before.

The most famous case was a male who had convulsions,

like a horrible, horrible seizure.

Turned out that this animal was infected with canine distemper

and it infected about 95% of the lions within the Serengeti.

It devastated prides.

And was obviously a risk to the whole lion population.

Canine distemper virus is a disease of the nervous system.

It more usually affects domestic dogs

and is closely related to measles in humans.

But it had been spread into the park by hyenas who regularly move between

the surrounding rural villages and the park's centre.

The huge lion deaths in 1994 were followed by a similar event in 2001.

Initially, it seemed canine distemper virus or CDV was to blame.

But the project had been keeping blood samples for a number of years, which when analysed

showed that there had been other outbreaks of CDV that didn't result in any lions dying.

We've had seven distemper outbreaks over the last 20 years now

and only two have had that high degree of mortality.

There was something else going on.

The team looked again at the two outbreaks that had

resulted in so many lion deaths and noticed something in common.

They both occurred at the end of a severe drought.

The herbivores like wildebeest and buffalo

struggled to find enough to eat and were themselves weakened by disease.

The lions suddenly had what seemed like a free lunch

with this excess of buffalo that were sick and very easy to catch.

But there's no such thing as a free lunch.

The buffalo, the lions' preferred prey,

had many more ticks than usual and those ticks spread

from the dying buffalo to the lions

carrying a dangerous malaria-like parasite called babesia.

Now, babesia in itself is something the lions can ordinarily handle,

but this was an exceptional dose of babesia, combined with distemper

and the distemper is like a short, sharp bout of AIDS.

They're immuno-suppressed, allowing the babesia to overwhelm them and that's actually what killed them.

Buffalo are the lion's preferred prey precisely because they're large

and can feed a whole pride.

But in this instance,

being social exposed whole prides to disease at once.

The disease outbreak had a catastrophic effect on the lion population.

We saw hundreds of losses in the Serengeti, and we saw losses here

in the Mara in the Marsh pride.

But what was interesting was, it didn't take that long for the lion population to bounce back again.

In fact, it only took four years to recover to pre-disease levels.

This is the flip-side to being social.

Given the right habitat, lion prides breed very successfully and rapidly.

But more frequent droughts in the future

could trigger more regular outbreaks of disease

and might not allow lion prides time to recover,

potentially decimating an otherwise healthy lion population.

The role of climate change in affecting lion numbers

shouldn't be underestimated.

The impact of climate change is likely to increase in these kind of areas.

We'll see more droughts and we'll see more floods

and that is likely to act as a trigger for these outbreaks of epidemic diseases.

Now another perhaps surprising way in which climate change can impact

on the lion population, is in the way they look.

Male lions have a striking feature

that marks them out from lionesses and all other big cats.

The mane.

It develops during puberty and attains its full glory

just as the male reaches his reproductive prime.

But it carries a heavy price tag.

All mammals need to maintain a constant body temperature

regardless of their surroundings.

But male lions like Clawed and Romeo have a problem.

Their big, bushy manes are like a jumper, one they can't take off.

Viewed through a thermal camera, the mane's contrasting colour

shows how much warmer the mane is than the rest of the lion.

In the hottest parts of Africa, this burden is simply too much to bear.

And the lions here are different.

Craig's data clearly shows that male lions growing up in hotter habitats

tend to grow shorter, thinner and lighter manes

than those growing up in cooler climes.

So climate change could eventually alter the lion's look.

But ultimately, does it matter what colour the mane is?

And, if they're such a burden, why grow a mane in the first place?

Craig and his team had a hunch

that the mane might have a profound meaning in lions' social lives.

To set about decoding what that meaning might be,

they enlisted a somewhat surprising research tool.

We had these dummies constructed and shipped out here,

where we could present alternatives to the lions.

So we'd find a wild lion, we'd set out two dummies at a time, with contrasting manes.

One might be dark, one would be light, or one would be short and one would be long.

OK, Fabio - you're on!

And the females clearly preferred the darker manes.

