Changes in African lion demography and population growth with increased protection in a large, prey-depleted ecosystem

Abstract

Large carnivores such as the lion are declining across Africa, in part because their large herbivore prey is declining. There is consensus that increased protection from prey depletion will be necessary to reverse the decline of lion populations, but few studies have tested whether increased protection is sufficient to reverse the decline, particularly in the large, open ecosystems where most lions remain. Here, we used an integrated population model to test whether lion demography and population dynamics were measurably improved by increased protection. We used data from monitoring of 358 individuals from 2013 to 2021 in the Greater Kafue Ecosystem, where prior research showed that lions were strongly limited by prey depletion, but protection increased in several well-defined areas beginning in 2018. In some other areas, protection decreased. In areas with high protection, lion fecundity was 29% higher, and mean annual apparent survival (φ) was 8.3% higher (with a minimum difference of 6.0% for prime-aged adult females and a maximum difference of 11.9% for sub-adult males). These demographic benefits combined to produce likely population growth in areas with high protection ($\hat{\lambda }$ = 1.085, 90% CI = 0.97, 1.21), despite likely population decline in areas with low protection ($\hat{\lambda }$ = 0.970, 90% CI = 0.88, 1.07). For the ecosystem as a whole, population size remained relatively constant at a moderate density of 3.74 (±0.49 SD) to 4.13 (±0.52 SD) lions/100 km². With the growth observed in areas with high protection, the expected doubling time was 10 years. Despite this, recovery at the scale of the entire ecosystem is likely to be slow without increased protection; the current growth rate would require 50 years to double. Our results demonstrate that increased protection is likely to improve the reproduction and population growth rate of lions at a large scale within an unfenced ecosystem that has been greatly affected by poaching.