Why the African Lion is endangered

Lions are facing an indirect threat from climate change called co-infection. Lions periodically face outbreaks of the disease distemper, and usually weather them with little mortality. However, distemper outbreaks in 1994 and 2001 caused massive die-offs. Researchers found that the key environmental factor in the 1994 and 2001 epidemics was the occurrence of a severe drought.
One result of this drought was that both the lions’ prey, weakened with malnutrition, became heavily infested with ticks, which in turn infested the lions as they fed. The ticks, it turned out, carried a blood parasite that rendered the less able to cope with canine distemper virus, and the combination of the two diseases killed many more lions than either disease commonly would acting on its own. Droughts such as the ones that led to deadly co-infection in lions are predicted to become more commonplace as the climate warms.
Lions are also facing many human threats such as population growth and agricultural expansion resulting in loss of natural habitat, as well as hunting, poisoning and poaching by livestock ranchers. Also human population growth is another threat to the lions because humans are encroaching upon their habitats.