Research overview: drought, water availability, and African lion prey systems

African lions inhabit savannas where drought and water availability strongly shape prey abundance and distribution, making them sensitive to climate variability. This overview surveys how droughts reduce herbivore numbers and concentrate both prey and predators around dwindling water, affecting lion hunting, competition, and conflict with pastoralists whose livestock also depend on scarce water. It reviews how climate variability interacts with land-use change and fencing across lion landscapes. The synthesis frames water and drought as central organizing forces in savanna predator ecology, explaining why projections of climate change for African cats emphasize rainfall variability and its effects on the herbivore base, alongside the human competition for water that intensifies during dry periods.