West African lions don’t prefer national parks to hunting preserves
March 30 (UPI) -- Data from a massive wildlife camera survey suggests West African lions divide their time evenly between the region's largest national parks and the hunting preserves that surround them. There are an estimated 400 lions living in West Africa, and 90 percent of them are found in a protected complex called W-Arly-Pendjari, or the WAP Complex. The expanse comprises five national parks and 14 hunting concessions in Burkina Faso, Niger and Benin -- some 10,200 square miles of habitat. Inside the parks, the lions are protected and face fewer human pressures, but in the hunting preserves, the lions can be killed. When scientists set out to document their distribution and movement patterns within the WAP Complex, they expected to find that lions avoided hunting concessions when ...
