The African lion population has fallen from 100,000 to 30,000 individuals in 50 years. Its main threat is man, due to competition for territory with livestock, habitat degradation, trophy hunting, local rituals, disease and poaching for Asian medicines. The main conservation measures are the creation of reserves, a ban on hunting, financial compensation for farmers who have fallen victim to lions, and the protection of villages by plant fences.

At the Paris Zoological Park, the northern lions have the particularity of being genetically very close to the Atlas lion, a subspecies that has been extinct since the 1950s. This lion was distinguished by a dark mane extending below the belly, probably an adaptation to harsher winters than those in the warmer regions inhabited by other sub-Saharan subspecies.

Volcan, a male individual that arrived from the Rabat Zoological Garden in 2020, possesses genetic sequences among the closest to what the Atlas lion once was