It is a heartrending sight.
Wire snare caught so tightly around his
neck he cannot eat, this young male lion is doomed to die a slow and agonizing
death. Within a matter of days he will be lying in the African bush gasping his
last breath.
Nor is he alone in his grim fate. The
sight is increasingly common in parts of the continent when a growing number of
lions have fallen victim to poaching. Some wander by mistake into snares that
are meant for other animals such as antelope which are hunted by poachers for
bush meat.
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The young male
lion cub was spotted in Mikumi National Park with a poacher's snare twisted
cruelly round his neck
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Others, whoever, are being deliberately
poached for their body parts.
There is now a growing demand for lion
claws and bones in parts of the Far East for use in traditional medicines. The
huge animals are hunted more and more as a substitute for tigers, whose body
parts have traditionally been used for the Chinese medicine market.
Tigers are now so scarce in the wild
that poachers have turned to another target.
A sharp increase in the lion bone trade
suggests that these are being swapped for tiger bones. Pelts and claws are also
being used.
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Doomed to die: The wire was twisted
so tight that the lion was unable to eat
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Dr Pieter Kat, from LionAid, said:
'There has been a huge jump recently in the value of lion bones driven by the
traditional medicine market, seeing as we have so few tigers.
'Since tiger bones are now so difficult
to obtain there has been a switch to lion bones.'
In the 1990s, 1kg of lion bones was
worth just $10, but now that has massively increased to $300 in 2010. And its reflected in the figures that show the
populations of lions are on a serious decline. There were an estimated 200,000
lions in Africa in the sixties. This has dropped massively now to just 23,000-
25,000.
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The final journey: The lion slopes
off into the long grass of the park where he would soon die either of
starvation or infection
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A source said: 'Only a few weeks ago we
saw this lion with a snare around its neck in Mikumi National Park in Tanzania. 'The park rangers tried to track it
with the intention of trying to remove the snare from around its neck, but by
the time they arrived at the location, the lion had disappeared into the bush. It wouldn’t have survived for many
more days. Already the wound was gaping, open to infection and covered in
flies.
'And it was so tight around its neck
that it would have found it impossible to eat. It would have either died from
infection or starvation.'
