The Barbary Lion Really Go Extinct

Barbary, or Atlas, lions once roamed throughout the deserts and mountains of northern Africa, ranging from Morocco to Egypt, far to the north of their sub-Saharan relatives. The largest lion subspecies, Barbary lions were once upon a time admired for their size and dark manes (although those two qualities have been greatly exaggerated and almost mythologized over time) and were kept by the royal families of Morocco and other north African nations. 

Why does it matter exactly when the Barbary lion went extinct? Black and his co-authors say this research has relevance for the conservation of the rest of Africa's lions. Small, fragmented populations in certain regions could require additional attention to ensure their survival. The authors also advocate against declaring any species as extinct too quickly. Doing so, they say, could remove any incentive to keep looking for and conserving that species, thereby pushing it into the same fate as the Barbary lion.

 Regardless of when it happened, Barbary lions are without a doubt extinct in the wild, but could they still exist in captivity? Several zoos around the world claim to have Barbary lions in their collections. In all likelihood most if not all of these big cats are not real Barbary lions but rather hybrids with lions from sub-Saharan Africa. "I seriously doubt pure north Africa lions occur in captivity anymore," Luke Hunter, president of Panthera, the conservation organization dedicated to big cats, told me last October when I first started investigating this story.

Whether or not the remaining Royal lions are pure, efforts are underway to both preserve their genetic diversity and prevent inbreeding. Black says controlled breeding—and a studbook that he helped create—will ensure that the population will remain healthy. "Several additional zoos in Europe have taken on collections of these animals, and new breeding pairs have been established in the hope of increasing the population from the current level of approximately 80 animals," he says. "New cubs have been born in the past two years, so momentum for conserving the population has been reestablished after a lull of 20 years."

We may never know the truth about when the Barbary lion disappeared, but it's possible that the story of the Barbary lion is still being written.