The morning’s game drive started as usual with a 5:00 a.m. knock at our cabin door, coffee and rusks at 5:30, and then off on the trail by 5:45. The clouds remained as they had for the past three days. It was a cool, dark morning in our section of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park.
These two little Transvaal lion cubs have full bellies from a feast their mother provided the night before. Life on the Sabie River is rich with other wild creatures that the cubs will interact with throughout their lives, but they won’t be able to fend for themselves until they are 16 months old.
Just over a century ago, there were more than 200,000 wild lions living in Africa. Today, there are only about 20,000. They are now extinct in 26 African countries and have vanished from over 90% of their historic range. Poaching, commercial hunting, and human conflict are threats that several African lion populations face. Help support African lion research and conservation by giving to Panthera.org.