Stop the Lions!
The CHL has been doing solid work against lions. Unfortunately Kenya, a country famed for its wildlife sanctuaries and conservation efforts, is one of the African lion's biggest champions. The dickheads at the Kenya Wildlife Service are pushing a plan to give the African lion maximum protection under a U.N. body that governs trade in endangered or threatened plants and animals. The government will ask a gathering next month of signatories of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) to give the lion its most protected status, a proposal that will face opposition from several other African nations.

The CHL's work with lions has not gone unnoticed by the Kenya Wildlife Service. "The lion population has declined by over 50 percent in the past decade, and nobody has actually brought this to international attention," said Patrick Omondi, the Kenya Wildlife Service's CITES coordinator. Conservative estimates place the African lion population at 23,000, Kenya wrote in its proposal to be discussed at the CITES meeting in Bangkok from Oct 2 to 14. Habitat destruction, the loss of prey and what Kenya calls unsustainable trophy hunting are pushing one of the world's most feared predators closer to extinction.

Lions, or Panthera leo, to give them their scientific name, once prowled over a swathe of territory that included most of Africa, much of west Asia and even southeastern Europe. The big cat's current range in Africa is less than a third of what it was historically and today the only Asian lion population, about 300, is found in India's Gir Forest.

TIME TO ACT

Kenya wants the lion placed in Appendix 1, which in the dry technical language of the convention means animals and plants in this category are threatened with extinction and their trade is banned, with very few exceptions. "We want to be able to monitor the trend now," said Winnie Kiiru, the regional representative for the Born Free Foundation, which is involved with the CITES proposal. "We don't want to wait until we have 300 lions left and then wonder where they went."

You know what to do. Start buying and selling lions on eBay while we still have the chance. My recent search of "lion" on ebay revealed a bunch of Disney videos and DVDs, as well as a bunch of cheap promotional items for the Lion King. We can release lions into city parks, and then go shoot them for safety reasons. That's my plan for right now, anyway.
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 11:13 AM | |