e360 digest

05 Dec 2012: African Lion Populations
Plummet as Habitat Disappears, Study Says

More than two-thirds of Africa’s lions have disappeared over the last 50 years as the continent’s once-vast savannah regions have been lost to human development, a new study has found. Using

A New Strategy for Saving
The World’s Wild Big Cats

Populations of many of the world’s wild cats are plummeting. In a 2010 interview, Panthera’s Alan Rabinowitz explained how these magnificent creatures can be brought back from the brink.
READ THE e360 INTERVIEW

high-resolution satellite images from Google Earth and human population data, Duke University researchers calculated that about 75 percent of the original savannah has been lost since 1960, driven by land-use changes and deforestation. On the entire continent, they found, there are now just 67 remaining pockets of savannah suitable for lion habitat; only 10 of those areas would be considered lion “strongholds.” Overall, lion populations have dropped from 100,000 to roughly 32,000 in just five decades, according to the study published in the journal Biodiversity and Conservation. Continued habitat loss projected over the coming decades could put these populations at increased risk, the study said. “Lions are not going to disappear overnight,” Luke Hunter, director of the conservation group Panthera, told the Guardian. “But it is quite possible they will wind up in a couple of decades in as dire a straits as the tigers are today.”

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South African photojournalist Adam Welz documents the harrowing relocation of six white rhinos to a region that has lost all its rhinos to poaching. View the gallery.

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