Abstract
Factors that limit African lion populations are manifold and well-recognized, but their relative demographic effects remain poorly understood, particularly trophy hunting near protected areas. We identified and monitored 386 individual lions within and around South Luangwa National Park, Zambia, for five years (2008–2012) with trophy hunting and for three additional years (2013–2015) during a hunting moratorium. We used these data with mark-resight models to estimate the effects of hunting on lion survival, recruitment, and abundance. The best survival models, accounting for imperfect detection, revealed strong positive effects of the moratorium, with survival increasing by 17.1 and 14.0 percentage points in subadult and adult males, respectively. Smaller effects on adult female survival and positive effects on cub survival were also detected. The sex-ratio of cubs shifted from unbiased during trophy-hunting to female-biased during the moratorium. Closed mark-recapture models revealed a large increase in lion abundance during the hunting moratorium, from 116 lions in 2012 immediately preceding the moratorium to 209 lions in the last year of the moratorium. More cubs were produced each year of the moratorium than in any year with trophy hunting. Lion demographics shifted from a male-depleted population consisting mostly of adult (≥4 years) females to a younger population with more (>29%) adult males. These data show that the three-year moratorium was effective at growing the Luangwa lion population and increasing the number of adult males. The results suggest that moratoria may be an effective tool for improving the sustainability of lion trophy hunting, particularly where systematic monitoring, conservative quotas, and age-based harvesting are difficult to enforce.
Highlights
African lions (Panthera leo) are declining world-wide and this is a concern given their role in ecosystem function [1] and their economic value to phototourism and trophy hunting [2]
During the five years with hunting, we documented deaths from other anthropogenic sources (2), disease (1), infanticide (3), injuries (4), and unknown causes (27), including cubs of known females and known litter size that were no longer seen with their mothers and adult males that were no longer seen after a harvest was reported from the area last seen
In the five years preceding the hunting moratorium, Rosenblatt et al [27] showed skewed demography and decreasing abundance in the SLNP lion population corresponding with 46 males that were harvested from the study area in that period
Summary
African lions (Panthera leo) are declining world-wide and this is a concern given their role in ecosystem function [1] and their economic value to phototourism and trophy hunting [2]. The primary threats to lions are anthropogenic, including habitat loss and human encroachment, conflict with humans and livestock, wire snare poaching, illegal hunting, disease, and prey depletion [8,9,10,11,12]. Most of these threats are similar in that they are typically unregulated or illegal, making them difficult to quantify and explicitly link to lion demography. Legal trophy hunting of lions is an anthropogenic impact that results in direct mortality of lions, but is unique because it is regulated and monitored and can confer both benefits and costs to conservation [13,14,15]
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