PANTHERA LEO | BUSH MEAT TRADE CRISIS. The Asian and African bush meat trade threatens so many wild animals across both the Asian and African Continent, that keeping up with statistics can prove somewhat difficult at the best of times. North African lions and few Indian Assam Lions are literally facing extinction via the unregulated hunting trade that feeds the bush meat trade. Its believed now from a 2013 assessment that the North African lion populations are virtually extinct. Widespread poaching and the bush meat trade are occurring more frequently than ever. The trade in lion meat is increasing more than ever across the Southern and Eastern savannas of Africa. Should the trade be left unaddressed we will most certainly lose our Northern and Southern lion populations to habitat loss, habitat destruction, poaching and trophy hunting. A grim total of some 23,000 lions remain in the wild if that, its likely should the trade not be nipped in the bud soon as well as action taken against land loss and destruction - we'll lose the Southern and Northern lion populations in the next 5-6 years. Anti Pet and Bush Meat Coalition and its coalition partners International Animal Rescue Foundation World Action South Africa and International Animal Rescue Foundation World Action India are hoping the threatened status of the lion will be moved up a notch from vulnerable to [endangered] at the next CoP summit in South Africa, Johannesburg in 2016. The bush meat trade is recognized as a serious threat to food resources of indigenous peoples and to wildlife in the forests of West and Central Africa. However while this current situation has been known for some time, little attention is being paid to the African savannas due to the belief that bush meat in these areas is not so problematic. The illegal bush meat trade within our African savannas is not a secret nor a phenomenon practiced by few people from various tribes. One only has to view the amount of bush meat poaching arrests in Southern and Northern Africa to view the sheer scale of the problem posed to our lion populations and wildlife in general. . Lion populations are continuing to decline as stated on the IUCN Red List. While trophy hunting has been named as the main player to this rapid decline. The truth of the matter is the bush meat trade is the main significant threat, followed up with habitat destruction, and both aggressors need to be addressed sooner rather than later at the next CoP 17 meetings. From 1996-2015 the African lion has been listed as [vulnerable] with populations still declining. African lions were known to populate to the sub-Saharan African regions, and ranged from Northern Africa through to Southwest Asia of which the species vanished over 150 year ago. Lions were also once known to populate Western Europe into all of India however went extinct some 2,000 years ago. Assam is the only region were the Asiatic lion is now known to live. Today, the only remainder of this once widespread northern population is a single isolated sub-population in the 1,400 km² Gir Forest National Park and Wildlife Sanctuary. Lions are extinct in North Africa, having perhaps survived in the High Atlas Mountains up to the 1940s. Extinction has already occurred in: Côte d'Ivoire; Ghana; Guinea; Guinea-Bissau; Mali; Rwanda; Togo; Afghanistan; Algeria; Burundi; Congo; Djibouti; Egypt; Eritrea; Gabon; Gambia; Iran, Islamic Republic of; Iraq; Israel; Jordan; Kuwait; Lebanon; Lesotho; Libya; Mauritania; Morocco; Pakistan; Saudi Arabia; Sierra Leone; Syrian Arab Republic; Tunisia; Turkey; and the Western Sahara. The main threats to Lions are indiscriminate killing (primarily as a result of retaliatory or pre-emptive killing to protect human life and livestock) and prey base depletion. Habitat loss and conversion has led to a number of subpopulations becoming small and isolated (Bauer et al. 2008). Furthermore, trophy hunting has a net positive impact in a some areas, but may have at times contributed to population declines in Botswana, Namibia, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe. Dramatically more effort, focus and resources need to be invested to address the illegal hunting and the bush meat trade. In the absence of such an effort, one of Africa’s most valuable resources, the continent’s wildlife and comparative advantage, will wane rapidly and disappear from many areas. Snaring, or the setting of wire snares, is the most common illegal hunting method and is highly effective, difficult to control, and has severe impacts on wildlife due to its non-selectivity and frequent incidents of severe, non-lethal wounding of animals. Such hunting, and the subsequent trade in wildlife parts, typically occurs on a continuum – from that done to obtain meat for direct consumption and/or community trade, to large-scale commercial trade in urban centers or international markets. FWS identified three main threats currently facing lions: habitat loss, loss of their prey base to the bush meat trade, and human-lion conflict. All three threats are inexorably linked. The human population of sub-Saharan Africa is expected to double by the year 2050, which will result in more conversion of habitat to agriculture, more hunting of the wild ungulates the lions depend upon for prey, and more instances of hungry lions attacking livestock and then being killed in retaliation. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), retaliatory or preemptive attacks against lions are the worst threats the species faces. The IUCN lists African lions as a whole as vulnerable to extinction. Failure to push for action soon at the next CoP summit could have potentially damaging effects to the entire species of lions on the African continent. For more information please read the article below: