Residents of Limpopo terrorised by a pride of escapee lions this week got off relatively lightly compared with villagers living in neighbouring Mozambique and Tanzania, where lions often turn into man-hunters.
Jeremy Anderson, a South African wildlife expert helping the Mozambican government develop strategies to mitigate human-wildlife conflict, reports that in 18 months in just one of the country’s 10 provinces at least 70 people were eaten by lions.
In neighbouring Tanzania, lion researcher Craig Packer recently recorded that lion attacks on people had risen from about 40 a year a decade ago to more than 100 a year.
Protected areas in both countries are rarely fenced and predators are forced out into rural residential areas by competitors and lack of food. Once they discover humans are easy prey and develop a taste for them, they turn into man-hunters and even pull victims out of their homes.
In Limpopo, the 15 lions that escaped through a hole in the fence of the Sabi Sands private reserve a fortnight ago killed at least 12 cattle but avoided humans. By Wednesday, eight members of the pride had been shot, five had been lured back into the reserve and three were still at large.
Conservationists gathered in Johannesburg earlier this year to discuss a crisis in African lion populations, which, they said, are at an all-time low, largely because of conflict with humans over livestock. Most of the continent’s remaining population is found in Southern Africa; Tanzania accounting for more than half.
Anderson’s report, co-authored by Mozambican conservationists, says Mozambique’s wildlife resources “are still very significant” after 30 years of civil war. People are moving into unoccupied areas, raising the potential for conflict.
“As both human and wildlife populations increase, and people occupy new land, the level of conflict is increasing. This unresolved human-wildlife conflict is creating negative attitudes towards both the government and proposed wildlife-related developments.”
Besides lions — there are at least 650 of them left in Mozambique — elephants (at least 21Â 500) and crocodiles (at least 50Â 000) cause the main problems. Growing buffalo populations could spread diseases to livestock, but hippos — usually the biggest culprits in human fatalities caused by wildlife — were eliminated from most river systems during the civil war.
The report recommends short-term solutions such as training and equipping professional problem-animal control units, as well as proper long-term land-use planning. It was presented to delegates at a National Directorate of Forests and Wildlife workshop in Maputo last week on the potential contribution of wildlife resources to poverty alleviation.
In the meantime, villagers are using home-grown solutions like smearing chilli on string and digging trenches to keep wildlife away from their crops. Simon Munthali, regional head of the African Wildlife Foundation, an NGO working on conflict resolution in Mozambique, told the Mail & Guardian his organisation had recently raised $8Â 000 for a chilli-growing project after chilli had proved an effective deterrent against elephants.