Background
Lions in Cameroon
Thursday 17 January 2013

All is not well with the lion population in Cameroon’s Waza National Park – in fact, the situation is so bad that researcher Pricelia Tumenta reckons that there will not be any lions left in ten years time. She has followed the lions in this park in her native country for years, and has kept a record of what the animals eat, etc. They mostly eat kobs, but roughly one-fifth of their diet is beef. And there is the problem: the cows are owned by cattle farmers who live within or just outside the borders of the park. They are not particularly pleased when their source of income becomes a lion’s lunch. Annually, around six lions are killed by poachers or angry farmers and, as there are only around fifty lions left in the whole park, they are rapidly disappearing. You might soften the pain by allowing the farmers a share of the proceeds of tourism, as Cameroon law prescribes but Tumenta’s study reveals that that isn’t happening.

Of course, cattle sheds and dogs could reduce the numbers of devoured cattle, the lions are attacking cows because the numbers of their other prey have dropped drastically in recent years. If nothing is done about that, better protection for the cattle will mean that the lions will continue to die, but of hunger.