Forty-nine lion statues went for prices ranging from around 1,100 dollars to over 13,000.

"We've raised in the region of 12,680,000 Kenya Shillings," auctioneer Philip Coulson told participants as he wrapped up the bidding in the early hours of Saturday.

Each statue is the work of a different artist, and one has Obama's face painted on its haunch. The US president's father was Kenyan.

Another has a mane made from recycled flipflops, yet another sports chains and is bright pink -- the colour of the packets containing the poison most commonly used to kill lions.

The statues, on display in the Kenyan capital for the past two months, were aimed at highlighting the plight of the big cats whose numbers have been decimated in the past two or three decades.

Lions in Kenya now number just over 2,000, according to the Kenya Wildlife Service. That compares to 2,749 lions seven years ago and some 30,000 back in the 1970s.

Increasing human population and greater numbers of livestock have sparked habitat competition that often results in herders spearing or poisoning lions who prey on their stock.

Kenya's lion population has been dropping by an average 100 lions each year since 2002, the Kenya Wildlife Service said earlier this year.

"It's in the past 20 years that the drop has been most significant," said Daniel Woodley, who is in charge of the Tsavo West National Park for KWS.

Rising livestock populations, exacerbated by a series of failed rainy seasons, means cattle encroach on parks due to lack of pasture.

Kenya's human population, which stood at 22 million in 1988, has almost doubled and is expected to double again by 2050, pushing people to settle in areas they would previously have rejected as barren.

"If farmers have poor crops they will go after the same prey as lions do," Woodley said.

Efforts to save lions are relatively new and it is only recently that the animals have been considered vulnerable.

"In the last 20 years easily 70 percent of the population has been knocked out and that's a conservative estimate," Woodley said.

Unless the current rate of decline is checked, the lion will be extinct in Kenya by 2030.

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