Powerful and majestic, the ‘king of the jungle’ has no natural predators but in the last three generations, African lion numbers have plummeted by over 40% due to loss of living space and conflict with people.
According to WWF, three-quarters of African lion populations are in decline. With only around 20,000 in the wild, they’re now officially classified as ‘vulnerable’.
Oxford University Wildlife Conservation Research Unit recently conducted a research on African lions and highlighted six African countries with lion populations over 1000.
Currently, the unit is working on 16 felid species, with projects from African lions to Brazilian jaguars, golden cats in Gabon to Botswanan cheetah, Scottish wildcats to Mongolian manul, and clouded leopards in Borneo and snow leopards in China.
Oxford’s Department of Zoology is also developing a systematic approach to prioritising felid projects, and of the 16 species of cat identified as top conservation priority, the department is already working on 13.
Considering that, here are 6 African countries hold the Africa's last remaining lions.
Tanzania is the ‘Lion King’ of Africa and boosts approximately 8,176 lions.
South Africa is the second country in Africa with the highest number of Lions with the country hosting 2,070, according to Oxford University
Only 1,825 lions are found in Kenya.
South Africa’s neighbour, Zimbabwe only has 1,709 lions remaining.
Mozambique closely trails Zimbabwe in lions numbers and boosts 1,295 lions.
Zambia is the last country in Africa to hold with lion populations over 1000 with the country barely hosting 1,095 lions.
![Graça Machel was born in 1945 [CGTN]](data:image/svg+xml;charset=utf8,%3Csvg%20xmlns%3D'http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg'%20width%3D'100'%20height%3D'100'%20data-ring-placeholder%3D'1'%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E "Graça Machel was born in 1945 [CGTN]")
