PROTECTED - U.S. Law Protects Lions

"How a new U.S. law protects lions in Africa" PBS NewsHour 12/21/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  African lions are getting new protections from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.  Five months after an American hunter killed an animal named Cecil in Zimbabwe, a new classification will help prohibit imports of lion trophies from Central and West Africa.  Dan Ashe, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, joins Jeffrey Brown to discuss the change.

JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):  The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed Central and West African lions as endangered, generally prohibiting importation of lion trophies from that region into the U.S.  Lions in Southern and Eastern Africa are now classified as threatened, which will allow U.S. trophy imports only under certain conditions.

The move comes five months after an American hunter killed a lion named Cecil outside a national park in Zimbabwe, and almost five years after U.S. conservation groups petitioned for greater protections for lions.

For more, I am joined by Daniel Ashe, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

And welcome to you.

DANIEL ASHE, Director, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service:  Thank you, Jeff.

JEFFREY BROWN:  Why now?  Is it right to see the killing of Cecil as a kind of game changer that galvanized public attention and now government action?

DANIEL ASHE:  Well, we have been considering the listing of the lion for more than five years.  We were petitioned under the Endangered Species Act, so that’s been our responsibility.

And we proposed listing the lion back in October of 2014, before the controversy over Cecil the lion, but Cecil and that controversy certainly have galvanized public emotions about lions and I think brings us to where we are today.

JEFFREY BROWN:  Advocacy groups have wondered what took so long.

DANIEL ASHE:  Well, we are a scientific organization.  And we’re dealing with what many scientists call the sixth mass extinction.

So we have many, many priorities, a lot of work under the Endangered Species Act.  This is one of those things.  And we have had lots of comment and lots of science to pore through.