MartinH Collection - Safari Ltd. Lion, Wildlife Wonders - video review

Lions have indeed undergone catastrophic declines since the commercialization of livestock ranching and agriculture in Africa, and are now only secure in a handful of and are on the brink of extinction in all but the largest and best-managed protected areas. Outside of these places, lions are in grave trouble. However, with funding, capacity improvement and strong policy, they could make a spectacular recovery and become important assets to rural economies. We will never know just how many lions there were, but measured trends in recent decades are alarming. Today, lions are extinct in 26 African countries, have vanished from over 95 percent of their historic range, and experts estimate that there are only about 20,000 left in the wild. Though lions still exist in 28 African countries and one Asian country, only six protected area complexes are known to support more than 1,000 lions. Thankfully there they remain safe for the foreseeable future, but in about 60 other protected areas the situation is far less