By Tonny Abet, Joseph Kiggundu
It reveals how the booming trade in lion skeletons, worth
millions of pounds a year, is fuelled by demand in China and South-East Asia
for traditional medicines. Lion parts are also passed off as rarer tiger bones
and used to make wine and trinkets.
World Animal Protection has raised alarm on the plummeting numbers of wild African lions, partly caused by global wildlife trade.
For many years, African countries have been the go-to
tourist destinations to experience safaris with key target being spotting the
African lion.
According to the World Animal Protection, captive lion
industry threatens the survival of lions and has a negative impact on tourism,
public health and safety, as Africa's lion population has almost halved in the
past 25 years.
The agency now warns that such scenarios may not resurface
in the near future if nothing is done to end the captive lion breeding industry
where lions are bred and raised in captivity for commercial purposes, including
canned trophy hunting, cub petting, walking with lion experiences and trade in
lion bones for traditional medicine.
This was during the World Animal Protection meeting with
different stake holders as one way of raising awareness about the increasing
loss of Lions in Africa and how to protect them on August 10, 2021 as they
commemorate Lions World Day.
"Habitat loss and fragmentation, wildlife trade, bush
meat poaching and human-lion conflict continue to threaten lions across Africa,
-which are now classified by the International Union for Conservation of Nature
(IUCN) as Vulnerable," Ms Edith Kabesiime, the wildlife campaigns manager
at the World Animal Protection, said after the meeting.
Ms Kabesiime noted that it is encouraging to see some
African countries making commitments to shift from the practice of breeding and
keeping lions in captivity and using captive lions or their derivatives
commercially.
According to the experts, lions suffer at every stage of
their life in breeding farms and intensive captive conditions increase the risk
of zoonotic disease transmission.
"Countries need to enact animal welfare and
environmental policies that protect individual wild animals and allow them the
right to a life in the wild. Wild animals are sentient beings, and their
intrinsic value should be recognized as an essential component in ensuring the
survival of species as well as the protection of the environment," Ms
Kabesiime said.
However, in Uganda, Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA),
reported that they have carried out two nationwide censuses on Uganda's lions
from 2007 to 2017 which found an increase in the population of lions.
The census of 2007 to 2010 gave an estimate of about 408
lions while that of 2011 to 2017 showed an increase to 493 lions countrywide.
Last year Uganda Wildlife Education Centre (UWEC) received a
male lion named Letaba, from South African Lion Park which is a replacement of
Kibonge who died last November, aged 18.
On protection of Lions, the UWEC director James Musinguzi
disclosed that the Lion Letaba has helped boost wildlife conservation in the
country.
"We are using Letaba for wildlife conservation in
Uganda, especially the young lions, and this comes at the time where we have
less than 400 lions in Uganda," he said.p
Mr Musinguzi added that the drop in lion numbers is
attributed to destruction of their habitats, using them as hunting trophies and
poisoning by poachers.
According to UWA, tourism has been a top foreign exchange
earner to the country contributing almost 10 percent of the GDP.
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