Celebrate World Lion Day!
World Lion Day is celebrated on 10 August every year. It is a special day to celebrate and raise awareness about these majestic animals as well as to find sustainable solutions to protect and save global wild lion populations from extinction.
Lions are one of the big cat species in the Panthera genus and are a member of the Felidae family. They are the second largest living big cat, after the tiger. Wild Lions currently live in India and Sub-Saharan Africa.
History of World Lion Day
World Lion Day was created by Dereck and Beverly Joubert, Botswana, in 2013. They brought together both National Geographic and the Big Cat Initiative under a single banner to help protect the world’s remaining lions. They also wanted people to know that lion populations have dramatically declined in their natural habitats and are now a vulnerable species on the ICUN’s Red List.
Lions in Zambia
Most cat species live a solitary existence, but lions are an exception. They have a complex social system, based on closely related females using teamwork to survive. An average pride consists of about 15 individuals, including five to 10 females with their young and two or three territorial males, who are usually brothers or pride mates. They are the only cats to move around in family groups and normally occupy a well defined territory.
Lions are found in all our major National Parks. They normally sleep during the day and can stay in the more remote areas of the parks, so might be difficult to see. At night you can hear their distinctive calls and roars as males defend their territory by calling to each other.
How to celebrate World Lion Day
- Why not spend a few minutes today finding out more about lions, how they live and how they are now threatened in the wild?
- You can change the profile picture pictures on your social media to a lion and share photos with your friends – #WorldLionDay.
- Check out your favourite conservation NGO’s Facebook page to see how they are celebrating World Lion Day today.
- Visit one of our National Parks to see them in the wild! If you live in Lusaka then you can also see lions at Munda Wanga Environmental Park.
