Iconic predator — a nursing mom — seen on park camera for first time in 6 years
As night settled across a national park in the Central African Republic, an iconic predator still nursing cubs walked through the trees. Unbeknownst to her, a nearby trail camera snapped a photo as she passed.
It turned out to be the park’s first such sighting in six years.
Conservationists set up trail cameras throughout Bamingui-Bangoran National Park as part of an ongoing effort to survey and monitor the park’s wildlife, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) said in an Aug. 7 news release. Later, the team collected the cameras and reviewed the footage.
One photo from April caught their attention. The nighttime photo showed an adult female lion and was the first time a lioness had been seen at the park since 2019, WCS said.
“Close examination of the image suggests the lioness is lactating, indicating the presence of cubs — a promising sign of reproduction and population resilience,” the organization said.
“For years we have recorded only male lions, raising concerns about whether breeding females even remained in these parks,” Armand Luh Mfone, the WCS program director for the Central African Republic, said in the release. “The discovery of this lioness, especially one that appears to be nursing cubs, demonstrates that with strong protection efforts, this landscape still has the potential to support a thriving lion population.”
“This is a truly exciting and hopeful sign for lions in the region,” Luh Mfone said.
“Lions have suffered greatly due to decades of persecution,” Luke Hunter, the director of WCS’s big cat conservation program, said in the release. In and around Bamingui-Bangoran National Park, the lion population is “now estimated at only a few dozen individuals at best.”
Since 2019, WCS has managed Bamingui-Bangoran National Park under an agreement with the country’s government that will last until 2044, the organization said. Its conservation efforts have included “anti-poaching patrols,” trail camera surveys and work with neighboring communities to reduce human-animal conflicts.
WCS described the recent sighting of a lioness as a “critical” conservation milestone for the park.
Bamingui-Bangoran National Park is in the northern Central African Republic, a landlocked country bordering Cameroon, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Congo, Sudan and South Sudan.
This story was originally published August 7, 2025 at 11:30 AM with the headline "Iconic predator — a nursing mom — seen on park camera for first time in 6 years."
