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| | Mail & Guardian Online: |
 | | Lions, cheetahs and lynxes share certain characteristics with many other threatened creatures: they are large, they are carnivores, they are fussy about where they live, they need a large range, they have small litters and a long gestation period, and they are hunted. |
 | | The bitterest irony is that animal populations are dwindling and extinctions accelerating despite a 30-year campaign to establish parks and wildlife reserves in all the great wilderness areas of the world: the rainforests, savannahs, estuaries, deserts, mountains, grasslands, wetlands and so on. |
 | | But Mark Collins of the United Nations world conservation monitoring centre in Cambridge says he cannot accept the idea that the lion might survive only in safari parks, or that zoos could be the last resort as the saviours of species. |
| www.mg.co.za /Content/l3.asp?o=41857 (2170 words) |
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