Darker cells mean a higher score for this topic on that metric.
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Quick answers
Why is the lion scored below the tiger on ecological role but above on culture?
Lions structure some savanna systems; elephants and wolves outrank both as engineers or keystones in this atlas. Culture is flags, churches and film -- lions win that axis. Scores stay relative across 24 types.
What is different about Gir lions?
Asiatic lions are a single-forest population with a distinctive belly fold and a thinner mane. A disease or fire there is a subspecies event.
Did Cecil change hunting policy?
The 2015 Hwange killing spiked petitions and some airline trophy bans. Zimbabwe and US Fish and Wildlife arguments did not end trophy hunting as a system.
Are lions recovering like some wolves?
No. Most African populations are still in long decline outside a few well-funded parks. VU is not a rebound band.
What did Born Free fix in the public mind?
Elsa the lioness (1960 book, 1966 film) made rehabilitation a children story. Field lion work is pride demography and conflict, not a single tame cat.
Who runs the Serengeti numbers?
The Serengeti Lion Project (Packer and successors) produced the long pride dataset that textbooks still mine.
IUCN: Vulnerable
The lion future is a triad of climate, take and attention -- not a product roadmap.
Risk scores here track conservation pressure relative to other types. High resilience types sit in a calmer band; CR/EN types do not.
Conservation risk
Lion sits in a threatened band in this atlas (resilience 27/100). Vulnerable. African numbers fell through the 20th century; Asiatic lions persist as a single-forest relic in Gir.
Teaching snapshot as of September 2026 — not a live IUCN feed.
Safeguards
Listing and enforcement
CITES, ESA, RFMOs and national parks only work when patrols and papers move.
Site protection
A breeding lake, ice type or cavity tree cannot be replaced by a logo.
Prey and forage base
Seals, krill, ungulates, bamboo and sardines are the quiet half of the lion budget.
Disease and toxin watch
Ebola, KHV, TTX, lead and rodenticides are type-specific ceilings.
English-language science capacity
The field sites in the techDeep lens still train the next census -- they are a safeguard only if funded.
What monitoring automates first
Census and acoustics
Camera traps, radar and moorings already take hours that used to be only notebooks.
Trade-document checks
eBCD and permit databases can flag a loin or a skin faster than a paper file.
Outbreak mapping
Flu and Ebola desks now run on shared dashboards -- still needing a human closer.
Visitor flow
Ticketing and hide cameras can be scheduled; habituation ethics cannot be fully automated.
Structural shifts
Climate as habitat law
Ice, bleach and river heat are now listing factors, not background weather.
From fortress to corridor
National parks plus gene flow -- panda belts, tiger landscapes, wolf packs on roads.
Fame as a take risk
Nemo, Jaws, Koko and Cecil still move capture, fear and donations in the same year.
English science is not the range
The localLens is a reading aid. Range-state languages still hold the living animal.
Outlook
Near term
Expect more listings, more cameras and more conflict paperwork -- not a sudden best-species ending.
Medium term
Sites that keep forage and enforcement will hold; single-lake and single-forest types stay brittle.
Long view
The lion body plan will remain recognisable. The map of secure versus threatened populations will not.
Keep exploring
More in Wildlife
Tiger
Asia largest cat — subspecies maps, 1973 Project Tiger, and roughly 4,000 remaining wild animals still frame a century of recovery arithmetic.
Overall 62 🐘African bush elephant
The atlas type is the bush elephant -- an ecosystem engineer whose ivory ban (1989) and split from forest elephants still structure African conservation.
Overall 61 🐺Gray wolf
A Holarctic pack hunter whose 1995 Yellowstone return and older Leopold ethics still structure predator politics.
Overall 78 🐼Giant panda
A bamboo specialist whose WWF logo, Wolong quake and 2016 IUCN downlist from EN to VU made a recovery into a brand.
Overall 41 🐻Polar bear
A marine bear whose seal-and-ice budget made Churchill, Knut and climate models into one public animal.
Overall 56 🦍Gorilla
The atlas type is the western gorilla -- a knuckle-walking ape whose Fossey-era mountain cousins and Koko lab fame split one public name.
Overall 45 🐋Blue whale
The largest animal whose 1966 IWC protection, 1982 moratorium and still-thin Antarctic recovery define a hunted giant.
Overall 65