The animals are some of the world’s most intriguing and unique populations of lions, yet very little is known about them. Dr. Stander is passionate about studying them and helping them to survive. The lions, and Stander’s efforts to understand their secrets, are featured in NATURE’s The Desert Lions.

On the Web site for The Desert Lions, you’ll learn more about Dr. Flip Stander and the animals he’s dedicated his life to tracking and studying. Find out about the unique family structure of the lions, and why their conservation is so vital. Discover the Namib Desert and how its inhabitants, animal and human, are able to survive.

Online content for The Desert Lions was originally posted January 2008.

Can the King of Beasts be copied? That is the question some conservationists are pondering as lion populations dwindle worldwide. They say cloning — using advanced biological techniques to create genetic duplicates of existing lions — could become part of the effort to save the big cats. Other experts, however, are skeptical. Cloning lions would be difficult and expensive, they argue, adding that it won’t really solve the major problems facing the big cats, such as habitat loss. For the moment, they say, the money would be better spent on more traditional conservation efforts.

It’s a debate that couldn’t have even occurred a decade ago. Cloning a mammal was beyond the reach of science until 1996, when researchers managed to create a cloned sheep named Dolly. Since then, scientists have learned how to clone a host of other mammals, including mice, sheep, cows, dogs, and small cats. In 2002, scientists in Texas announced that they had cloned a domestic cat. They named the genetic replicate kitten “CC,” for “carbon copy.”

The breakthrough got some cat conservationists thinking. Cloning, they realized, could be a way to preserve the gene pool of dwindling cat populations, and perhaps create robust animals that could eventually be returned to the wild. In theory, genes could even be taken from the frozen tissues of dead animals, then reintroduced into populations through cloning. In essence, the dead could “walk again.”

In 2003, one conservation center began to follow through on these ideas. In New Orleans, the Audubon Center for Research of Endangered Species succeeded in cloning the first African wildcat, the bigger, wilder cousin of the common domestic cat. Eventually the team produced seven clones. Then, in 2005, the researchers went a step further. Two of the clones were allowed to mate, producing eight kittens. The births confirmed the idea that maybe, someday, cloned animals might be used to repopulate endangered species.

“We couldn’t be happier with these births,” Audubon researcher Betsy Dresser said at the time. “By improving the cloning process and then encouraging cloned animals to breed and make babies, we can revive the genes of individuals who might not be reproductively viable otherwise, and we can save genes from animals in the wild.”

Ultimately, she said, similar techniques might be used to reinvigorate populations of endangered small cats, such as Asia’s fishing cats and India’s rusty spotted cat, the world’s smallest feline. “The goal is to use whatever tools we can to help boost these populations,” explained Dresser. She cautioned, however, that while cloning could help conservation, “no single approach is going to solve the incredibly complex problem of disappearing wildlife.”

That complexity has helped spark controversy in India, where in 2004 scientists announced ambitious plans to clone the highly endangered Asian lion. Fewer than 300 are believed to exist, and the small group of Indian researchers said they wanted to spend $1 million to clone and restore the big cats.

The announcement drew criticism from conservation groups, who said the project raised false hopes. One problem, they noted, is that even if scientists succeeded in cloning the lions, their natural habitat is rapidly being lost to farms and development. “We spend millions of rupees trying to clone…lions, but where will we put them?” Belinda Wright of the Wildlife Protection Society of India asked reporters.

In addition, experts predict that cloning a lion won’t be easy. The vast majority of cloning experiments end in failure, they say, noting that it took more than 300 tries to create Dolly the sheep. Adding to the challenge is the fact that every mammal species has its own biological quirks when it comes to reproduction. Cloning a dog proved far more difficult than cloning a cat, for instance, because of some details of its reproductive biology.

In India, lion cloning advocates predict those technical problems will be overcome. So far, however, no scientist has succeeded in cloning one of the big cats. For the moment, weighing the potential risks and benefits of making copies of the King of Beasts remains a mostly hypothetical debate.

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Across Africa, the King of Beasts is in trouble. In the late 20th century, wildlife preserves were created to curtail safari hunting, but the African lion population continues to decline. Their numbers have dwindled from 100,000 in the early 1990s to no more than 30,000 and as few as 16,000 today. What could be endangering the King of Beasts?

In the mid-1990s a mysterious disease spread rapidly through the lion population in Tanzania and Kenya. An investigation revealed that the big cats had contracted canine distemper from jackals and hyenas that were picking it up from dogs in nearby villages. The spread of the disease was quickly halted and today lion numbers in the affected areas are back to previous levels.

If canine distemper was halted, why have lions continued to decline? An ever-expanding human population has led to competition between herders and lions for land and food. Lions living at the edge of the preserves sometimes stray from protected areas in search of easy prey. The Maasai and other ranchers will often kill them to protect their livestock and source of livelihood.

But as NATURE’s The Vanishing Lions shows, Africans are now struggling to reverse the decline. Everyone from scientists and conservationists to Maasai herders and ranchers is working together to find solutions. Travel to Kenya’s famed Serengeti Plains, the wildlife-rich Laikipia Plateau, and elsewhere in Africa as NATURE explores efforts to allow people and lions to coexist and prosper.

To order a copy of The Vanishing Lions, visit the NATURE Shop.

Online content for The Vanishing Lions was originally posted April 2006.

