Mother Nature is not the only one to be undermined by the actions of mankind all over the planet. In certain countries, some species are really endangered, and the notorious animals we used to know will perhaps belong to the past in a couple of years. Are our children going to get to know about lions and elephants only by reading books and watching movies? This is not the way it was supposed to be, but when trade and money tend to prevail, this is the kind of finality you can have to suffer.

In Africa, some football teams are nicknamed thanks to animal names: the Elephants of Ivory Coast who won the African Cup of Nations lately, the Lions of Atlas for Morocco, the Lions of the Teranga for Senegal, the Indomitable Lions for Cameroon and so on. Speaking about lions, did you know that studies were quite pessimistic about the future of the king of animals? According to some of those studies, half of the current population of lions will have disappeared by 2035, and barely 10 000 lions will live in the wild at this time.

According to scientists, the lions could purely and simply be wiped off the map before 2050. Lions have already started to become an exception in locations where they used to be quite numerous. In West Africa, where the lion is a unique population that you can find nowhere else in the world, the lions were less than 500 in 2014.

Nowadays, Southern and Eastern Africa count more lions than other regions of Africa. Due to touristic reasons (mainly), those regions tend to protect lions and have them sheltered in nature reserves in order not to have them killed by hunters or poachers. Because you may ask yourself why lions are becoming so scarce all over Africa. The answer is simple: trade and money. To put it in a nutshell, mankind.

The lion’s place of life has been gnawed by human activities over the last decades, and the areas where the lions used to hunt have become areas dedicated to human business such as agriculture. It is becoming increasingly

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harder for the lion to feed, all the more as cattle breeders do not hesitate to kill lions so as to protect their livestock.

Is it worth it to mention poaching, another big threat for the lion? In today’s world, lions are hunted for their bones, which are said to be particularly useful in Chinese medicine. Tiger bones and rhinoceros horns are becoming scarce as well, and lion bones have become the next opportunity. Mankind is destroying animal species for business purposes, and the animals of the Earth are disappearing in silence before money and profit.  

Something must be done, but is mankind still interested in preserving animal species? Of course, some people are, but the work has to be intensified and generalized to any endangered animal. We focused on lions, but what about koalas, okapis, panthers and chimpanzees? Still more species to take care of, protect and respect in this world.