African lions are increasingly targeted for trade in their bones, skin, teeth and claws, according to a newly published study.
Without urgent action, the authors warn, poaching may pose an existential threat to Panthera leo, which once numbered in the hundreds of thousands across Africa. Today, about 25,000 are relegated to just 6% of their historic range. They’re classified as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List.
Poaching is especially rising in Mozambique and South Africa, said Peter Lindsey, the study’s lead author who directs the Wildlife Conservation Network’s Lion Recovery Fund.
Officials seized more than 300 kilograms (660 pounds) of lion parts in Maputo, Mozambique’s capital, in 2023. That year, an Endangered Wildlife Trust survey found just 122 lions in an area of South Africa’s Kruger National Park that had held 283 in 2005 — a drop of nearly 60%
Threats are pervasive. Prey is depleted by intensive bushmeat hunting. Lions are targeted for trophy hunting and poisoned in retaliatory killings by pastoralists when the cats hunt livestock.
However, deliberate, organized poaching for body parts now “represents an intensifying challenge to lion conservation, compounding other threats, many of which are also growing in intensity,” the authors wrote.
Luke Hunter, who heads the Wildlife Conservation Society’s big cats program, called trade-driven poaching “a defining threat to the future of Africa’s lions.”
Demand is growing. The study notes that cats are killed for their bones — used in tiger bone wine, an expensive traditional medicine coveted in China. Some 37 African countries use body parts in cultural, spiritual or traditional healing practices.
Though much remains unknown, the authors posed several theories for what’s driving trade, from local market demands to highly organized transnational networks.
Following restrictions on international trade in tigers, lion poaching spiked. Legal trade in lion parts from South African captive breeding operations helped feed the market, but the country stopped exports in 2019. This may have pushed trade “toward wild lions once the legal supply was restricted,” Lindsey told Mongabay.
Another possibility: International syndicates that traffic rhino horn and elephant ivory may be diversifying their business portfolios to target lions.
A central question for conservationists is what percentage of lions are deliberately killed for their parts versus “opportunistic poaching” — lions that died naturally or as a result of human-wildlife conflict and were later harvested?
Opportunistic poaching has historically been more common. But Lindsey said that may be shifting. “In some cases, lions are killed miles away from livestock and their parts harvested, suggesting that they are just being poached,” he said. “Also, we have had cases where poachers have indicated that they were sent to source parts to fulfill orders made.”
The review also highlights numerous ways to intervene: stronger enforcement, increased funding for protected areas, disruption of illegal trade — and, importantly, reducing demand.
“Urgent action is needed to acknowledge, understand, and address this crisis and safeguard the future of Africa’s lions,” the report concludes.
Banner image: A lion in South Africa. Image by Rhett A. Butler/ Mongabay.
This story first appeared on Mongabay
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and Mongabay, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.
