No, This Man Did Not Kill a Lion in East Africa
The Claim
A photo depicts a man who killed a lion in East Africa, sustaining wounds after fighting the lion with his bare hands for 90 minutes while protecting his family.
News posted on
Emerging story
Social media users have shared a photo purporting to show a man who killed a lion sustaining wounds after fighting the lion, which was featured in another image included in the posts, for 90 minutes with his bare hands while protecting his family.
Misbar’s Analysis
Misbar has investigated the claim and found it to be misleading.
The image does not depict a man who killed a lion in East Africa.
Man Mauled by Lion in April 2022
A Google Image Reverse Search revealed that the image is from April 2022. It depicts a man being attacked by a lion, which was later killed by Uganda Peoples Defence Forces soldiers after the animal had spent days killing and eating people's livestock in villages in the western Uganda district of Kagadi.
The image depicts one of the lion's victims receiving first aid in the Mpeefu sub-county, Kagadi district, according to local news websites.
The Lion Shot Dead After Killing Livestock
According to local media, the lion was killed during a joint operation involving Uganda police, the Uganda Police Force, and the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA). According to the same reports, the lion killed the villagers' livestock, which included goats, cattle, and pigs.
According to some news outlets, the residents skinned the animal and ate its meat. "The enraged villagers overpowered security, skinned the lion, and distributed its meat." "It's unclear what the villagers did with the meat," according to the article. However, the reports did not state that the lion was killed with his bare hands to protect his property, as false social media posts claimed.
“I know that lions kill people’s livestock which often makes them angry, but even in Queen Elizabeth National Park, where there has been a lot of confrontation between the lions and frontline communities. I have never seen anything like it,” Dr. Gladys Kalema Zikusoka, the Conservation Through Public Health founder, told a local media outlet. “The Kagadi people do not know the number of wildlife diseases they could pick up from eating lion’s meat,” Dr. Zikusoka added.
Six lions were killed in Uganda's Queen Elizabeth National Park last year, and approximately 18 lions have been killed by humans in the last three years. Local conservationists were sympathetic to the lion's death, as lions were listed as vulnerable and on the red list of threatened species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Read More