It turns out that black-maned males,

they're actually superior males.

They have higher testosterone levels, they live longer,

they're more likely to survive from being wounded

and their cubs have much better survival.

So a female making a choice would do much better

to have her children fathered by one of the black-maned males.

The mane, it turns out, plays a huge part in lion society.

The ability to grow a big, dark mane is a sign of fitness.

It's an honest signal that you're strong enough to carry the burden

of all that extra heat stress - it shows you have good genes.

And that's why, in nine out of ten cases, lionesses prefer dark-maned males.

In the Marsh pride, Romeo is the female's favourite right now

with his dark, luxuriant mane.

But his mane won't always look so grand.

The aging Clawed,

two years older than Romeo, has a less impressive mane.

But right now, with plenty of food available,

he's still at least managing to maintain a reasonable head of hair.

The females don't take too much notice,

but it's still a powerful signal to other males.

The mane allows rival males to quickly assess each other's strengths and avoid direct conflict.

Fights between males often lead to injury and are best avoided.

Just the sight of Romeo and Clawed together

will be a powerful deterrent

to any new males lurking on the edges of Marsh pride territory.

There's no doubt that the mane plays a significant role in lion society.

But the very thing that makes them attractive to females

and wards off other males also puts them at risk.

In the last century, tens of thousands of lions were killed by big-game hunters.

And that had an effect on what sorts of lions were being seen.

When I first arrived in the Mara in the 1970s, it was rare to see those big black-maned lions

such as Clawed and Romeo, who are so essential to maintaining the integrity of a pride's territory.

But in 1977, the Kenyan government decided to ban all trophy-hunting and the sale of wildlife products.

When they did that, the male lion population began to recover again.

But trophy-hunting still continues in many parts of Africa today, as shown in this simulation.

In Tanzania, we're the biggest country for lion trophy-hunting in all of Africa,

and the hunters have access to more than seven times as much land as the national parks.

This vast amount of hunting land often surrounds protected areas,

the parks, and acts as a buffer zone between people and wildlife.

It may seem ironic, but some believe trophy-hunting of lions could play an important role

in protecting their habitat and ultimately, them as a species.

The human population is growing at 4% annually in Tanzania,

so there's increasing pressure to convert the land to agriculture

and human settlement. Ultimately, it all comes down to money.

There are many areas in Africa that will never be attractive

to photo tourism, that do provide lion habitat.

Trophy-hunting could help justify that set aside, so that the land

is not converted to agriculture. It's not lost to wildlife.

But perhaps most important is to recognise the limited amount of revenue

that so far has been collected from trophy-hunting.

Shooting a lion is surprisingly inexpensive.

For North American hunters who might want to shoot big-horned sheep in certain areas of the US,

they might pay over a 100,000 for the opportunity.

Lions, as a species, are far less common than big-horned sheep

and yet a client can go out and get a licence to shoot a lion

for less than 10,000.

In Tanzania, tourism to National Parks generates four times more revenue than hunting.

There's a real danger that if areas set aside for hunting

can't generate enough income, they'll be converted to human settlement.

For trophy-hunting of lions to be an effective conservation tool,

it first needs to generate vastly more income than it does currently.

GUNSHOT

Secondly, the choice of lion to kill is critical.

An adult male with a large impressive mane

is the most sought-after trophy, like those of Clawed and Romeo.

It may seem that hunting a lion affects just that one animal.

But the consequences are much more significant.

We have to keep in mind that the lion does have a very complex social system.

Unlike most trophy species

where the male only meets the female once for mating,

and has nothing to do with tending to the offspring,

the pride male is a devoted father.

He needs to continue to be around until his young are safely raised.

So if a hunter comes in and removes an adult male from a pride,

he'll render his offspring and the rest of the pride vulnerable

to a take over by a new set of males.

If the new males are coming into a pride while there's still dependent young,

from the preceding set of males, all hell breaks loose.

If for instance, Clawed and Romeo were killed now,

new males would kill all cubs under nine months old

to bring the females back into season and give themselves a chance

of raising their own offspring.

