Smartphones, ancient tracking skills and a future for desert lions.
Community rangers in Namibia's Kunene region are combining smartphone reporting, GPS collars and inherited tracking skills to reduce conflict between farmers and desert lions, according to Positive News.
The Lion Rangers programme, created in 2018, now operates across 11 conservancies in north-west Namibia. Its rangers use smartphones, camera traps and GPS collars to give early warning when lions approach farms, while still relying on tracking skills passed down through families.
The programme responds to a shift in the region. Positive News reports that the area's lions rose from around 20 adults in 1997 to around 180 by 2015, but their wild prey has since fallen by about 72.5%, pushing the animals toward livestock. Field coordinator Benjamin Kordom joined after three lions came to his family farm in 2018. He now oversees more than 40 rangers, patrol leaders and rapid response members covering 40,000 sq km.
Rangers once recorded sightings, tracks and kills in pencil and notebooks, and records could take days to reach anyone who could act on them. Since 2021 they have used a free conservation tool called SMART on their phones, logging observations in real time or as soon as they find a data connection. Coordinator Mathilde Brassine analyzes the data and reports back to patrols and conservancies. Combined with camera traps and data from 44 collared lions, it helps Kordom direct patrols and rapid response teams. In one 18-month period, rangers covered almost 280,000 km, including 88,000 km on foot.
By 2023, human-lion conflict incidents had fallen by a third, though they have since risen, largely due to better detection and dispersal of wild prey caused by changing weather patterns, which brings lions into unfamiliar territory. Illegal lion killings have been eliminated in six of the conservancies, and Lion Rangers considers the desert lion population, now 60 individuals, stable. Some pastoralists receive SMS alerts when collared lions cross virtual boundaries, and 16 early warning towers near conflict hotspots can trigger sirens and spotlights. "You can't do conservation without including the community," Brassine said.
The technology has limits. Kordom described waiting 12 hours at supplied coordinates without seeing a lion, then finding fresh tracks and the pride by following them on foot. He is also a farmer whose herd was lost to drought. "Let's try to live together with these lions," he said.
At a Glance
- Lion Rangers began in 2018 and operates across 11 conservancies in Namibia's Kunene region.
- Rangers have used SMART software on smartphones since 2021, and 44 lions carry GPS collars.
- Illegal lion killings have been eliminated in six conservancies, according to Lion Rangers.
- Human-lion conflict incidents had fallen by a third as of 2023, but have since risen.
- Sixteen early warning towers near conflict hotspots can trigger sirens and spotlights when collared lions approach.
Sources
This brief was written by Brightside Report from the reporting linked above. Spot an error? Request a correction.