Lethal control of African lions: local and regional population impacts

Woodroffe and Frank examined how retaliatory and preemptive killing of lions on Kenyan rangelands affects populations at local and regional scales. Combining mortality records with spatial analysis around Laikipia, they showed that conflict killing was a major source of lion mortality and that source-sink dynamics let protected areas subsidise human-dominated lands where lions are repeatedly removed. They cautioned that apparently abundant lions near reserves can mask unsustainable losses across the wider landscape. The work highlighted that conflict mortality, even when individually justified by livestock loss, can drive regional declines, underscoring the need for nonlethal mitigation and coordinated landscape management.