Jan 10, 2014 10:35 AM EST By Staff Reporter, UniversityHerald Reporter

Could the world lose a sub species of lion in the next five years? According to a six year, 11 country study published Wed. Jan. 8, the population of West African lions numbers just 250 and covers 1 percent of their previous habitat, National Geographic reported.

West African lions aren't technically a different species of lion, but they possess unique enough physical characteristics (lighter build, lighter manes, longer legs) compared to lions hailing from eastern and southern Africa (which are also more plentiful, at around 35,000) that many conservationists would welcome a taxonomical change, currently under review by the IUCN. If approved, it would put more attention on the population and qualify them as a critically endangered species, according to Nat Geo.

"Lions in West Africa are genetically more different from lions in East and Southern Africa than Siberian tigers are from Indian tigers," said Hans de Iongh, a lion researcher at Leiden University in the Netherlands (but not part of the new study).

What's with wildlife in western Africa? Earlier this year, the western black rhinoceros was declared extinct (for the second time). Most, if not all, of the 11 countries -- covering a 1,500 range from Senegal to Nigeria in western Africa --  studied by researchers didn't know about their lion populations because they didn't have any funding to study them, according to study co-author Philipp Henschel of the big cat conservation group, Panthera.

"All of these still contain suitable, intact lion habitat, and we thought all would contain lions," said Henschel. "But instead we found only four isolated and severely imperiled populations."

West African lions face the usual threats -- locally and from afar -- without proper protection by understaffed and underfunded wildlife groups and the preserves in which they typically live. Farmers shoot them in retaliation for attacks on their livestock. Both locals and those from faraway countries hunt and kill them for their meat, which has become a popular and at times a necessary food option in areas of need, Nat Geo reported.  

"Bushmeat has become so valuable that it is becoming international," Henschel said. "In Burkina Faso we saw poachers coming from Nigeria, 100 miles [160 kilometers] away, to shoot big animals and carry them across the border in pickup trucks."

According to Henschel, whether lions go the same way as the western black rhinoceros could be determined in the next five years or less. The western black rhinoceros had the advantage of being its own species. Lions have the advantage of being lions, inherently more popular among conservation groups. Perhaps sub species distinction will give them just enough to maintain and grow their numbers in western Africa.

"West African lions have unique genetic sequences not found in any other lions, including in zoos or captivity," said Christine Breitenmoser, co-chair of the IUCN/SCC Cat Specialist Group. "If we lose the lion in West Africa, we will lose a unique, locally adapted population found nowhere else. It makes their conservation even more urgent."

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