An automated, real-time alert system is helping local communities in Botswana protect their cattle from approaching lions.A team at the nonprofit Claws Conservancy is also working with communities to name individual lions in order to help them build a connection with the animals.The initiative was launched to mitigate human-lion conflict, which often led to loss of livestock and the retaliatory poisoning of the lions.The lack of vehicles and torches, however, continue to be hurdles when it comes to effectively responding to alerts, which tend to come at night, when the lions are most active.
Andrew Stein had been working across Africa for more than 15 years when he first heard of lion poisoning incidents in Botswana. In a bid to protect their livestock, communities were poisoning the big cats when they came close to their villages.
It was a precarious situation. On one hand, populations of lions (Panthera leo) were rapidly declining across the continent. On the flip side, people had few other options to protect the source of their livelihood.
“People were using poison because they were likely desperate,” Stein told Mongabay in a video interview. “They saw no other alternative to managing the issues that they were facing.”
