Data from: Bayesian estimates of male and female African lion mortality for future use in population management

The global population size of African lions is plummeting, and many small
fragmented populations face local extinction. Extinction risks are
amplified through the common practice of trophy hunting for males, which
makes setting sustainable hunting quotas a vital task. Various demographic
models evaluate consequences of hunting on lion population growth.
However, none of the models use unbiased estimates of male age-specific
mortality because such estimates do not exist. Until now, estimating
mortality from resighting records of marked males has been impossible due
to the uncertain fates of disappeared individuals: dispersal or death. We
develop a new method and infer mortality for male and female lions from
two populations that are typical with respect to their experienced levels
of human impact. We found that mortality of both sexes differed between
the populations and that males had higher mortality across all ages in
both populations. We discuss the role that different drivers of lion
mortality may play in explaining these differences and whether their
effects need to be included in lion demographic models. Synthesis and
applications. Our mortality estimates can be used to improve lion
population management and, in addition, the mortality model itself has
potential applications in demographically informed approaches to the
conservation of species with sex-biased dispersal.