The Barbary Lion

Alrighty! We have another post on a critically endangered animal! This one, the Barbary Lion, has been extinct in the wild since 1922!!! How some poor animal goes that long without any public notices or any activism is beyond me! This creature is simply astounding! It was originally found in Northern Africa, but serious hunting of this up to 600 lbs for males and 400 lbs for females creature endangered the creature to the point where the last one was shot in the Atlas mountains in Africa in 1922. Fortunately, though previously though extinct, several of these majestic creatures have popped up in zoos and circuses around the world. Unfortunately, there is some dispute as to whether these lions are pure-breeds or not.

An organization called WildLink, has teamed up with Oxford University to create a project called the Barbary Lion Project, where they will take these half-breed lions and selectively breed them to bring the Barbary Lion back! It sounds complicated and somewhat horrible, but I assure you that the animal rights activist in me finds that it’s more important to bring back a species if there is a possibility over anything else!

The program has been somewhat a success. Recently, six Barbary lions were released to Aquila Private Game Reserve in South Africa, two hours from Cape Town, to restore the Cape lion. As of March of 2010, two cubs of a Barbary lion couple have been moved to the Texas zoo in the city of Victoria.

But WildLink has become unavailable and the project is on hold until funds can be raised!!!! If you would like to donate, email “SaveTheLions@aol.com” OR go to this website: http://www.bigcatrescue.org/donate.php.