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Bauer, H.; Chapron, G.; Nowell, K.; Henschel, P.; Funston, P.; Hunter, L.T.B.; MacDonald, D.W.; Dloniak, S.M.; Packer, C.
Reply to Riggio et al.: Ongoing lion declines across most of African warrant urgent action
2016  Pnas (113): 1-1

In dismissing the conclusions of our paper, "Lion (_Panthera leo_) populations are declining rapidly across Africa, except in intensively managed areas," Riggio et al. (1) misrepresent our treatment of specific survey sites and raise erroneous objections to our overall statistical approach. They question our data from two sites in East Africa: Masai Mara and Katavi. However, our Masai Mara analysis was based on the best available data for the reserve as a whole: A 12-mo study in 1991-1992 and Dloniak's 2005 survey, cited by Packer et al. (2), that replicated the earlier methods and indicated a 40% decline in 14 years. Kiffner et al.'s 2005 survey in Katavi (3) responded to conservation concerns over declining ecosystem health (4) and reported a lion density of only 15% of estimated carrying capacity (168 lions compared with an expected 1,100) (2). Our paper acknowledges the imprecision inherent in the Katavi time series of ground surveys, which were recently used to report a significant decline in lion numbers from 1995 to 2010 (5). Our Bayesian analysis fully considers uncertainty resulting from observation and process errors, and our conclusions do not depend on the Katavi time series: Excluding Katavi only reduces the probability of a one-half decline in three lion generations in East Africa from 37% to 32%.

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