A lioness and her adorable lion cubs are bringing more than just warm fuzzies to people’s hearts after being caught on a trail cam; they’re bringing hope. That’s because the trail-cam footage provides the first video evidence of an adult lion and her offspring in Bamingui-Bangoran National Park in “decades.” Bamingui-Bangoran National Park is a protected area in the Central African Republic (CAR).
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“These lion cubs are the clearest sign yet that lions are starting to reclaim their place in a critical landscape,” wrote the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) in an Instagram post sharing the trail-cam footage. “For decades, lions in the northeastern Central African Republic have been on the brink due to poaching, insecurity, and more. And since 2019, our monitoring had revealed only males, raising fears that breeding females—and with them, the possibility of a population recovery—had vanished from the region.”
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This recently changed, when WCS first announced trail cams had recorded an adult female that appeared to be lactating. After seeing evidence of a female lion, the field team saturated the area with silent infra-red video cameras. It worked. They captured long-awaited footage of three cubs trotting behind their mother.
“This is the payoff of years of relentless protection and patience,” said Armand Luh Mfone, WCS’s Director of Programs for CAR. “To see not just a lioness, but a mother raising cubs, gives hope that the ecosystem is healing.”
Watch trail-cam footage of a lioness and her three cubs here:
Header stock image by James Keith/Getty Images
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