When one looks at Namibia’s Skeleton Coast National Park in pictures on the internet, one won’t think about being stalked and ambushed by lions, but that can happen now. That’s why there’s an invisible fence that will keep lions and visitors safe.
“What do you mean invisible? Will it be safe?”
Yeah, I also furrowed my brows when I read it.
Known as a geofence, created by Namibia’s Ministry of Environment, Forestry, and Tourism and the nonprofit Desert Lion Conservation Trust (DLCT). It’s meant to track lions that approach a 40-kilometer stretch of beach around Torra Bay—a popular fishing and camping area.
So, each time a lion that wears a satellite collar crosses the geofence, the system keeps track of the animal’s GPS coordinates and sends automatic alerts to the DLCT’s lion rangers and managers of the local campsite. Then, the area will be closed to visitors. It’s pretty safe, though not perfect. But more one that later.
The officials began implementing this geofence after some potentially dangerous incidents involving lions and people. Some time ago, a group of recreational anglers got too close to a lioness on a beach near Torra Bay, and the animal charged their vehicle.
The group were unharmed, fortunately, but since the lion’s presence is growing on the Skeleton Coast, such interactions may increase, hence the safety precautions.
Lions living on coast
Now, these lions aren’t the special type that only live on Namibia’s coast or something like that. They do live in the Namib Desert, with a history of feeding on marine species, such as Cape fur seals, beached whales, or sea birds; and they are the only known lions to target marine prey, but they’re just your run-off-the-mill desert lions.
Such hunting temporarily stopped in the 1980s, unfortunately, as the lions abandoned the coast after local farmers wiped out most of the population.
In 2002, the lions returned. A sign that the population was recovering. Though around this time, they weren’t hunting marine prey. Lion ecologist and founder of DLCT Philip Stander was worried that the population had lost the knowledge and instinct to hunt their previous prey.
Within the last eight years, researchers have kept close watch over three orphaned lionesses, known as Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie. The three have led a coastal hunting revival on the beaches around Torra Bay, which was of course good news to the ecologists.
But the resurgence brought along risks, like the one which charged the angler’s car. It’s unknown whether it was one of the three or another lion known as Xpl-108.
The lion population was struck with a drought that decimated the park’s mountain zebras, springboks, oryxes, and ostriches in 2015. Therefore, they started to find another source of food in the same year. To replace these dietary staples, the young lionesses turned to marine birds, mainly cormorants, flamingos, and red-billed teals.
Making a comeback
It was in 2018 that DLCT scientists finally spotted the three lionesses hunting fur seals—the first lions to have done it in four decades. In a diet study which the scientists had done for 18 months, Stander observed that marine foods, particularly cormorants, seals, and flamingos, accounted for 86% of the lionesses’ diet.
DLCT’s project coordinator Félix Vallat said, “It’s fascinating to follow from a biologist’s point of view. It is knowledge that has been lost. Now it’s slowly coming back.”
Naude Dreyer is one local who’s actually excited about the lion’s return. Dreyer runs kayaking safaris in Walvis Bay, around 350 km to the south, and he had longed to see a desert lion since he was five years old.
Then, in January 2022, he spotted wo of the lionesses separately on the beach near Torra Bay. Like any excited person who’d waited to see this phenomenon for three decades, he took a photograph of one lioness, while still keeping his distance, as she fed on a fur seal against the backdrop of the Atlantic Ocean.
“She looked up a few times while eating but didn’t display any aggression,” he said.
Per the ecologists, the lioness that Dreyer spotted and photographed was likely Xpl-108, as she’d spent more than 30 days in the geofenced area from late November through January. She and the three orphaned lionesses have all been tagged with satellite collars to keep both lions and humans safe, especially during peak tourism seasons.
During holidays, around December to January, tourists crowd the beaches, which could disrupt the lions’ hunting activity or push the animals inland, toward conflict with farmers.
Mankind vs wildlife
Interaction and conflict between us humans and animals have been around ever since the beginning of our evolution, but both are more prevalent in modern times when humans need more land than ever.
We see this in many areas around the world, particularly ones near the animals’ habitat. One example is Kashmir, which has experienced a rise in the cases of man-animal conflict.
Some experts put the blame on humans, as they’re the main reason for such incidents; if humans can manage themselves well in terms of population growth and land use, animals won’t need to search for food in their areas.
In Kashmir, casualties have gone down although conflict has escalated, thanks to more education and awareness. According to the statistics, in 2013 and 2014, the total number of deaths was 28, which declined to 10 in 2022.
Kashmir’s regional wildlife warden Rashid Naqash said that nowadays, wild animals such as leopards, black bears, and brown bears have adapted to live in human-dominated landscapes because of changes in their habitat.
“Leopards are not restricted to jungles and have their territory now. These changes have made them often migrate to places where they can find a little shelter and food. Dogs are the main delicacies to them, and they have developed a habit to urbanise, they feed and breed,” Naqash said.
As time goes on, wild animals like leopards have found food that they can get more easily. And, they can hide well in dense vegetation and abandoned plots. With the abundance of shelter and food, these animals change their territory and areas easily.
So, to reduce such interactions and conflicts, Naqash said that there should be strategies to balance the coexistence between humans and wildlife. Other than that, awareness and education are just as important, so that casualties in Kashmir could go down, and conflicts like Xpl-108’s case won’t happen again.
The hit-and-miss feature of geofence
Now, as I mentioned, geofence is quite safe, but it isn’t perfect. One night, Xpl-108 slipped down to the coast and killed a fur seal. In the morning, anglers were coming to the area to fish before rangers could alert the anglers or guard the area. As a result, Xpl-108 was startled and she dragged her meal 4 km inland to the safety of a rocky outcrop.
Nonetheless, the geofence should work. According to Matthew Wijers, a postdoctoral lion researcher from the University of Oxford in England, who is not part of the desert lion project, even though geofence is not cheap, it’s been effective in other parts of southern Africa.
“This technology, coupled with educational programs that highlight the ecological importance of desert lions as well as the potential dangers to the public, should help reduce the risks of conflict between lions and anglers along the Skeleton Coast,” Wijers said.
Besides, the scientists still don’t know if the lionesses will linger around Torra Bay for long. After nearly eight years, Namibia’s drought which reduced the lion population from 150 to 80 appears to have finally broken.
Vallat predicted that within a year or two, the lions’ land-based prey—and hopefully lion numbers—should rebound. And in the meantime, the scientists hope that the geofence will keep lions and animals safe.
Sources
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/in-namibia-lions-are-king-of-the-beach-180981718/
Leave a Reply