The mothers of the older cubs would move away to protect them

and the pride would be fractured.

Regularly removing pride males destroys the stability

required to successfully raise the next generation.

The hunting industry has to be a fair player and recognise

that past practices have been inadequate and it's time for careful oversight,

this is a very rare and precious species

that must be hunted in a very careful and sustainable manner.

The impact of trophy-hunting can be minimised.

First, it's important to establish the age of the male lion to be shot.

Something hunters could do by looking closely at their quarry.

I've been keeping records on the Marsh pride for so long,

and know the nine sub-adults with the pride are about three years old.

The reason I know that is that I saw them as young cubs

when they emerged from the den at about two months old.

But if I didn't know how old they were, I could use a method developed by Craig and his team

which relies on the fact that young lions,

such sub-adults have pink noses till they're four,

but after that time, and you can just see it here.

This is a five-year-old lion, black pigment begins to cover the nose.

So his nose is half-black, half-pink - five years old.

If you look at this male, a previous pride male, his nose is black.

He's nearer ten years old and you can see his teeth are worn.

So, if you don't know the age of a lion, using Craig's method,

you can get a pretty good estimate.

The age of a lion is crucial.

On average, male lions are four years old when they take over a pride

and remain in control for roughly two years before being evicted by younger rivals.

Time enough to raise just one group of young.

Hunting male lions only over six years of age minimises the risk

of killing males before they've had a chance to breed.

Or whilst they're a father to young, dependant cubs.

Clawed and Romeo are both significantly older than six.

In their time in charge, they've already fathered a group of nine three-year-old lions -

who are now nearly fully grown - as well as this second group of younger cubs.

The impact of one, or both of our males demise

would consign the youngest cubs to a violent death by incoming males.

It would be tragic, but Clawed and Romeo have already assured their genetic success

in the raising of their first brood.

Clawed and Romeo have been pride males here

for longer than any previous males I've recorded.

They are literally living on borrowed time.

New, younger, males are lurking on the edges of Marsh pride territory

waiting for an opportunity to challenge the holders.

HE BELLOWS

Males outside a pride normally don't roar,

to avoid unnecessary attention.

HE BELLOWS

But these two youngsters clearly consider the Marsh pride's territory is theirs for the taking!

Much of what's happening with the Marsh pride right now is occurring after dark.

One of the classic sounds of the African night is the sound of lions roaring.

LIONS ROAR

SNARLING ROARS

HE ROARS

The lion's roar advertises their ownership of a territory.

HE ROARS

Work by the Serengeti Lion Project showed that, as a pride roars,

other lions hearing it can count how many lions are calling.

The project also showed that the roar is directly related to body size.

Being up to 50% larger than females,

the males' roar is louder and deeper than the lionesses'.

Though Clawed is a shadow of his former self, his continuing ability to roar with the pride

is helping to keep potential invaders at bay - for now.

HE ROARS

Life for all lions is a numbers game.

Outnumbering the opposition is key to success.

When there's just one male voice left in the Marsh pride,

it will be noticed by other males in the area

and the odds will switch in their favour.

The Marsh pride's social life is like a feline soap opera.

But it's clear that, for lions, their unique social lifestyle

makes for unique pressures from factors such as disease outbreaks and trophy-hunting.

Both have affected the Marsh pride in the past and could do again.

But, perhaps the biggest pressure on lion prides comes from the landscape in which they live.

The landscape which Craig and his team have shown to be crucial to the evolution of the pride.

By looking at the breeding success of known prides,

the team discovered that those holding territories

centred around river confluences

were the largest and most successful.

Territories that contain permanent water, shade and cover in which to raise cubs.

Only powerful prides were able to defend these much sought-after territories

from other lions and so ensure their long-term genetic success.

It stands to reason then, that changes to the very driving force

behind the evolution of lion prides would have a huge effect on their population.

And there's no doubt the lion's landscape has changed dramatically in recent years.

A striking example affects the lions of Tarangire National Park in Tanzania.

