Madikwe Game Reserve Lions

[Rui Ferreira]

(01-20-2025, 04:05 AM)RookiePundit Wrote: I think lions as a species are not such a priority and it would be more doing it because of them being charismatic megafauna species, there will be species that need help more and where every individual counts, but are not as popular

Yes I fully agree with this take but we do also know or atleast thats what I think that when starting a reserve from the zero like we see in Mozambique or what happend in Madikwe is much easier to control the population of herbivores that also need help in getting their numbers up like Giraffes and in general its easier in general to not risk them going extinct compared to territorial predators like lions/hyenas even cheetahs, obviously in cases such as elephants or rhinos you have the big risk of poaching but thats something impossible to control at what densisty it happend atleast in my view wich Im seeing from a simple point of view I must admit

(01-20-2025, 02:35 AM)T_Ferguson Wrote: I actually think this is the direction that Kevin Richardson is going to go in with his foundation when all of his lions finally pass (his lions live to 20+ it seems).

Yup I´ve heard that aswell, I admire what he does to the animals and I think he is such an example , I cant help thinking that his male lions are not castrated and we´ve seen videos of them hunting and showing signs of being capable of doing well in the wild, obviously Im not saying that we should just leave one of those males in a reserve like Kruger with other males born in the wild not at all, but again and Im really focusing on newly made reserves and the introduction of animals in such closed ecosystems, but lets say we have a pride of females in a part of the reserve and another pride in an area where they arent able of interact ( still same reserve) to really start things how out of the picture would it be to make a selection of what males would thrive the most in the wild and put two males in each part of the reserve only with females and no other males that might kill or seriously injure them , thats a question that I´ve been having for quite a while, after those males raise cubs into adulthood that were fully born in the wild you could either reform those males and put them in a sanctuary and/or open the borders for the whole reserve and let the prides interact for some genetic fresh air, or use those two mini reserves inside of just one as like a breeding program that creates wild born lions ( and when I say lions we could say about other animals too but this forum is about lions ) and populate other reserves Reply