Density estimates of African lions in Queen Elizabeth National Park

African lions are declining across much of their range, yet robust measures of population densities remain rare. The Queen Elizabeth Conservation Area (QECA; 2400 km2) in East Africa’s Albertine Rift has potential to support a significant lion population. However, QECA lions are threatened, and information on the status of lions in the region is lacking. Here, we use a spatially explicit search encounter approach to estimate key population parameters of lions in the QECA. We then compare home range sizes estimated from our models to those from a radio-collaring study implemented a decade earlier. We recorded 8243.5 km of search effort over 93 days, detecting 30 individual lions (16 female and 14 male) on 165 occasions at a rate of 2 lion detections/100 km2. Lion density in the QECA was 2.70 adult lions/100 km2(SD=0.47), while mean abundance was 71 individuals (SD=11.05). Worryingly, the movement parameter for male lions was 3.27 km and 2.22 km for females, suggesting >400%, and >1...