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Amboseli's lions could be extinct 'within a few years'
Posted by Henry at 2:05 pm,
June 18th 2008.
Following on from last week's worrying news about the rhinos of Tanzania
comes disturbing reports of the decline in the lion population at Kenya's Amboseli
National Park.
The park, which borders Kilimanjaro (and from which the best photographs of the mountain are usually taken) has seen a decline in the population of lions largely due to poisoning and spearing by the local Maasai population who live in the park.
The Maasai see the lions as a threat to their livestock -
"The situation has reached a critical
level," said Terry Garcia, executive vice president of the National Geographic Society.
"Unless something is done immediately, there will be no more lions in this part of
Kenya, which would be a tragedy."
To try to help the population, the society has offered
an emergency grant of $150,000 to the Maasailand Preservation Trust. This money will
go towards compensating those who have lost livestock to the lions. Similar programs
in other parts of Kenya have succeeded in stabilising the lion population, and can
only be hoped that such a tactic works here too.