Saudi Arabia to reintroduce lions after more than 100 years

• Just 900 Asiatic lions exist in India
• Part of wider rewilding programme
• Plan to be ‘world’s greatest desert reserve’

The largest nature reserve in Saudi Arabia is planning to release lions into the wild as part of a conservation effort to reintroduce 23 endangered or locally extinct species.

Andrew Zaloumis, chief executive of Prince Mohammed bin Salman Royal Reserve, said that the park is looking to reintroduce the Asiatic lion to the peninsula more than a century after the species was hunted to extinction in the region.

Ancient rock engravings suggest that the animals had been roaming freely for at least 10,000 years before they were wiped out.

The plans would make Saudi Arabia only the second country in the world with wild Asiatic lions after India, where there is a population of up to 900 in Gir Forest in Gujarat. 

Covering 24,500 square km, an area more than twice the size of Lebanon, the Royal Reserve is larger than the Yellowstone, Kruger or Serengeti national parks. 

Its 15 ecosystems reach peaks of more than 2 kilometres along the Hijaz mountains and the volcanic lava fields of the Harrat Plateau, and depths of 1,000 metres, below the deep water corals of the Red Sea.

Only 20,000 people live within this vast area, excluding the small coastal towns of Al Wajh and Duba. The reserve is already home to more than 300 species of birds and mammals and more than 300 recorded species of plants.

It has already released a number of species, including the Persian onager – an ass that resembles a donkey but which can run at 70km/h – which had been locally extinct for more than 100 years before it was reintroduced last year. In 2022, the reserve established a population of oryx, which has since grown to 86.

It also plans to reintroduce leopards, as has been previously announced, with breeding programmes underway in Taif.

    A pride of Asiatic lions in Gir National Park, India – the only place on Earth where the species exists. Image: Shutterstock

However Zaloumis said there is not yet a target date for reintroducing the lions – and the plan may prove more controversial.

“People are scared of lions,” said Zaloumis. “Sometimes, bringing predators from the outside can be very problematic.”

He said the plans are still in the consultation phase but that they have received “no pushback” from the board, of which Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is chairman.

“His Royal Highness is really well informed,” he said.

He added that the park holds meetings with local residents and tries as much as possible to recruit staff from people living within and around the park to build relationships.

Wild Asiatic lions are smaller than African lions, with shorter, darker manes and a larger tuft at the end of their tails. They live in smaller prides than their African counterparts and maintain overlapping territories.

Prince Mohammed bin Salman Royal Reserve is one of eight royal reserves in Saudi Arabia. Its ambition is to become “the greatest desert reserve in the world,” Zaloumis said.

He previously ran the iSimangaliso Wetland Park, South Africa’s first Unesco World Heritage site, for 20 years. Rewilding the park could make an outsized contribution to Saudi Arabia’s ambitious tourism targets, he said.

“If you look at the great conservation areas of the world, the Serengetis, the Kruger National Parks, the Yellowstone National Parks,” Zaloumis said, “people come to the Kruger National Park for four days and they spend two weeks in the country.”

More than 90 percent of wildlife visitors to South Africa come from Europe and North America, two markets that Saudi Arabia is targeting but has so far struggled to attract.

ISimangaliso, for instance, attracts around a quarter of a million visitors a year and, according to the World Bank, contributes $229 million to national GDP.

The Royal Reserve is located between the giga-projects of Red Sea Global, AlUla and Neom in the north of the kingdom, and Zaloumis said that facilitating connections between these sites and excursions for guests will be a major part of its long-term tourism plan. 

It hopes to build mobile campsites and work to increase visitor numbers by 2030, but Zaloumis said that is not the current priority.

“Our primary drive has been habitat restoration and rewilding,” he says. “The tourism side is coming.”

“The desert seems like an empty place,” said Zaloumis. “It’s not. Sometimes it’s the rarity of what you see that makes it all the more special.”