After nearly twenty years of absence from Gabon, the presence of a lion has been documented; further studies will determine whether it is an isolated specimen.
When researchers from the US organisation Panthera, an NGO dedicated to the conservation of wild cats and their ecosystems, reviewed the footage captured by two hidden cameras installed to film chimpanzees, they could not believe their eyes.
The large figure walking in the video, along a trail "carved out" by elephants in Batéké Plateau National Park in Gabon, is without doubt a male lion (Panthera leo), declared "locally extinct". Lions lived in large numbers in Gabon until the 1950s, but poaching, the widespread hunting of their prey and habitat destruction decimated the population. It had been nearly twenty years — since 1996 — since a single specimen had been sighted.
"This footage was truly a surprise; it is proof that life is still possible for lions in Gabon," said Philipp Henschel, lion programme coordinator at NGO Panthera. "This discovery shows that the efforts of the Gabonese authorities to protect the environment, above all through the establishment of Batéké Plateau National Park in 2002, have been successful."
The fortunate footage was captured as part of a study on chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) conducted across a territory stretching from Gabon to the Democratic Republic of Congo, led by the Panthera group in collaboration with the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and the Aspinall Foundation.
According to the researchers, there are two possible explanations for the lion's presence: it could be a solitary specimen that arrived from the neighbouring state, swimming across the vast Congo river — lone male lions can travel as much as 300–400 kilometres from their home range — or, it is hoped, it could be part of a larger pride. Panthera has already announced the launch of a detailed survey specifically to find out whether a new resident pride of lions exists in Gabon.
The sighting represents good news for the king of the savannah, an animal that until ten thousand years ago was found across almost the entire planet and was the second most widespread large mammal after humans, yet today, according to a Plos One study, just 35,000 lions survive in the wild, occupying roughly a quarter of the range historically inhabited by the species.