How do researchers know how many lions there are in the wild?

Question

we are learning about sampling in school and are using quadrats and pooters to find out how many bugs are living in our school. How do people know the amount of lions living in an area? surely its too dangerous to trap them and looking at them by site will count some twice? How are they actually counted?

Answer 1

<<How are they actually counted?>>

Surveys from aircraft can be useful on the African savannah.  I'm not sure how well that could work for lions, given that they rather like hiding away in the daytime.  What doesn't matter is a bit of mis-counting.  Nobody needs the exact answer.

Answer 2

There are quite a few ways researchers can keep track of animals, not just Lions. Its common to use radio collars and/or tags on them so they can keep track of them and also the movement of the pride. They closely monitor and study them (eating and mating habits, sickness, age, etc..), they dont have an EXACT number but this gives them a close estimate on the number of Lions surviving in the wild.