African lions are increasingly targeted for trade in their bones, skin, teeth and claws, according to a newly published study. Without urgent action, the authors warn, poaching may pose an existential threat to Panthera leo, which once numbered in the hundreds of thousands across Africa. Today, about 25,000 are relegated to just 6% of their historic range. They’re classified as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List. Poaching is especially rising in Mozambique and South Africa, said Peter Lindsey, the study’s lead author who directs the Wildlife Conservation Network’s Lion Recovery Fund. Officials seized more than 300 kilograms (660 pounds) of lion parts in Maputo, Mozambique’s capital, in 2023. That year, an Endangered Wildlife Trust survey found just 122 lions in an area of South Africa’s Kruger National Park that had held 283 in 2005 — a drop of nearly 60% Threats are pervasive. Prey is depleted by intensive bushmeat hunting. Lions are targeted for trophy hunting and poisoned in retaliatory killings by pastoralists when the cats hunt livestock. However, deliberate, organized poaching for body parts now “represents an intensifying challenge to lion conservation, compounding other threats, many of which are also growing in intensity,” the authors wrote. Luke Hunter, who heads the Wildlife Conservation Society’s big cats program, called trade-driven poaching “a defining threat to the future of Africa’s lions.” Demand is growing. The study notes that cats are killed for their bones — used in tiger bone wine, an expensive traditional medicine coveted in China. Some 37 African countries use…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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