Counting of lions in Kruger National Park vital for conservation
Knowing how many lions there are in a specific area is important for conservation efforts to ensure the survival of this iconic species. One way to obtain this information is to get into a jeep, drive around and count every lion you see.
This is exactly what Alison Govaerts, a doctoral student in Conservation Ecology within the Wildlife Free to Roam research group at Stellenbosch University (SU) is doing.
Ms Govaerts, who hails from Belgium, is also the co-lead of the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT)’s lion spatial capture-recapture survey.
She and the EWT team are counting lions in the central parts of Kruger National Park to estimate their numbers in the area, in collaboration with South African National Parks and with financial support from the Lion Recovery Fund.
According to Ms Govaerts, counting lions in the Kruger National Park is an important step in the conservation of the species because it is classified as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species.
“We must know how many lions there are within the national parks, and the next step would be to focus on connectivity between these parks. All these parks are like little islands, but it is crucial to create opportunities for gene-flow, migration, recolonization and adaptation to climatic changes and seasonal prey fluctuations.
“However, we first must count how many there are and investigate where they are, before trying to open the area a bit so that they can migrate between parks. You can’t develop adequate conservation strategies for the species if you don’t know how many there are and where they currently occur.”
She adds that there have always been estimates of the number of lions in Africa, but it is hard to know how many there are. These are estimates and not based on counts.
“The Kruger National Park is very big and there are a lot of lions there, but you have to monitor all the populations, even small, big, protected or those outside the parks to know what the situation is.
Because for example, climate change, conflict with humans or habitat loss can impact populations faster than we think, and lions cannot easily bounce back from severe populations declines.”
Ms Govaerts says she and the EWT team usually set off at sunrise and drive around to find lions. She doesn’t mind spending hours to spot a lion because she loves carnivores and the African wildlife.
Before coming to the Kruger National Park, she studied lions in the Limpopo National Park (Mozambique) and baboons in Kasanka National Park (Zambia).
Ms Govaerts does point out that counting lions is not always easy because finding them can be hard sometimes.
“We have to drive the whole area to be sure. Sometimes we receive help from tourists or rangers, or we test our luck in areas where we know there is a high chance of finding them (near water and prey).
“When we do find them, we take identification pictures and back in camp, sort the pictures, and make catalogues of each pride of lions.
“In the afternoon, we either go for another drive, or I work on other aspects of my PhD project. The final analysis of this spatial capture-recapture survey will be carried out by our collaborators at the Lion Recovery Fund.
“It is very hard to identify lions because they don't have spots like leopards or wild dogs. And when they're the same age and sex, it's hard to tell them apart.”
Ms Govaerts says the only way to identify lions is to focus on their whisker spots, which are like fingerprints. She points out that the top row of the whisker spots is unique to each individual and remains the same throughout the animal’s life.
They use cameras with big lenses to photograph the spots on the left and right side of the lion’s face because both are different.
As each lion in this spatial capture-recapture survey is identified, Ms Govaerts and the EWT team have the advantage that they never count a lion twice.
“It is also easy to determine the sex ratios, the ages, and we're always pretty sure about everything. We count every lion we encounter,” she says.
Ms Govaerts says that even though lion populations in Africa have been declining, they are still doing well in some areas. The danger is that, once they come under a certain threshold, they cannot recover.
She emphasises the importance of also focusing on the people who live in the surrounding areas.
“We also have to focus on the people because they're part of the equation, and if we don't keep them in the loop or in the managing decisions, it is not going to be good for either the animal or the people.”
Ms Govaerts adds that once they finish the survey by the end of September, they will have a much clearer picture of the distribution of lions throughout the Kruger National Park.