A lioness at the Ukutula Conservation Center and Biobank in South Africa’s North West province has given birth to two cubs conceived via non-surgical artificial insemination, using fresh semen from an adult male lion at the same facility, in a world first achievement, the University of Pretoria (UP) has said. Although African lions normally breed well in captivity, the wild population is highly fragmented and suffers progressively from isolation and inbreeding. Indiscriminate killing, habitat loss and prey depletion, epidemic diseases, poaching and trophy hunting threaten the extinction of these existing wild populations. The African lion is listed as vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list of threatened species, with the West African lion subpopulation considered critically endangered. “This, together with the success of the AI births of the lion cubs, not only celebrate a world first achievement but has laid the foundation for effective non-surgical AI protocols for this species, using both fresh and frozen-thawed sperm,” she said.

Source: The North Africa Journal September 03, 2018 06:11 UTC