The Lion Center

General Page Media
Lion walking across landscape with mountains in background with text "A future without lions? It doesn't have to be!"

At the Lion Center at the University of Minnesota, our mission is to tackle the complicated issues around lion conservation through advocacy for direct international funding for African wildlife reserves and development of innovative strategies to protect both lions and vulnerable human communities in an ever-evolving landscape.

Lions are an integral part of Africa’s savanna ecosystems.

As top predators, they have disproportionate impacts on all the larger mammalian species, and they are also sensitive to any perturbations in the lower trophic levels. Thus they are both a “keystone species” and a sentinel of ecosystem health.

By 2035, half of Africa’s remaining lions may be gone.

Without policy changes and a fresh approach to conservation, the outlook is dark.

But there is a way forward.

We are learning from the success stories as well as the failures. Help us advance new evidence-based approaches to lion conservation that balance the needs of wildlife and human communities.


Recent work

Conserving desert-adapted lions in northwest Namibia

Community conservation approaches for maintaining a unique lion population. In Africa’s second-youngest country communal conservancies ensure rural residents benefit from living alongside wildlife. Community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) in Namibia is a shining light in African wildlife conservation. This signal success brings new challenges, chiefly increasing levels of human-wildlife conflict. Read more