The park covers nearly 1,000 square miles,

bigger than the whole of the Mara.

But unlike the Maasai Mara, which is connected to the vast Serengeti, Tarangire is isolated.

A real problem for the park's population of approximately 200 lions.

The park and the surrounding area is home to the Tarangire Lion Project

and it's run by Bernard Kissui.

One of Tanzania's most respected ecologists,

he's noticed a big change in the landscape over the years.

Traditionally here the indigenous people have always been the Maasai,

and they are keeping livestock,

but increasingly also we are seeing a slow change

from pure livestock-keeping, pastoralism, to agro-pastoralism.

So more and more people now need to you know keep some livestock but also, grow some crops.

The increase in farmland outside the park is reducing the space for both lions and their natural prey.

The park boundaries were drawn up in 1970, but over the course of Bernard's study

he's discovered that about three quarters of the lions in the park

actually leave its protection regularly throughout the year.

And that brings them into danger.

Lions go out, attack livestock, people retaliate.

You know, they go out, find out where the lion is and kill it.

Over the years, we have been collecting this information

and you'll be surprised to hear

more than 30 lions sometimes get killed every year.

And that has got huge implications to the population.

With a total population of just 200 lions in the park,

having 30 of them killed in retaliation for livestock predation annually is significant.

To stand even the remotest chance of maintaining lions in the park,

Bernard had to win over the local community.

THEY CONVERSE IN SWAHILI

'We are now trying to convince the pastoralists keeping livestock to adopt new ways.

'So, one of the things we're actually testing, is the use of chain-link fences.'

Traditional cattle stockades, or "bomas" are, more usually constructed from thorn bushes

but the chain-link fences offer better protection.

We've been working on this particular strategy for about now two or three years.

We have almost 60 bomas right now that have been enforced and we've been monitoring them.

Where chain-link fencing has been installed,

there's been no further instances of lions taking cattle.

And hence the motivation for retaliation is lower.

But changes to the landscape outside the park affect the lion population on a bigger scale.

Reducing prime lion habitat and reducing the number of lions potentially to zero.

Just as in Tarangire,

for the Marsh pride, the changes outside the Mara reserve

could have an effect on their success as a pride.

The Marsh lions are a boundary pride, as I'd put it, because if you look at my map here you can see

that the reserve boundary cuts through the top of their territory and that boundary

is very close to here, it's just up the top there I can see cattle and Maasai just beyond it.

The boundary to the Mara, like most national parks or reserves in Africa, isn't marked by fences

and the area beyond it has changed dramatically in my time watching this pride.

The Maasai population here has grown enormously in the last 30 years.

But, unlike in Tarangire,

the Marsh pride are bordered on just one side by an increasing human population.

The Mara reserve is part of the much more extensive Serengeti Mara system.

And this is critical.

It's one of the six large areas that Craig Packer believes might be the last stronghold of the lion.

It's so large that the migration of two million wildebeest

can be completed entirely within it.

And the migration brings other animals too.

Nomadic male lions in search of their own pride follow the herds.

Lions that could bring new diseases.

Or in taking over an existing pride, cause the death of young cubs.

For now, the Marsh males still control their territory.

And, at least in Romeo's case, still actively attempting to sire new offspring.

Clawed, in his poor condition, can only watch from a distance.

For male lions life is a race against the inevitable.

Their time as a pride male is limited.

And they need to make hay while the sun shines.

They will, ultimately, be challenged.

Challenged by new males from far and wide.

The consequences of new males taking over a pride can be catastrophic in the short-term.

But it's a vital part of a healthy lion population, mixing the gene pool.

The situation without an influx of new males is far worse in the long-term.

It's a situation faced by the lions of Tanzania's Ngorongoro Crater.

The area for which Craig and his team have the most lion data.

I travelled with Craig into this vast volcanic caldera.

It's one of the lion hot-spots of East Africa.

The prey here is resident all year round

and this natural cauldron once supported the highest density of lions anywhere in Africa.

