Tech warns villagers of nearby lions to cut livestock losses

Programme started after people retaliated for predator attacks by poisoning half the area’s lions

(Andrew Liu)

By Keletso Thobega for Midweek Sun

An innovative system using cloud computing and mobile phones warns people when lions are approaching, helping them move their livestock to safety and cutting retaliation against predators.

Predators sometimes cause communities harm not only through injury to humans, but by killing their livestock.

Botswana’s government spends large amounts of money to compensate victims of predator attacks, and there are many cases of predator human persecution, where people act on risks posed to human life and livestock, as well as habitat loss and loss of natural prey from game meat and poaching.

Andrew Stein, founder and director of CLAWS Conservancy Botswana, a community-based lion conservation programme in the Seronga area along the northern boundary of the Okavango, demystified the notion that locals in wildlife-dense areas kill animals mindlessly, saying that they only take such desperate measures when their lives or their livestock are at risk.

Stein explained that they put satellite tracking collars on the lions and had the villagers give the lions local names to foster a connection.

“The collars transmit the locations of the lions to a cloud-based formula that calculates the distance from the lions to each of the villages, homesteads and cattle posts, then delivers an SMS to anyone that the lion is approaching.

“Once the warning is received the respondent can take preventative actions like kraaling their cattle and building small fires to deter lions from attacking the cattle,” he said.

Stein started the programme in response to devastating poisoning events that targeted lions in 2013 and eradicated 50 percent of the regional lion population in that single year.

“We began our outreach campaign, not to prosecute those that illegally used poison, but to sympathise with people who were losing their livestock to the point where they felt desperate to kill all lions indiscriminately,” he said.

Wildlife conservation will only succeed if locals are benefiting or at least not harmed in the process, Stein continued. “So, for example, if lions are not killing people’s cattle then they are less likely to want to kill lions,” he said.

“It is very difficult to have people helping to conserve lions, but many people are interested in receiving alerts when lions are approaching - over 120 participants currently.”

He said that there is significant interest in joining their communal herding programme.

“So far we have nearly 700 cattle from 30 owners participating from Eretsha Village, representing 50 percent of the village herd. Now, these people likely would say that they joined the programme for the health benefits for their cattle - vaccinations, treatments for infections, feeding of supplements, better market access for their beef and assistance with protection against predators.

“If they are participants they must agree not to kill lions, so in a way their participation is indirectly conserving lions and improving rangelands for wildlife. Thus far poisoning has stopped completely, the lion population is at pre-poisoning levels and the communities have tools to address conflict.”

They have also started the first communal herding programme in Botswana, through which they have formed a community committee to hire local herders, who are trained in basic veterinary care for treating infections, wounds and vaccinations.

The cattle are put in a predator proof kraal at night that is moved weekly to foster rotational grazing to restore rangelands and reduce overgrazing.

This article is reproduced here as part of the African Conservation Journalism Programme, funded in Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe by USAID’s VukaNow: Activity. Implemented by the international conservation organization Space for Giants, it aims to expand the reach of conservation and environmental journalism in Africa, and bring more African voices into the international conservation debate. Read the original story here.