The
famous Lion House Pride in Gorongosa National Park (1960s). Gorongosa
was once a stronghold for wildlife and today an ambitious, large-scale
restoration project is underway to restore it to its former glory.
(Courtesy Gorongosa National Park)
It
wasn’t too long ago that Central Mozambique was considered lost
territory for the big cats, a place where they would soon no longer roam
wild and free. But today an effort is underway to hold the line against
extinction and ensure that the African lion has its rightful place here
into the foreseeable future. This thanks to a 25-year commitment to restore Gorongosa National Park and a stellar team of scientists, community educators and organizers, cinematographers, and funders—including National Geographic’s Big Cat Initiative.
Before
the 1977-92 war in Mozambique, Gorongosa’s lions were a famous tribe,
strong in their numbers alongside the vast buffalo herds that roamed the
plains. Today a few dozen of these resilient individuals rebounded
(possibly more) from near extirpation, although a thorough accounting of
how many and where has never been done. Impossible to effectively
restore and conserve what we don’t sufficiently understand, in 2012 Projecto Leões da Gorongosa was launched and we began the important and exciting work of putting Gorongosa’s lions back on the map.
When our field-work first began we spent many-a-night on the roof of “Lion House,” famous for its stair-climbing lions who claimed this colonial-era structure as part of their dominion back in the 1960s. Lying on the southern edge of the vast floodplains of Lake Urema,
it is the highest point for miles around and one can fully appreciate
why lions would favor this outpost. From the roof you can see Mount
Gorongosa rising over the lowlands filled with sable, waterbuck,
reedbuck, oribi, and the occasional wildebeest; The mountain’s
rainforest and cascades filter down the essential waters that nourish
all this wildlife, including the perilously endangered population of Panthera leo.
A lioness with Mt. Gorongosa rising above Lake Urema and its floodplains. (Photograph Adolfo Macadona)
Gorongosa is
a wild place and lions here are elusive. Anyone who works with these
big cats knows well that trying to find them during daylight hours as
they slumber in the deep scrub and tall grass is akin to trying to find a
needle in a haystack; it can be (and is) done, but the night hours when
they are most active is the better time to be out working the lion
shift. So we became nocturnal creatures ourselves and Lion House became
our night-refuge, a mission control center of sorts, where we could
safely convene in the dark hours to hear out the location of local
prides (conveniently not having to watch our backs if we inadvertently
snoozed off). Any roar would send us swinging down the stairs in the
dead of night, into our vehicle and off to try identify who was out
patrolling the dirt roads.
It took many weeks of preparation and
learning as the lions slowly revealed themselves, then just outright
sweat and definitely tears (on my part for sure) before we found
ourselves in the right place at the right time to collar our first lion.
We made that crucial leap early this year when our team satellite-collared our 1st male—who has since led us on to more lions, being the highly social creature that he is.
Paola Bouley (left) and Rui Branco (right) collar the 1st lion. (Photograph by James Byrne)
Satellite
monitoring of our lions has been crucial in these early stages of our
work. The real-time capabilities of this technology means we can rapidly
locate lions anytime of the day and document their social interactions
(meaning we find more lions, and faster too), diet (understand what
lions in a recovering ecosystem subsist on), sources of any mortality
(human or otherwise), and their response to the extreme flooding and
environmental change that occurs in the Park each year.
A
typical mating signal from the satellite data alerts us to the presence
of other lions and we are able to deploy into the field immediately.
Most
importantly, as we succeed in collaring prides in more remote areas
we’ll be able to understand how lions interact with the boundaries of
the Park and Gorongosa’s human communities and aide the Park in securing
expanded protected areas for lions. It’s also essential for anti-poaching as
we are able to document core areas for strategic de-snaring operations
and if a collared lion’s movements seems unusual—or cease to move for an
extended period possibly due to a poacher’s snare—we can deploy a
rapid-response team and help save a precious life.
PLG’s
team documents poaching and works with law enforcement to focus
strategic de-snaring where lions and snares will potentially coincide.
(Photograph by Paola Bouley)
Now
with each additional lion identified, tracked and those collared we
gain more insight into the ecology of the Park’s largest carnivore while
also helping secure their conservation. A thorough accounting of how
many lions and where is now solidly underway in this Park for the first
time ever. And what we learn from this recovering population has the
potential to inform the science of wild lion recovery in savannah
ecosystems across southern Africa; a need that sadly only continues to
grow as lion populations across the continent face ever greater
challenges.
Projecto Leões da Gorongosa is
dedicated to the recovery and conservation of big cats in the Gorongosa
Ecosystem of Central Mozambique. We work in direct partnership with
the Gorongosa Restoration Project: a 20-year Public-Private Partnership between the Government of Mozambique and the Carr Foundation, a U.S. non-profit organization.
Stay tuned for Projecto Leões‘s
upcoming blog with co-author Domingos Muala (local historian)
highlighting the social histories of Gorongosa’s lion-people
relationships and how we’ll work with National Geographic’s Big Cat
Initiative to foster co-existence with these big cats. The Big Cat
Initiative will also support the training of Mozambique’s first women to
work directly on lion research and conservation – updates on this
exciting development to come soon!