But not any more.

It's a direct result of the lack of new males

able to enter the crater from areas outside.

In 1959, there were 8,000 people that lived in the Ngorongoro

conservation area and now there are 60,000.

There's just so many Maasai in close proximity around the wall

that there's a barrier to migration.

Now we have had a series of disease outbreaks the last few years,

the lions seem more susceptible to disease than before,

and ordinarily we'd expect males to come in to help repopulate. No longer.

This lack of new males has led to a reduction in genetic diversity

amongst the lion population on the Crater floor.

A result of narrow inbreeding between the lions that remain.

So who are we looking at here?

Well, this female comes from the Mungi pride.

The male comes from the other side of the Crater floor

and even though he didn't know her growing up

they do have many links on their family tree,

so they're about as closely related as half-siblings.

But as lions to look at the effect of this inbreeding isn't immediately obvious.

When I look at these lions,

I'm looking at healthy, vigorous animals,

I mean that's a big male, the female looks in great shape,

so really, how much impact is inbreeding having on these lions?

They look great, but they get such a high level of nutrition

down here, there's always food available for them.

The things that are harming them are all happening inside their bodies.

We're seeing signs, and have seen for some time,

of reduced fertility in the males, they have higher levels

of sperm abnormality, they have lower testosterone

and their immune systems seem to be compromised now.

This population seems to be exceptionally sensitive to infectious disease.

From a high of 120 lions in the 1980s,

the Crater population today numbers less than 60.

Ngorongoro reveals the problems for lions in small populations.

If lions are to survive here they'll need human management,

introducing new lions with new genes.

But this is difficult - lion prides don't tolerate outsiders.

The financial cost is large and only for small, valuable populations

like the Crater, where tourists expect to see lions

will it be cost-effective to manage so intensively.

The Marsh pride are, for now,

thankfully still part of a much larger, natural, lion population.

That of the Mara Serengeti system -

perhaps the world's most famous African reserves.

This journey has shown me how fortunate I've been

in being able to watch this one pride for so many years.

From my own experience,

their immediate future can almost be predicted.

As the wildebeest migration heads south, there'll be less prey,

resulting in more competition within the pride for food.

Clawed is likely to lose out and his condition will worsen.

But his, and buddy Romeo's success has already been assured

in the form of their nine almost fully-grown offspring.

New males in the area will challenge this ageing pair

and ultimately win.

Just how soon they do

will decide the fate of the youngest cubs in the pride.

A new chapter in the Marsh pride's story will begin.

But the lion's story as a whole may be closer to an end

than I'd previously imagined.

I think the animal is close to being restricted

to maybe three or four places.

The Serengeti is so famous,

it's hard to believe that anyone will let that die,

parts of the Selous can be protected,

Kruger National Park in South Africa is fenced.

The Okavango is in the middle of a desert,

so those four areas maybe the sole repository of healthy lions

in the 22nd century.

It's a stark situation for an animal whose success once rivalled our own -

the seconnd most widespread land mammal on Earth.

For lions, social living has made them especially vulnerable

to disease spread from our domestic animals.

Hunting individual male lions for trophies can all too easily

have devastating impacts on entire prides.

GUNSHOT ECHOES

And as territory is key to the lion's social way of life,

it's becoming obvious that healthy lion populations

can only exist where large areas of suitable habitat can be found.

Habitat that, throughout our long association with the lion,

has also been coveted by humans.

But, living with this large, dangerous, social predator

has been difficult and still is.

Everybody hates lions.

Pastoralists hate lions, people in man-eating areas

would just as soon there were never any more lions ever again.

And I often find it surprising that we somehow expect Africa

to bear the brunt of living with a really difficult species.

Seems to me that's the world's responsibility.

If the lion was lost, that's something that belongs to all of us,

it's part of our whole history.

There's a big irony here.

The lion's uniquely social way of life, which to me makes them

so fascinating, evolved as a defence against others of their own kind.

But the truth about lions is that their biggest threat is no longer other lions...

it's us.

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