November has been a busy month! First a bull elephant translocation, and now the long-awaited arrival of lions at Samara. Our founder pride consists of one male (3 years old) and one unrelated female (4 years old) from Kwandwe Game Reserve near Grahamstown.
The translocation to Samara mimics the natural lion migration patterns that would take place in open systems, as young males tend to be ejected from their pride at around this age to seek their own territory. Due to the fragmentation of lions’ historical range, these ‘migrations’ now take place manually through human intervention in the form of translocations and introductions between protected areas. The reintroduction of lions to Samara is critical to ongoing lion conservation efforts in providing additional habitat for a species in global decline.
More information on this historic translocation and the context of lion conservation in South Africa is available in our earlier blog post.


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well done the Samara team. Lion numbers are rapidly decreasing. The charity LionAid are quoting lion in the wild numbers at 20,000 maximum… across the whole continent….. In 1970 there are were an estimated 400,000 lions in the wild!
good luck with your new pride