While the civil war and the influx of refugees from neighboring Sudan are causing concern in eastern Chad, on the other side, at the very bottom, in the south-west of the country, on the border with Cameroon, a small event just happened. In the national park of Sena Oura, in the middle of the savannah, a surveillance camera equipped with a motion detector filmed a lioness.
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It was a few weeks ago, in the middle of the night: the infrared images show a young lioness, well-muscled, visibly in good health, who settles down in front of the lens and lies down, peaceful, her front legs crossed one on top of the other, completely unaware of the presence of the camera, camouflaged in the thicket in front of her.
The appearance is exceptional, completely unexpected for the park team since it will soon be twenty years since any lion, lioness or cub has not been seen in this area. As the Wildlife Conservation Society reports, the last sighting was in 2004. Since then, nothing. The intensity of poaching in the early 2000s got the better of these big cats, hunted, killed for their skins, some kidnapped to be sold, to the point that the IUCN, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature which identifies animal populations all over the world, said lions an extinct species in this region of Chad.
Only 22,000 lions in the wild on the planet
Hence the unexpected character of this nocturnal appearance. Especially since there is no human intervention. Chad has not attempted to reintroduce lions on its territory, this lioness came by itself, without it being known for the moment why, from which point of departure and with which possible travel partners. Observations are in progress, researchers are trying to trace the traces and the investigation will be done quickly since in this central part of the African continent, there are very few lions identified. Barely 1,000 throughout the Chad, Cameroon and Central Africa region.
In total, the population of big cats has dropped by 66% in this region since 1990. And globally, on the whole planet, there are only 22,000 to 24,000 lions left in the wild, the equivalent of the number of inhabitants from Cahors. It was precisely to stop this carnage that the park was created in 2008, and what this video proves is that creating protected areas works, it’s effective, and that nature always takes its place, if we leave it to him.