Madikwe Game Reserve Lions

[T_Ferguson]

(01-20-2025, 02:00 AM)Rui Ferreira Wrote: May I start the first debate on this thread?
So I was watching a reel on instagram about a litter of cubs that lost their mother in Kruger ( dont remember wich pride)  and I just happend to go see the comments, and as usual there were people saying " save the cubs" " why didnt they help the mother" the usual, I am on the side that we should always not intervene when the problem isnt men made, but the " save the cubs" for some reason put me with alot of questions such as:
For example in these reserves where you dont have that much genetic diversity, or in new reserves that eventually need to get their first lions in to stabilize the ecosystem etc... couldnt for example cubs in Kruger with 0 survival chances like not having a mother etc instead of dying and being just a couple thousand calories to hyenas, vultures you name it, is it moraly wrong to use those cubs for conservation purposes? " But you gotta respect the natural selection process" I mean when you´re a little cub most of your survival isnt about how tough you can be but more so by how lucky you are..
And leaves me with other questions like, animals in zoos ( lets use lions as an example) could lions all over the world in zoos be used to populate these reserves, obviously theres that thing that most cant hunt, more or less is the truth because there should be ways of testing that, but lets they cant ( wich we have examples that they can but anyway) could we have a pride of lionesses and use artificial insimination from lion sperm of males in zoos to pregnate those lionesses in those prides, it would do wonders to the genetic diversity in the population, but that could only work if there was no male around because he either mate with those females and we are left without knowing who the father of those cubs really are , or he doesnt mate and decides to kill the cubs that arent his 
Either way thats just me brainstorming

Yeah.. this is something I've been thinking of a lot as well. 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).  But soon he is going to have a lot of his enclosures freed up and I know he just did a thing with the Miracle 6 Cheetah's where they took in 6 orphan Cheetah's and I know 3 of them (males) are now covered quite a bit on Wild Earth, and the other 3 went to various reserves as WILD cats.  This is the vision I think he wants where his reserve is a place where things like this happens.

I agree, this has to be part of a future plan or there will be no wild cats in Africa in our lifetimes. Reply