Last week I had the pleasure of meeting iconic filmmakers and National Geographic Explorers in Residence Dereck and Beverly Joubert. There is currently a tremendous Exhibit featuring Beverly’s photographs and some of the Joubert’s flim clips at National Geographic’s Explorers Hall in Washington, DC. The exhibit runs through October 4th and is a must for any African wildlife lovers who find themselves in the Nation’s capital. The Jouberts were in town hosting a fundraising event for their Maasailand Lion Conservation project and I flew in to DC to attend.

The Jouberts Speaking at National Geographic

The Jouberts talked about the rule of 95’s, as in very many species populations have declined by 95%, including lions with a precipitous drop in just the last two decades going from population estimates of 450,000 to possibly around 23,000.Like my own research the Joubert’s current focus is on the dynamic of human/livestock conflict with lions that is decimating populations. In the Maasailands the focus has been on a compensation program where Maasai pastoralists are paid for livestock losses from lions in exchange for not killing the lions. In the area of their compensation program the program has been quite successful in curtailing the killing of lions. You can read the project details here.

Video about the conservation issue in the Maasailands

At this time compensating for livestock losses is the best technique to stop predators from being killed, however, such action does nothing to slow the predators preying on livestock. In fact as lions are conserved their numbers in such an area should actually increase leading to more livestock losses and the need for greater compensation budgets. It is clear that more proactive techniques need to be developed and applied and this is something the Jouberts are advocating for. With small pastoralist herds there are possibilities to better guard livestock and place them in protective bomas at night but these are barrier techniques, and predators will continue to try and exploit barriers causing continued conflict though these techniques can certainly help. However, in locations like my study area of the Kalahari there are cattle farmers who have thousands of head of cattle ranging over large acreage where such barrier techniques are simply not possible. Additionally these are expensive cattle, high quality beef that is sold commercially to the EU so even compensation programs are more difficult to support.

Lions are cultural feeders so if adults are eating livestock the cubs learn to as well.
Photo copyright Bill Given

The conditioned taste aversion methodology that is the focus of my research could provide the first truly proactive conservation tool to mitigate lion/livestock conflict by actually taking cattle off the menu for lions and eventually other predators too.

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The Wild Source's Africa Video Channel - safari videos taken by The Wild Source founder Bill Given