So the only way we can see a lion in person is to spend thousands and thousands of dollars to travel to their natural habitat in hopes that we can be one of the lucky groups who can actually see a flash of one before returning home......
Actually if you find the right tour group you're only going to pay at most around 8,000 dollars, I used Gadventures and they do the same routes as other but it was cheaper and to me at least way more fun, and we saw lions in every national park we visited from Namibia to Kenya, we didn't go to any huge parks in South Africa though I hear it has a large population, so seeing them isn't that difficult of a thing, though I do disagree with op, the reason why animals like lions are in zoo's is for conservation efforts, you just have to make sure the zoo is a well maintained zoo and that's fairly easy, they'll have a plaque from AZA, Assocations of Zoo's and Aquariums, and they look to keep the exotic species they have a life due to breeding efforts, there are several species that where once extinct that zoos have saved from being lost forever, as for the animals that are native to the area, they keep them because they may not be able to return to the wild, they also use there animals
I do too, i would much prefer to see them where they live. But if lion viewing costs $8k, most of the people on earth will go their whole lives without seeing one.
I agree with guest, it's much better experiencing animals in their natural habitat