Can We Save Lion Across the World. - The Lion Whisperer

The two beautiful boys. Yeah, naughty boy. Hello boys. Right, good morning everyone. Today we're going to be taking George and Yame out for an enrichment walk and yeah, recently it was World Lion Day and my foundation and I did a collaboration just celebrating the day and I think that that is important. However, I think we also need to be thinking about lions and their habitat or lack thereof, you know, more frequently than just on one particular day. Here is George, he's just arrived. George and Yame are very excited, yes. Right, we'll be taking the boys to a new camp after the walk. They're tired of being next to Thor's group. Okay, Yame, give me some spice buddy, yeah. Nice, George. These two are such a pleasure to load. We really have to enjoy them while they're still young. Oh, George, hello beautiful. Okay, let's go. Yame, let's go big boy. Yame, what are you doing? Full of it today. I don't know what he's doing. I know what he's doing. Come, Georgie. Oh, let's go. Come. Oh, it's drying up here. This was all underwater but we are, oh it's a little sloshy here, we are at the end of our winter. This is normally completely dry. Hey, come. Yame. Maybe this is going to be a short walk. Literally going to offload and load them up again. They continue being naughty cats. That's a good boy. At least someone's listening. Georgie. Boy, I think these boys are out of practice. Hey, I think you're out of practice. Come, let's go. Okay, just need to get into the rhythm of walking. Hello boy. Yame. He's being very naughty today. Yame's problem is Yame. Georgie, just let me know if he's coming. We're just going to continue. Okay, copy that. All right, let's go. That's my boy. All right, so sometimes you're just going to play reverse psychology with Yame and ignore him and he gets a bit nervous that we've both pushed off and he's left there all on his lonesome and that seems to have worked. Okay, we can get on with our walk. All right, it's hard navigating through here. All this sloshy. Oh, I'm sinking here. Let's go this way, boy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There we go. Here comes Yame. Probably going to be coming through here at a rate of knots. Let's see. Here he comes. Oh, that's what it's all about, eh, boy? Yes. Go, boy. Naughty. Naughty Yame. Now he's decided to take a number two. It's always, guys, always the days that I say to George, George, today's going to be a quick walk because I need to pee somewhere. It's like, uh-uh. These lions have other things in mind. Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa. It's a short walk today, my boy. Short walk. Nice. Scrape up on those trees. Up or down? Up. Want to go up? Let's go up. Beautiful, fresh morning. As I said earlier, even though it's fresh, there's a little bit of a warmer feel in the air, and you can feel this is the warm front before the cold front. I believe the temperatures are going to get pretty frosty in the next few days, and we may even get some snow here. That should be quite interesting. We are certainly not geared up for snow, that's for sure. The two beautiful boys. Yeah, naughty boy. All right, so it's looking like it's just going to be a walk with George and myself. Yame has doubled back, and he's decided that he wants to go and hassle George by the car. And yeah, sometimes these cats do these strange things. They get it into their head that there's something there that's better for him than out here walking around in the lovely bush, the beautiful sun. Anyway, I'm not Yame, I'm not in his head, and he must do what he feels is good for him. But yeah, I'm here with George, and just quickly, I don't want to harp on too much about it, but something struck me this past World Lion Day. And as I said earlier, I mean, I'm not doing a video specifically about World Lion Day. I did do a Lion Heart Collective with my foundation, and I hope that every one of you participated in it and told my foundation and myself what lions mean to you, the connection that you have with them, and why there is that connection. Because, you know, if you think about lions throughout the world, these are iconic animals that are so symbolic of so many different things, bravery, strength, you know, power, majesty, you name it. And if you go around the world, as I have, and look in every major city, you always tend to see that lions are the representation of, you know, the protection and or, you know, the royalty of a city. It's incredible. It's not tigers, it's not leopards, it's not jaguars, it's lions. I go from Barcelona to Trafalgar Square in the UK, to places in Russia, to places in South America, and everywhere in a major city or even smaller cities, you come across statues of lions. And there's obviously a reason for this, guys. Lions are iconic and symbolic, and they mean different things to different people. I know what lions mean to me because they've been such an integral part of my life. I have no problem saying that lions helped change my life. They changed the trajectory of my life. Town of Napoleon, if I didn't meet those two lions, I have no idea where I would be today. I'm