MinnesotaLionCenter

There are a lot of good places to see lions in South Africa. You are almost certain to see them in Kruger National Park. The Sabi Sands Conservancy is another great area. But you can find lions in a number of the smaller parks in KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo and and Mpumalanga. My favorite fun fact about lions is that they can count.

There are at least 20,000 lions left in the wild, so they still out-number captive lions -- but not by much!

I suppose if the fight were to take place in the deep ocean....

Cecil was shot illegally. The Zimbabwean guide only had permission to shoot a lion in an area in a different part of the country -- and he brought his client to a site where lions from Hwange National Park are often found. But even if Cecil had been shot legally, the client only spent $50,000 -- when the true conservation costs of shooting a fully adult lion is well over $1,000,000 -- lion conservation is expensive and sport hunting in most countries raises pennies on the dollar of the true costs of wildlife management.

This is only true in a few parts of Africa. In most places, the hunting fees are far too low to cover the costs of protecting the hunting blocks from poachers, cattle herders, etc. The hunting blocks are typically rented out to individuals with close contacts inside the range-state governments. So the government "official" gets the money rather than the government agency that pays the rangers' salaries, etc. In short, the high idealism of sport hunting fails because of rampant corruption.