Typical savannah landscape in southern Africa
Lions are commonly associated with the savannah grasslands of southern and southeastern africa. They live in large prides, hunting herds of antelope and other ungulates of the grasslands. However these expansive grasslands are specific habitats to sub-saharan lions of eastern and southeastern Africa Panthera leo melanochaita. These habitats are the heartlands for lions in the modern world.
Unexpected sight of lions in desert dunes, southwest Africa
Dry forest in the Gir, India
Yet lions also survive in quite doverse habitats, such as the desert dunes of Namibia.
This would have been true for the northen subspecies Panthera leo leo in areas of the middle east and North Africa. Camels were known to be tracked by lions on isolated trails in the late 1800s. Animals were reported in the desert firnges of southern Morocco up to the 1930s and were also known in isolated forests and oases in western Algeria,
For today’s remnant population in India mostly live in the dry forests of the Gir. These forests are less productive in dry years with prey numbers falling under challnging conditions. Some lions have chosen to venture beyond the Gor,, across agirculaural land and into new but limited habotats in the coastal forests and dunes of Gujarat. Smaller populations survive in the forests of central and west Africa, in the deserts of southwestern Africa.
Northern lions also previously roamed the marshes of the middle east, the mountains of North Africa occasionally up above the snowline, down to the coastal forests of the Mediterranean.
 Mediterranean cork oak forests would seem to be an unfamiliar habitat for lions. |
 High Atlas plateau, North Africa. The last lions in Morocco were seen at high altitudes in the 1930s and 1940s. |
Reading:
Black, S. A. (2016). The Challenges and Relevance of Exploring the Genetics of North Africa’s “Barbary Lion” and the Conservation of Putative Descendants in Captivity. International Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 2016. https://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijeb/2016/6901892/abs/
Yamaguchi, N. and B. Haddane, B. (2002) “The North African Barbary lion and the Atlas lion project,” inInternational Zoo News, vol. 49, pp. 465–481, 2002