Majesty alone can not save them.The world's top felines including lions, cheetahs, and leopards are slipping toward extinction. But an emergency effort to fund on the ground conservation project may help put them back on their feet.
The big Cats Initiative, recently launched by the National Geographic, Society and led by Society Explorers in Residence Dereck and Beverly Joubert, is uniting government, conservation, group, corporations, scientists, and local villages to find ways to reverse big cat declines. In Africa burgeoning human populatios have swallowed up wild habitat, leading to increase poaching and retaliatory killings by farmers when cats preyon cattle a top threat. Part of the solution : programs offering financial incentivies to those who spare the predators, say the Jouberts. Lions will be the initiative's first priority, with a goal of boosting their numbers to sustainable levels by 2020 - Jennifer S. Holland
Lion have declined to as few as 20,000 animals from about 450,000 just 50 years ago.Other population estimates :
7,500 cheetahs
6,000 snow leopards
4,000 tigers
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