Experts Capture Rare African Park Moment That Proves Wildlife Protection Efforts Work

Deep in the heart of the African continent, the landlocked nation of the Central African Republic (CAR) has been bellowing screams for help for the past decade. Battered by French colonization and intense political clashes, CAR was almost reduced to chaos. Within the belly of this chaotic, failing state, the lions were going through a silent, violent crisis. When researchers strapped cameras in CAR's forests, they were distraught to notice that the number of lions was rapidly dwindling. Even when a lion was spotted in a rare case, it turned out to be a male. Females seemed to be disappearing, which meant the population of this majestic predator could vanish from CAR anytime soon due to loss of reproduction, as reported in a press release by WCS Newsroom.

Nothing seemed to help, until very recently, when researchers from Wildlife Conservation Society (@thewcs) came across the rare sighting of a lioness in Bamingui-Bangoran National Park. Amidst the crumbling depression of CAR, this lioness offered a remarkable slice of hope. CAR, a state bordered by rolling plateaus, was once a residence bustling with these glorious wild predators. Once upon a time, a bounty of lions roamed inside its jungles, cradled by the rainforests in the south and moist savannas in the north, where howling harmattan winds deposited sands of the Sahara desert, creating fertile grounds for them to feed and breed.

However, in the past few years, the state became ravaged by the ravenous agendas of humans who started murdering lions to extract profitable resources from their carcasses. During the 2000s, CAR witnessed a dramatic rise in poaching activities, driven by intensified political conflicts coupled with an increased demand for luxury products derived from wildlife. Gangs of poachers would set foot into CAR and kill lions to trade their skin, bones, claws, and teeth for money. Back in the cities, these extracts would be used for making luxury products, showpieces, and medicines. Poachers weren’t the only culprit, though. Local farmers, too, were involved in massive lion killings. They would sedate, poison, or trap the lions with wire snares to protect their livestock and prevent overgrazing on their farms.

Those lions who succeeded in escaping these killings got pinned down by CAR’s residents for occultish ceremonial and ritualistic killings. In South Africa, for instance, lions were slaughtered as part of a “muthi” ritual that people conducted as a religious practice that would bless them with “protection from evil spirits,” “power,” “healing,” and “sexual health and wellbeing,” according to a report published in Global Ecology and Conservation. And even if a lion got away with all these sinister plots, it would eventually die of starvation due to the depleted prey base in the forests, triggered by illegal logging, weak law enforcement, trophy hunting, bushmeat trade, civil unrest, and resource competition.

However, according to the latest footage captured by WCS researchers, with photos of a lactating lioness and her three cubs, the scene has dramatically shifted now. The “lion's roar” is back in CAR. This, according to the researchers, is the “first video and photographic evidence of lion cubs” in the region in decades. Last time it was in 2019 when a female was spotted. “These lion cubs are the clearest sign yet that lions are starting to reclaim their place in a critical landscape,” WCS wrote on Instagram.

In a conversation with IFL Science, Armand Luh Mfone, WCS Director of Programs for CAR, shared that this is a “payoff of years of relentless protection and patience.”  Excited at the discovery of this lactating mother, Luke Hunter from WCS’s Big Cats Program, was jolted into a pleasant daydream. “Where there is one lioness, there are almost certain to be more.”

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