The lion (Panthera leo), the once mighty ruler of the wilds of the African continent, is now facing its biggest threat as traces of the large feline are starting to vanish from its historic natural habitats.

In 2014, Philipp Henschel, a coordinator for the conservation group Panthera, published a survey of lion populations in all 21 known sanctuaries in West Africa. He discovered that the animals no longer exist in up to 99 percent of their traditional range in the region.

Prompted by Henschel's alarming findings, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) declared the West African lions as critically endangered based on its Red List of threatened animals in the wild.

In a new study featured in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S., Henschel and fellow researchers highlighted how sharp declines in the number of Central and West African lions since 1990 could ultimately lead to a reduction of all lion populations by half over the next 20 years.

East Africa, another well-known haven for wild lions, currently has a 37 percent risk of losing half of its large felines throughout the same period.

The study has identified only four countries in southern Africa where populations of lions are growing mostly in fenced nature reserves. These are Zimbabwe, Namibia, Botswana and South Africa.

To help keep the African lions from completely vanishing from the continent, Panthera hopes that it could attract philanthropists and animal protection agencies to provide funding for lion conservation.

According to Henschel's findings, there are only around 400 individual lions left in the wild of West Africa. This makes them the most endangered group of lions in the world.

The strict competition between humans and lions for food and land has left the animals at a severe disadvantage. The encroachment of peasant farmers and antelope poachers on the lions' historic ranges is grossly diminishing available living and hunting grounds for the animals.

The Impact of Lions on the Ecosystem of Africa

In its chief role as one of nature's apex predators, lions help regulate the population of herbivore mammals, such as zebra (Equus burchelli), wildebeest (Connochaetes taurinus) and buffalo (Syncerus caffer), within terrestrial ecosystems.

Together with the hyena (Crocuta crocuta), lions contribute to around 85 percent of predation upon herbivore populations in the ecosystem of the Serengeti region.

The diminishing number of lions in Africa could result in significant increases in herbivore populations, particularly zebras, which could then create an imbalance in available food stock for other animals. These animals would find it difficult to compete with the foraging tactics and larger spatial distribution of zebras.

Lions help control the growth of zebra populations through predation, allowing less competitive species of herbivores to sustain themselves through their capacity to carry vegetation.

By hunting the weakest member of animal herds, lions also serve to help keep herd populations healthy and resilient. These frail animals are often vulnerable to parasitic infection, and without the predation of lions, diseases could easily be spread throughout animal populations.

Photo : Mathias Appel | Flickr