Mate who knows what politics are behind some of this too from either angle. Lions in new parks would also make money for those parks as well.

And as for population numbers, extreme greens always claim they are nearing extinction for any wildlife population.

People wanting to show good management claim the numbers are stable or improving.

My experience in India was being told and reading tiger population numbers for a number of parks. Based on censuses. Visited a couple. Some people claimed the pop'n numbers were BS.

Turned out a year later, the naysayers were right and there were serious problems with tiger populations being ONE-QUARTER of the census claims!

No wonder us tourists had trouble finding any stripes and when they were sighted were hounded by literally thousands of people in over a hundred vehicles at the time.