Nancy Felix
Tarangire-Manyara Ecosystem (TME) is found within Maasai Steppe with an area of 35,000 km2 in Northern Tanzania. It is located at 3°50′0″S 36°00′0″E, 950-1500 m.a.s.l. increasingly retaliatory killing of lions (Panthera leo) within the TME threatens the population of lion in Tarangire National Park. Despite being a vulnerable species according to IUCN Red List, lion continue to be threatened with retaliatory killing in TME. As a result, its population has been decreasing continuously. This project aims to save the lions from retaliatory killing in TME through community conservation education, awareness and capacity building; and assess the effect of retaliatory killing on lion population. It will further assess the current population, distribution, and the number of lions that have been dying due to retaliatory killing within TME. This project will provide a baseline for designing conservation strategies involving local communities to stop illegal killings of lions.
A pride of lions sighted during monitoring and tracking in June.
Biodiversity has been decreasing worldwide owing to increase in human population, encroachment into protected areas and other developments (Loveridge et al., 2010). Therefore, conservation of wildlife especially animals with large home range such as lion has been a challenge (Trinkel, 2013).
Because of this, carnivore predation on livestock (Nyahongo, 2007), retaliatory killing of lions, and conflict between human and lions has been increasing in those areas (Kissui, 2008). Tarangire-Manyara Ecosystem (TME) harbours large number of lion in Tanzania (IUCN, 2006), however, its population is threatened by retaliatory killing from local people. This increases the vulnerability of lion population in TME because loss of a cattle leads to death of 6 to 8 lions of a pride. Despite the efforts to reduce retaliatory killing of lion, killing incidences continue to be reported. This could be due to lack of conservation awareness and limited local community’s involvement in conservation activities. Therefore, the aim of this project is to save the lions from retaliatory killing in TME through community conservation education, awareness and capacity building; and assess the effect of retaliatory killing on lion population. It would also provide a baseline for developing conservation strategies which involves local communities in conservation activities, to stop killing lions. Moreover, this project will update information available about the number of lions being killed in villages and human-lion conflicts so that measures to stop these incidences would be taken.
Generally, this project will raise community conservation awareness about the lion, promote positive attitude towards conservation of large carnivores and avoid unnecessary killing. In addition, the project team will train local people about the best approach to protect themselves against lion attacks and threats e.g. building live wall fences to protect their cattle but also not encroach further to border zones of protected areas in order to avoid human-wildlife conflicts. Therefore, retaliatory killing of lions by local people will decline and successively increase of lion population.