Protecting livestock more effectively is a cheap and easy way to reduce livestock losses, and therefore the killing of lions. But bullets and poison are also very cheap in Kenya, and unless livestock owners gain some economic benefit from lions there is still a great likelihood that they will soon disappear outside protected parks. Protected areas and ecotourism will always be central to conservation. Tourism is a great source of income for Kenya, with big cats being a major lure for visitors.

It was estimated that a male lion in Amboseli National Park is worth US $128,750 a year in tourist income. If landowners and communities were to receive a proportion of these vast earnings they would have a strong incentive to conserve lions, and the greater ecosystem that supports them.

Most protected areas are not big enough to ensure the long-term survival of viable populations of lions, which need huge ranges and hunting territories. Only a few National Parks in Africa are big enough to supply these, and most are too widely separated to prevent inbreeding, causing many ‘protected’ lion populations to suffer genetic problems such as increased vulnerability to disease.

Because of this, it is vital that lions are protected outside these parks, and many livestock ranches are starting to supplement their incomes by opening tourist lodges, and are protecting the wildlife on their ranches, rather than destroying it.

Pastoralists on the communal lands, however, have not yet fully realized tourism as a potential alternative to their dependence on livestock, and wildlife is still scarce in many areas.

LWL are helping to educate people in these communities, encouraging them to become involved with ecotourism and explaining that tourism requires wildlife, especially predators, and that maintaining healthy populations of grazers like wildebeest and zebra is also likely to decrease attacks on their livestock. They are hoping that local pastoralists will put aside areas of land for the exclusive use of wildlife, and that their negative attitudes towards carnivores may soon change.

It has been suggested that trophy hunting may be another way to derive economic value from wildlife, giving people an incentive to coexist with lions, rather than seeing them as an expensive nuisance and eradicating them.

It is counterintuitive to think that killing lions could benefit their conservation, and may seem hypocritical to allow rich foreigners to kill lions for sport, while local people, whose livelihoods are being threatened by lions are actively discouraged from killing them.

Yet some conservationists believe that the revenue from hunters, who are willing to pay considerable sums of money to kill a trophy male, could potentially be used for lion conservation, compensating for livestock losses and reducing the overall number of lions that are killed. Read our trophy hunting page for more information on this controversial potential conservation strategy.