Imagining a World Without Lions

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There will never be a time that we will be able to forget lions. Walk ten blocks in most of the world's cities and you'll see a dozen lion statues, small or large, icons of the most symbolic animal on Earth. (See an interactive experience on the Serengeti lion.)

Some of the more famous ones reside in front of the New York Public Library and in Trafalgar Square. On a recent walk around the four-block radius of National Geographic's Washington headquarters, I counted 26.

But will real lions survive in the wild beyond our generation? As someone who has studied the animals for 30 years, I'm not sure. (Read "The Short Happy Life of a Serengeti Lion" in National Geographic magazine.)

In the 1950s, when I was born, the best estimate of the world's lion population was 450,000. Today, studies point to 20,000 to 30,000 lions remaining. We've lost 95 percent of lions in the last 50 years.

The slaughter has a variety of causes: trophy hunting, habitat loss, communities killing lions in retaliation for cattle losses, and poaching, which fuels a bone market in the East built around bogus medicines and special-occasion wine.

The Power of Lions Up Close

Recently, I was kneeling outside my vehicle here—a battered, doorless Land Cruiser—with my camera on the ground, filming a low-angle shot for a National Geographic Channel film about young nomadic male lions. I miscalculated.

Two very large lionesses walked much closer to me than I expected, and at three meters they rippled with power and predatory presence. Massive shoulders moved under tawny skin, ready to grab hold of a passing zebra or buffalo.