Kenya’s famed lion prides could be driven to extinction because ritual killings by tribal warriors are decimating their ranks in and around the country’s protected game reserves, wildlife experts warned on Tuesday.
The findings were immediately dismissed by members of the Maasai tribe, which is blamed for most of the deaths among the country’s dwindling lion population.
”It appears as if the Maasailand lions are in such serious decline that the entire population may disappear within very few years,” the experts warned in a new study.
The study, by the Kilimanjaro Lion Conservation Project and experts from the University of California, squarely accused the Maasai for the loss of the big cats.
”Although the [lion] population seems to be in rapid decline, the number of killings has been increasing annually,” it said. ”It would appear that people are putting greater effort into lion killing.”
Since 1998, at least 195 lions had been killed in and near southern Kenya’s Amboseli and Tsavo preserves and the Nairobi National Park, reducing the confirmed number of lions to 2 010, the experts said. Of those, 20 had been killed this year alone and the trend appeared to growing.
The study, entitled Lion Killing in the Amboseli-Tsavo Ecosystem 2001-2006 and its Implications for Kenya’s Lion Population, paints a bleak picture of the animals’ future.
”The lions do not have time for Maasai traditions to change,” it said.
In addition to traditional warrior rituals, the tribe was also slaying the lions with snares and poison in retaliation for deaths among their livestock, it noted.
But Daniel Ole Osoi, a senior Maasai leader, rejected the study’s assertions, saying that ritual killings of lions were a thing of the past.
”Nonsense,” he told Agence France-Presse when asked about the study. ”Ritual killing of lions no longer exists. We have realised that lions are part of our heritage and they also bring in tourists and money.”
But he stressed that the Maasai would react if lions took their cattle.
”We shall continue killing the lions when they attack our livestock and until the government pays us enough compensation [for] every animal mauled by these beasts,” Osoi said. — Sapa-AFP