“Twenty years ago, you would always see lions lying in the road,” says Asaye Alemayehu, who runs the Nabu project. There are about 1,100 lions clinging on in Ethiopia’s last remaining pockets of wilderness, according to a study published in 2021. Farms rub up against areas of protected forest in Ethiopia’s Kafa region, where researchers are studying the lion population. “Our animals can’t graze freely because we fear the lions.”It is rare for people to kill lions in Kafa, where they are respected. Fekede says more funding would make protecting Ethiopia’s lions possible, but “if things continue as they are, with deforestation and other human factors, we will lose the lions.

Source: Ethiopian News August 17, 2023 15:33 UTC