"Zimbabwe Park to Cull 200 Lions, Cites Lack of Hunters"

[MikeG]

What is the natural way that lion populations are controlled?

As with most predators, lion numbers would naturally (ie prior to losing enormous areas from their range) vary with the amount of available prey. A bumper year for wildebeeste, for instance, would mean a bumper year for lions, and therefore plenty of cubs surviving to adulthood. A failure of the rains, leading to reduced herbivore numbers, leads to fewer cubs surviving to maturity, and overall population numbers dropping off rapidly.

Hyenas eating the young,

No

or in times of drought did the males murder their offspring?

No. Lions kill (but don't eat) the offspring of a pride which they take over (one of the reasons that lion hunting has to be carefully controlled and thought through).

And can we encourage the natural method? ot have they been controlled for millenia by indigenous paople with spears and the need to have a rite of passage?

That misses the point entirely. Lion numbers across Africa are reducing catastrophically. We shouldn't be doing much to control their population, but should be doing what we can to increase supply of their prey, reduce the high level of poaching, and increase the amount of land available for them. Apex predators are a useful indicator of the health of the biomass "below" them in the food chain, and this park (which isn't a national park, but a private reserve formed from former farmland) clearly has some management issues.

 

[Reality Check]

Agreed. I got no problem with shooting Lions, but I do have a problem with shooting the biggest, healthiest males.

I cannot see the problem.
The wildlife reserve has 500 lions. Apparently it can only support 300 lions. So they are "considering either hiring marksmen to shoot some of the animals, or capturing them and donating the cats to other reserves".

In the past hunters helped to control numbers by the simple method of killing lions. Kill any lion and the numbers of lions decreases. The rate of "predation" by hunters decreases the rate of population from births. Predation is in quotes because trophy hunters do target the biggest, healthiest animals. You seem to think that would result in the lion population becoming smaller or less healthy. But consider the fact that trophy hunting has been going on for a couple of centuries with fairly modern weapons and there are no obvious reports of lion sizes decreasing.
I suspect that the selection of biggest, healthiest males also means the selection of males that have already procreated. So even if hunters killed 100% of the biggest lions, most of the next generation will still have their genetic contribution.