The big cats of Africa have always been favored subjects of wildlife filmmakers. But as little as 15 years ago, no one had captured the unforgettable image of a leopard in its ghostly nocturnal stalk. Viewers had never seen intimate portrayals of the sleek and elusive serval, or witnessed the nighttime romps of the beautiful black-eared caracal.

The team of Owen Newman and Amanda Barrett filled those gaps with a series of spectacular breakthrough films in the 1990s. Among the first to apply infrared light and night vision goggles to wildlife studies, they combined technology with intrepid determination and a strong dose of luck, illuminating the cats we hardly knew, and giving us fresh insights into those we only thought we knew, such as lions and cheetahs.

Join the team of Newman and Barrett as they pursue unique and amazing footage of Africa’s five most spectacular cats: cheetahs, leopards, servals, caracals, and lions in Chasing Big Cats. 

To order a copy of Chasing Big Cats, please visit the NATURE Shop.

Online content for Chasing Big Cats was originally posted November 2004.

Africa’s Namib Desert is a harsh and unforgiving place, home to shifting, barren sand dunes, jagged mountains, and gravel plains. The vast desert — whose name means “place of no people” in the local Khoikhoi language — covers nearly 100,000 square miles and stretches along some 1,200 miles of the coast of western Namibia, in southern Africa. In the ancient 55-million-year-old desert, the world’s oldest, rainfall is scarce (less than 2 tenths of an inch per year in the west), and there is no surface water and just a few dry riverbeds.

And, yet, surprisingly, the Namib is a living place, home not just to the big cats featured in The Desert Lions, but to an impressive array of plants and animals. In the Namib live gemsboks (oryx) and springboks, ungulates that can avoid drinking water for weeks at a time by ceasing to sweat, plus a large number of small rodents and reptiles and a stunning diversity of beetles — which, like desert vegetation, have devised techniques to condense water out of the western desert’s distinctive, eerie, and life-giving morning fog. The fog is produced when the cool waters of the offshore Benguela Current interact with the warmer air over the desert. The Benguela also moderates the desert’s climate; temperatures in the searing, arid desert rarely rise over 104 degrees Fahrenheit (but can drop to near freezing at night).

Field studies by Dr. Flip Stander have shown that the lions of the Namib, which live mostly at the northern edge of the desert, can survive in extreme conditions, feeding on gemsbok, ostriches, and seals captured along the Skeleton Coast. They breed rapidly and quickly spread into new, suitable, habitats.

Like the lions and other desert inhabitants, the native Herero and Himba peoples have also adapted to the difficult conditions. Namibia’s 100,000-odd Herero once lived a nomadic life, but have now settled down to breed cattle and subsist on the milk and meat of their animals; many also depend on horticulture. Since European contact in the 19th century, the Herero have also adopted more modern attire.

Although the Herero have embraced a more modern existence, the Himba, who are descendents of a group of Herero herders who moved to northwestern Namibia, still hold on to their traditions. Himba men and women wear little clothing, aside from a loin cloth or a mini-skirt made of goat skin. Both men and women (who are noted for their elaborate hairstyles) rub their bodies with a mixture of ochre, butter fat, and an aromatic resin of herbs from the omuzumba shrub. The concoction gives their skin a distinctive reddish hue — and, more importantly, protects their skin from the harsh sun.

Himba have access to government-sponsored clinics and schools, but over the course of a year, the nomads move from one homestead to another, to find good grazing grounds for their animals. Because water is scarce, the Himba adapt their movements in concert with rainfall patterns. For example, when the rains come, they move to pasturelands created by the precipitation that falls on the desert’s margins. The Himba very often graze their animals near the Kunene River — home also to many desert lions — and take water from the river to drink.

The Himba’s tribal system also helps their survival in the desert. Unlike most nomadic populations, each Himba belongs to the clan of both their mother and their father. This is advantageous in a harsh environment, because it means that every individual can rely on the resources of two families spread over a wide area, rather than on just a single clan.

A decade of research on Namibia’s desert lions by carnivore expert Dr. Flip Stander has revealed a family structure and dynamic that is unique among Africa’s lions.

Namibia currently supports a population of up to 900 lions, with about 100 to 150 lions living in the northern Namib Desert near the Kunene River, the region that is the focus of Stander’s studies.

Like other lions, the Kunene lions live in groups, or “prides,” but the harsh desert cannot support large groups of lions. Wild prey is not abundant. As a result, Namibia’s desert lions break up into smaller groups, with between 2 and 10 members, versus about 15 in other parts of Africa. Desert lions also occupy much larger home ranges of 12,000 square miles or more, versus just 50 square miles for the lions living on the Serengeti Plains of Tanzania and Kenya. The animals have also learned to be less dependent upon numbers to hunt successfully; in the Serengeti, several members of the pride will usually be involved in a kill, while desert lions rely more upon stealth and the skills of fewer animals, such as the two lionesses whose cooperative hunting prowess is featured in The Desert Lions.

Lionesses in the desert have an average litter size of 2.8 cubs, somewhat bigger than in other parts of Africa, and, in general, produce a larger number of litters, indicating a more rapid rate of reproduction. The cub survival rate is a stunning 90 percent, far in excess of that seen among other African lion groups.

Among the lions of the Serengeti, young females rarely leave their “home” pride, that of their mother. But in the desert, Stander has found, it is common for females to break away from their mother to hunt independently — as young as 18 months old, 2 years earlier than would a Serengeti lioness. Perhaps even more remarkable is the fluidity of these arrangements. A female may reunite with its mother or sisters, often only to separate once again.