Craig Packer, director of the Lion Research Center at the University of Minnesota spoke about lion conservation in his lecture: Lion Conservation on a Crowded Continent at the Memorial Union Tuesday.

Packer said he named his presentation due to the population growth in Africa that is expected to double by the end of the century and how difficult it could be to come up with solution so lions and humans can live sustainably together.

Packer said the first interest with lions started in the early 1900s with mass hunting from the wealthy class. The mass hunting then led to the creation of wildlife reserves.

“A number of species were recognized to being vulnerable to hunting, specifically the lion,” said Packer.

Packer said that within the last 20 years the lion population has declined by nearly 50 percent and with that comes a responsibility to create a resolution to save the lions.

“It’s going to cost a lot of money to do this and wildlife is not going to pay its own way,” Packer said.

Packer said that within a 15 year period, an estimated 900 locals have been attacked, which creates a difficulty in trying to locals on board within preserving lions. Packer said his team has studying why and how these attacks happen so frequently in order to try to assist the local governments in learning how to prevent the attacks.

Packer said that some the most effective methods he has conducted research on are methods such as fencing certain areas with large lion populations and herding lions.

“Either way you do this, its going to take a lot of time and a lot of energy.” Packer said, “so how do we pay for this?”

Packer said that the more funded national parks are, the more conserved the animals are, but at this point in time many national parks are left underfunded and unfenced leading to a decline in the lion population.

“The bottom line is that Africa is incredibly underfunded,” Packer said.

Packer said there are ways to produce money for national parks in Africa, such as photo tourism. Packer said while paying to hunt lions does generate money, the price point still doesn’t fulfill the amount of money needed to fund parks.

Packer has long been conducting research for the famous Serengeti Lion Project on lion conservation and human to lion interaction.

Packer authored the book “Into Africa,” as well as over 100 scientific articles on the behavior of lions.

The lecture is cosponsored by Agronomy, College of Agriculture & Life Sciences, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Miller Lecture Fund, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology Program, Ecology, Evolution & Organismal Biology, Iowa Cooperative Fish & Wildlife Service, Natural Resource Ecology & Management, and Committee on Lectures (funded by Student Government.)

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1“Either way you do this, its going to take a lot of time and a lot of energy.” Craig Packer said, “So how do we pay for this?” In his lecture, “Lion Conservation on a Crowded Continent.”

2 Craig Packer, head of research at the Serengeti Lion project, spoke at the MU tuesday about methods to lion preservation in africa.

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Craig Packer, head of research at the Serengeti Lion Project, spoke at the MU tuesday on his findings and solutions to preserving lion populations in africa