Lion cubs seen on trail camera at nature reserve for first time in decades
As sunshine filtered through the trees at a national park in the Central African Republic, a mother lion walked along followed by her three cubs. Unbeknownst to the family, a nearby trail camera recorded their brief appearance.
It turned out to be the park’s first such sighting in decades.
Conservationists regularly set up and check trail cameras throughout Bamingui-Bangoran National Park as part of an ongoing effort to survey and monitor the park’s wildlife. Recently, they had a breakthrough: their first sighting in six years of a lioness — and one who appeared to be nursing.
The lioness photo, taken in April and publicly released in early August, sparked a “major” follow-up effort to survey the area in hopes of seeing cubs, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) said in an Aug. 28 news release.
“We combined satellite imagery with on-the ground field knowledge and an understanding of lion behavior to target high value real estate for a mother lion — rocky outcrops, forest corridors near savanna patches and water sources,” John Guernier, WCS’s director for Bamingui-Bangoran National Park, said in the release. “We set cameras on roads and trails leading to these spots; we avoided the possible den-sites themselves so we didn’t disturb the cubs, and we just had to hope that she would lead cubs past our cameras.”
“After weeks of waiting, our plan finally paid off,” Guernier said.
A trail camera recorded the mother lion walking past and then, roughly 30 seconds later, her trio of cubs. The video, taken July 24, shows two of the cubs following their mother into the trees directly in front of the camera where they fade from view. A third cub appears to the left of the camera and follows the same route.
The footage was the first confirmed sighting of lion cubs in the area in decades, WCS said.
Until recently, trail cameras at Bamingui-Bangoran National Park had only recorded male lions despite six years of “intensive monitoring,” WCS said. Conservationists began to worry “that breeding females — and with them, the possibility of a population recovery — had vanished from the region.”
The recent sighting of a lioness with three cubs is a “landmark discovery” and a “milestone in conservation for a population estimated to number only a few dozen individuals at best,” the organization said.
“This is the payoff of years of relentless protection and patience,” Armand Luh Mfone, the WCS program director for the Central African Republic, said in the release
But the roughly 4-month-old lion cubs face ongoing risks. “Natural threats such as disease, predation, and separation remain high during their first year of life,” WCS said. “Unlike lions that live in prides, this mother must protect her young entirely on her own.”
WCS said it plans on “intensifying patrols” of the area where the mother lion lives in hopes of helping protect the cubs.
Still, conservationists expressed excitement about the recent sighting.
“Where there is one lioness, there are almost certain to be more; and now that we know there is at least one litter, I’m sure that others will follow,” Luke Hunter, the director of WCS’s big cat conservation program, said in the release.
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 28, 2025 at 11:49 AM with the headline "Lion cubs seen on trail camera at nature reserve for first time in decades."
