https://scienceblog.com/515090...parks-hunting-zones/



West African Big Cats Show No Preference Between National Parks, Hunting Zones

March 30, 2020


West African lions are a critically endangered subpopulation, with an estimated 400 remaining and strong evidence of ongoing declines.

About 90% of these lions live in West Africa’s largest protected area complex, the W-Arly-Pendjari. The WAP Complex includes five national parks and 14 hunting concessions across roughly 10,200 square miles in Burkina Faso, Niger and Benin.

Given that wildlife protection is one of the main purposes of a national park, you might expect West African lions to favor life inside park boundaries, rather than within the privately managed hunting concessions that surround the parks. After all, lions tend to shun people, and human pressures are higher in hunting areas than in the parks.

But a new University of Michigan-led camera survey of West African lions–believed to be the largest wildlife camera survey ever undertaken in West Africa and the first carried out within WAP Complex national parks and hunting concessions–found that West African lions show no statistically significant preference between the parks and trophy-hunting areas.

The findings, scheduled for publication March 30 in the Journal of Applied Ecology, have implications for conservation management of the remaining West African lions.

“Our results suggest habitat quality in national parks is inadequate, leading to a lack of preference in lions despite lower human pressures,” said doctoral student Kirby Mills of U-M’s Applied Wildlife Ecology (AWE) Lab, lead author of the study.

The researchers suspect that the lure of plentiful water, high-quality habitat and abundant prey on hunting properties outweigh the lions’ natural avoidance of humans. Revenues from trophy hunting pay for enhanced infrastructure such as irrigation systems and solar-powered pumps at watering holes, as well as added patrol staff.

At the same time, under-resourced national parks struggle to deal with degraded wildlife habitat, poachers, inadequate staffing and displacement of wildlife by livestock, which are permitted within the parks.

“We recommend prioritizing the reduction of habitat degradation in the parks and increasing water availability to increase suitable habitat for lions and their prey,” said Mills, who conducted the study for her master’s thesis at the U-M School for Environment and Sustainability. “But at the same time, we recognize that management interventions at a large scale require economic resources unavailable to park managers in WAP, an incongruity prolific throughout the range of African lions.”

The study’s senior author is Nyeema Harris, an assistant professor in the U-M Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and director of the AWE Lab. Harris designed the project and led the fieldwork with an international team that included government employees and students from Burkina Faso and Niger.

In the U-M-led study, 238 motion-activated digital cameras were deployed across 5,000 square miles in three WAP Complex national parks and 11 of the hunting concessions. The fieldwork was conducted from February through June in 2016, 2017 and 2018.

Some 1.7 million images were captured during that time, but West African lions triggered the shutter just 96 times, reflecting the critically endangered feline’s scarcity. The cameras were programmed to rapid-fire three to five frames when triggered, so the total number of lion images is 360.

One can presume that wild animals lack education and awareness.

When I was in BF hunting bu the pendajari river we saw lions on daily basis. I can assure u there was no shortage of lions on that area. A lioness with three cubs gave me the worst fright on my life. We were scouting the pendjari riverine and a lioness jumped 3 meters from me and run stopping at 20 meters. 2 seconds latter another one jumped and run stopping at 18 meters. My 500 NE at the cruiser and with me a 7 mm scoped with a 3x12x56

Predators go where the prey is. Pretty simple really...

That study ended in 2018. With the security situation for the past couple of years there are no hunting concessions, rangers or any government authority in that area whatsoever, except for Benin. So forget about protecting any wildlife let alone the lions.

We saw quite a few lion while I was in BF. I set up a game camera and captured 3 different lions in 4 days.

When I was in BF hunting bu the pendajari river we saw lions on daily basis. I can assure u there was no shortage of lions on that area. A lioness with three cubs gave me the worst fright on my life. We were scouting the pendjari riverine and a lioness jumped 3 meters from me and run stopping at 20 meters. 2 seconds latter another one jumped and run stopping at 18 meters. My 500 NE at the cruiser and with me a 7 mm scoped with a 3x12x56. To make things more interesting three little cubs crawled out of the weeds and climbed with mummy. Thanks God they decided to leave. A short walk to the cruiser and a 500 enabled me to continue the stalk.

I would say that the lion numbers in Burkina are dwindling rapidly....on the last hunt 2 years ago we saw 5 in total. VERY VERY SAD.

between the jihadists and the COVID now, I dont know what chance they have, maybe COVID will be their saviour!

The lion population has and continues to explode in Namibia's Kunene region. Between farmers along Etosha's southern border fence and the Conservancies to the west, they're culling 50 to 75 problem lion (that are recorded - there is a lot of SSS going on) and 8 - 10 (on average) trophy quality males a year - and the population continues to expand.