not sure I'd even be talking to you as an audience. Lions occupy less than 20% of their former habitat, in Taurigres. So you know, I met those two lions, call it destiny, and they really did change my life. I'd always loved lions before that, but in a different way. It was probably in the way that a lot of people would look at these majestic animals. We'd look at them and say, wow, just look at that beautiful golden mane and the size of them, big cat, power. Male lions are very different looking to their female counterparts. They've got these big manes, they're bigger. So these are all the things that come to mind. But obviously when you get to know a lion intimately on the level that I know lions, they start to mean different things to you. So yeah, lions have become an integral part of my life, as many of you will know who follow my channel. And they are really important to me as a species. What struck me, and this is what I was getting at, is this World Lion Day. I've been working with lions for almost 30 years. I couldn't believe I was saying that. It's almost 30 years. I started working with lions when I was 23 years of age, and now I'll be 52 in a month or two's time. So in two months time I'll be 52, and next year I'll be 53. So 29 years working with lions very closely. But what I'm really trying to get at, and I'll get at it right away, is the fact that when I started working with lions back when I was 23 years of age, we used to have this statistic drummed into our heads about the fact that lions had lost between 90 to 95 percent of their historic range. They had been extirpated from these areas. And although lions do exist and have some strongholds throughout Sub-Saharan Africa, in many regions where lions once existed, they're gone, no more. And that struck me back then as being quite horrific and quite sad. Now that was almost 30 years ago, and I heard numbers being thrown about of that there were only in the region of 20 to 25 000 lions left in the wild. Guys, I must remind you this was almost 30 years ago. And so in preparation for all the World Lion Day kind of ongoings, I decided to just do a little bit of a deep dive into what the stats are saying now. And I have heard things over the past couple of months, years, about lions are doing better here or worse off there because of human-lion conflict. But the number that continually gets thrown about is lions are estimated to be between, guess the number, 20 to 25 000. Which means in 30 years, not much has changed. In 30 years of me working with lions, not much has changed, guys. They're still throwing the same numbers out. So in other words, did we have it wrong or are we just doing enough to keep those lion numbers stable in a few areas? Bearing in mind that the figures over a hundred years ago, or just on a hundred years ago, figures were thrown about of lions being estimated to be in the region of about 200 000. 200 000 lions were estimated to be walking this planet a hundred years ago. That is crazy. And now we sit here 20, 26 and they're talking about the same numbers. They're talking about there's estimated to be between 20 and 25 000 lions in the wild. Habitat and rewilding of habitat is the keyword or the catchphrase or the word that's been bandied about these days. It's rewilding. And rewilding doesn't mean rewilding lions, it just means rewilding habitat. And if we can do that, guys, oh my gosh, that would put a smile on my dial and it would make the future look really, really bright. But at the moment, it's a typical human nature. We tend to want to divvy up everything and put up fences and call it mine. And what we've been trying to say to people here, especially in this area by Denneking, is just guys, we need to get over this sense of entitlement and ownership. We need to stop saying this is mine, mine, mine, mine, mine and start saying this is ours, ours, ours, ours, ours. Lift up the fences, get rid of the fences, let the animals do the roaming and let them decide where they want to go and just give them more and more and more space. All right, boy, we're waiting for that naughty brother of yours. Hello, my boy. Why are you being so naughty today? Very odd behavior today from Mr Yum. They had a little scrap now that I didn't catch on camera. But you can see he's avoiding George a bit. Yeah, George can be a bit of a bully, which is really interesting, because he's actually a sweetheart. Yes, my boy, he's a good boy. Hey, Georgie, you're a good boy. Sometimes you just get very possessive when it comes to your brother. Yum is super distracted today. I don't understand what it is. Definitely hasn't been one of our most, I don't know what to call it, a walk where we are just a nice little group together. Tight, tight knit together. What do you say, big boy? Hey, what do you say? What do you say? Keeping a close eye, close watch on Yum Yum. Hello, my boy. All right, guys, that's it for today's video. I hope you enjoyed that short little walk with George and Yummy and all the little bits of info that you get in these videos. If you did, like and share. And until next time, from me, Kevin, and all the lions here at the sanctuary, bye.