Lions Approach Extinction in West Africa
New study paints dire picture and outlines conservation needs.
Lions may soon disappear entirely from West Africa unless conservation efforts improve, a new study predicts.
The study, published January 8 in the peer-reviewed scientific journal PLOS ONE, presents "sobering results" of a survey that took six years and covered 11 countries.
Lions once ranged from Senegal to Nigeria, a distance of more than 1,500 miles. The new survey found an estimated total of only 250 adult lions occupying less than one percent of that historic range. The lions form four isolated populations: one in Senegal; two in Nigeria; and a fourth on the borders of Benin, Niger, and Burkina Faso. Only that last population has more than 50 lions.
"It was really not known that the status of the lion was
