Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps she is taking to promote the up-listing of African lions to Appendix 1 of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species.

At the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) earlier this year, it was decided that lions should not be uplisted to Appendix I of the Convention. The Government supported this decision.

Based on the biological and other listing criteria under CITES, our assessment is that the entire lion population of Africa does not currently meet the criteria for inclusion in Appendix I. This is notably the case for Southern African lion populations, which have an increasing population trend.

The UK takes the conservation of lions seriously. At the CITES Conference of the Parties, the UK played an instrumental role in banning the trade in wild lion bones, which represents a key conservation concern. We also supported a broad range of decisions to support African lion conservation on a continent-wide basis.