Catfolk Species Accounts: African lion (Panthera leo)

Population Status
Global: Category 3(A)
Regional: Category 2(A)
IUCN: Not Listed
There are no sound estimates of the total number of lions in Africa: guestimates range from 30,000 to 100,000 (Stuart 1991, P. Jackson pers. comm.). East and Southern Africa are home to the majority of the continent’s lions; in West Africa, numbers have greatly declined. Throughout most of Africa, lions are becoming increasingly rare outside protected areas (Figure 4).
The countries in which lions are still relatively widespread are Botswana, Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Zaire and Zambia. Status in Angola, Mozambique, Sudan and Somalia is difficult to determine because of these countries’ long history of civil unrest; in Angola lions are believed to be widespread but rare (Anstey 1992), and in Somalia they are patchily distributed, and largely restricted to the south (Fagotto 1985, A. Simonetta in litt. 1992).
Populations are well-defined, but isolated and centered on protected areas, in the following Southern African countries: Namibia (Etosha NP 300; north-eastern region 130-200; Caprivi Strip 40-60; north-western region 35-40 [H. Berry, P. Stander in litt. 1991]) and Zimbabwe (Hwange National Park complex 500; Gonarezhou National Park complex 200; Zambezi Valley and Sebungwe complexes 300 [Stuart and Wilson 1988]).
Lions are more sparsely distributed in Benin, Burkina Faso, northern Cameroon, southern Chad, southern Congo, northern Ivory Coast, northern Ghana, northern Guinea, eastern Guinea Bissau, southern Mali, northern Nigeria, and Uganda. Populations are essentially restricted to protected areas only in Burundi, Malawi, Niger, Rwanda, Senegal and South Africa. Lions are believed to be extinct or practically so in Djibouti, Gabon (Franceville area), Lesotho, Mauritania, Swaziland, and Togo (Limoges 1989, Stuart 1991; E. Abe, M. Agnanga, T. Anada, A. Blom, P. Chardonnet in litt. 1993).
Reported lion densities (measured according to numbers of adults and sub-adults per 100 km²) range from 0.17 in the Savuti region of Botswana’s Chobe National Park (Viljoen 1993) to 1.5-2 (Kalahari Gemsbok NP: Mills et al. 1978; Etosha NP: Stander 1991) to 3-10 and up to 18 in East and southern African protected areas (Makacha and Schaller 1969, Schaller 1972, Rudnai 1973, Rodgers 1974, Smuts 1976, van Orsdol et al. 1985, H. Jachmann in litt. 1993). The highest known density is in Kenya’s Maasai Mara National Reserve, the northern extension of the Serengeti plains ecosystem, estimated at 30/100 km² (H. Dublin in litt. 1993). Density is closely linked to seasonal prey availability (van Orsdol et al. 1985). Average pride home range sizes vary from 26 to 226 km² (van Orsdol et al. 1985, Viljoen 1993), and can be considerably larger - Stander (1991) reported that one pride in Etosha NP had a home range of 2,075 km².