WBRC's Lion AI Study

WAC was asked to assist in funding Wildlife Breeding Research Centre's following proposal, which we funded. They are in S. Africa and our Director Dawn Simas had just visited them. The following letter was written by Yolan Friedmann (click here to email WBRC):

We have begun the programme and are really excited about it as there is a dire need to develop this technology for the purposes of exchanging genetic material between isolated populations of lion in Africa. In this regard I would like to enquire about applying to your organisation for funding which will help to develop this programme and may be used for perfecting the technology for application to the wild prides in the North West Parks Boards Reserves in South Africa.

With the outbreaks of TB and FIV in lion populations, the number of genetically sound and "clean" lions for transfer between reserves is no longer what it used to be and most reserves are not large enough to translocate males without risking high incidences of cub mortalities, fighting and animals breaking out of the reserves to find open territory. In the past a solution to this was to shoot out older males but this is now being frowned upon and many reserves can no longer do this. Therefore, AI is becoming the most practical, least risky, and most ethical means of maintaining healthy lion populations in many reserves in Southern Africa. Therefore, the urgent need to develop the least invasive and most effective means of applying the technology.

Our project is unique as we are using vasectomised "teaser" males to indicate which females are in oestrus and are ready for mating which avoids the need to induce oestrus with hormones. This is essential for working with wild lions and also allows the dominant males to remain heads of their prides and to mate the females, thereby still keeping control of the pride. Our work is also unique in that we have another programme in place (Wild Gene Recovery) which collects and banks viable genetic material from wild animals, including lions, which die in the wild, and in this way, we have collected sperm from a number of genetically valuable lions which have been shot or have died in the wild, thus developing a stock of invaluable genetic material which is now available for AI purposes.

We have already started a number of the procedures and have done two AI's last week. I am attaching a photograph (see above) of our recent work, an epididymectomy - a form of vasectomy which allows one to collect sperm at the same time - on an over-represented male. No other project, to our knowledge is doing similar work on animals in their habitat nor developing techniques of applying this technology to lions in the wild.

Finally, as indication of the quality of the work being produced by our centre, I have attached a copy of a poster on our lion work (see below) which was presented at the recent meeting of the International Embryo Transfer Society meeting in the Netherlands. The abstract was also published in their esteemed journal "Theriogenology".

Photos