GRAAFF-REINET NEWS - In a historic conservation milestone, Samara Private Game Reserve is reintroducing lions to the 27 000-hectare reserve located on the Plains of Camdeboo, where they last roamed over a century ago.
These lions will be the first free-roaming lions in 180 years to set foot back in this area, providing a much-needed conservation good news story for South Africa, whose poor track record of lion conservation has made news headlines in recent months.
The lion has declined in numbers by 43% over the past 24 years, with a current population estimated at between 20 000 and 30 000 individuals.
Lions face a number of threats. Conflict with humans leads to indiscriminate killing in areas like the Maasai Mara, whilst the bushmeat trade and habitat loss deplete the lions’ prey base. Further pressure on the species stems from the trade in lion bones destined for the Far East, where lion body parts masquerade as tiger bones in traditional medicine.
This illegal trade has fuelled South Africa’s infamous and unscrupulous 'canned lion' industry, in which lions are bred in captivity, often hand-reared, only to be shot as trophies in small enclosures for vast sums of money, their bones shipped off to Asia.
Despite the operators’ claims to the contrary, these ‘canned’ lions have no conservation value. The total number of wild lions in South Africa hovers around the 3 000 mark, a fraction of their former population.
There is thus a recognised need for wild lion populations within South Africa to be managed as part of a meta-population – a group of spatially-separated populations between which translocations can take place to ensure genetic diversity and to establish founder populations in areas where lions historically occurred but have since been wiped out. Samara Private Game Reserver provides one such sanctuary.
Read more on our sister publication, Graaff-Reinet Advertiser.
