Overall the cats' population is estimated to have declined by 30 to 50 percent over the past 20 years.
The African lion is classified as vulnerable on the 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. (Read "Endangered Species List Expands to 16,000.")
In West Africa there are now thought to be fewer than 1,500 lions left, meeting the Red List criteria for "regionally endangered."
Kristin Nowell of IUCN's cat-specialist group says in western and central Africa lions have lost some 80 to 90 percent of their historic range.
Gus Mills, a senior researcher with South Africa National Parks, says that the main trouble for the lions is that their roaming area has become so cramped.
"We are going to have to find ways of expanding their living room," he said.
"The only way is to identify areas surrounding wildlife reserves where it will be possible for people and lions to coexist, and then to work at ways of bringing this about.
"There cannot be hard and fast rules, because circumstances differ from place to place and country to country. But where possible, we must see if we cannot get a more mutually beneficial relationship going between lions and people," Mills said.
Lion Safety
The key to success, Mills says, would be to help communities see lions not as a liability but as something that can secure an income in the form, for example, of ecotourism or sustainable hunting practices.
He cautions that people will have to learn safety precautions, such as to put their livestock inside enclosures at night.
Mills also says that a managed plan for killing lions that become a danger to people or regularly attack livestock is better than indiscriminate hunting or poisoning.
But some experts fear it may no longer be possible to get lion-friendly projects going in densely populated areas, such as those adjoining South Africa's Kruger National Park.
Southern and eastern Africa are home to the biggest lion population, with between 21,000 and 35,000 of the animals.
In southern Tanzania (see map) more than a hundred people are attacked by lions every year.
And in the area surrounding Nairobi National Park in Kenya farmers seeking revenge for livestock attacks have killed an estimated 40 lions over the past four years.
Mills says another option is to look at creating corridors between protected lands as a way of expanding the animals' ranges.
The Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park, now in the process of being formed, would link the Kruger park with Zimbabwe's Gonarezhou National Park and Mozambique's Limpopo Park.
Such a project would allow animals, including the lions, to expand their range and use traditional migratory routes that are now blocked by fences.
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