LionAid: African Wildlife In Crisis

African wildlife is in crisis for three main reasons. First, as the human population rapidly increases, more land is needed. Secondly, the livestock population that is raised for human consumption is taking up more and more land. Thirdly, sport hunting continues unabated even though lion populations are declining at catastrophic rates.

There are approximately 25,000 lions left in Africa and of this population, only 2,500 are adult males in which approximately 650 of them per year are hunted for the purpose of being a trophy. It gets worse – lions in Western and Central Africa are genetically very different from lions in other parts of Africa. There may be only about 1500 of these amazing lions left. Sadly, they are still allowed to be trophy hunted, in Burkino, Faso and Cameroon.

What is really disturbing is that some of the big, well known conservation (non-governmental organizations) NGO’s still support lion trophy hunting, calling it sustainable because they actually contribute to the conservation of the species! This is absolutely ridiculous as clearly it only serves to contribute to hunters seeking new prizes.

LionAid.org is trying to fight for African lions. They are fighting for better lion protection measures and will be speaking in front of the European Parliament in September. They need everyone’s support and do not accept funding from the hunting community and are generally concerned about wildlife preservation.

In this segment of The Organic View Radio Show, host, June Stoyer will speak to the founders of LionAid.org Christine Macsween and Pieter Kat stay tuned!