GATSIBO, Rwanda, June 28 (UPI) -- Lions will be reintroduced to Rwanda for the first time in nearly two decades after the population was wiped out in the east African country.
Seven lions, two males and five females, will be taken from South Africa to Rwanda by truck and air and released into Akagera National Park after a two-week quarantine. Conservation groups said Rwanda's lions were wiped out following the 1994 genocide that left some 800,000 people dead. Returning refugees settled in the national park, the only spare piece of land in the country, and poisoned the lions in an effort to save their cattle.
"The return of lions to Akagera is a conservation milestone for the park and the country, said Peter Fearnhead, CEO of African Parks, which is heading up the effort. "Restoring national parks to their former biodiversity state is a key deliverable of the African Parks conservation model and we, in conjunction with our government partner, the Rwandan Development Board, are delighted to have been able to reintroduce one of the key species to this beautiful national park."
The group said the lions have been held in enclosures in wildlife preserves in Phinda and Tembe Elephant Park. Monday, they will be tranquilized, placed in individual steel crates and taken by truck to O.R. Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg for a charter flight. There, they will be fitted with monitoring collars to allow park managers to watch the theirfmovements. They will be taken by charter flight to Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, to Akagera.
The group said the lions have been selected from different genetic stock based on reproductive potential and their ability to contribute to social cohesion.
In early June, the International Union for Conservation of Nature listed lions as vulnerable in an update of its "red list" of species facing survival threats. The group cited dwindling lion habitat and a decline in prey as a result of human enroachment as reasons for the decline in population.
