A lion was shot dead in Kenya today after attacking a man, while trackers in South Africa searched for a lion whose own escape from a park prompted appeals to wildlife officials to relocate it rather than kill it.
The two cases of African lions on the loose highlight the difficult balance between protecting people and conserving lions, whose numbers have declined dramatically over the past century because of unregulated hunting, a loss of habitat and growing conflict with livestock herders.
Concern about the threatened species intensified last year when an American dentist killed a lion named Cecil in a hunt in Zimbabwe that officials said was illegal.
The circumstances of the stray lions also fueled questions about whether to dart a potentially dangerous predator with a tranquilizer and return it to a fenced area, or kill it before it can attack people.
Such decisions depend on factors including the training of wildlife experts, their resources and whether the area where a lion is roaming is densely populated. In some cases, local residents have killed lions before officials arrived on the scene.
Wildlife officials in Kenya shot the escaped lion several times after it injured a man in the Kajiado district, 57 kilometers (35 miles) from Nairobi, the capital, said Paul Udoto, a spokesman for the Kenya Wildlife Service.
Officials had planned to capture the lion and save it from a crowd, Udoto said. But by the time officials arrived, the animal had become too agitated and dangerous, he said.
"We didn't have a chance to save the lion," he said. Another senior Kenyan wildlife official, Kitili Mbathi, blamed a faulty electrical fence for the escape of the lion from Nairobi National Park.
"The lions periodically test the fence to see if there is a charge in it, and when there is no charge sometimes they will jump over and try and get to the livestock that is being kept next door to us at the army barracks" or in other nearby animal enclosures, he said.
It was the second incident this month involving a stray lion in Kenya. On March 18, a lion mauled a pedestrian in Nairobi before being captured. Nairobi National Park, which covers 117 square kilometers (45 square miles) on the outskirts of the city, is home to endangered black rhinos, lions, leopards, cheetahs, giraffes and diverse birdlife.
The park is not entirely fenced and its wildlife is under growing pressure as the city expands.
