Photo: desertlion.info

The past four days have been incredibly productive for the whole Lion Ranger team. Led by Dr. Philip Stander of Desert Lion Conservation, the Lion Rangers assisted in collaring four lions in the Hoanib and Mbokondja areas, while successfully identifying a fifth, sub-adult male. Four newly identified lions were termed XPL-121, XPL-122, XPL-123, and XPL-124 by Dr. Stander. The ‘XPL-###’ naming system is a long-standing one of Dr. Stander’s. The ‘X’ stands for the area: the Xhorixas District, and the ‘PL’ indicate the species, in this case Panthera Leo. This was overseen by the Ministry of Environment and Tourism Large Carnivore Coordinator, Mr. Uakendisa Muzuma, who provided much appreciated thoughts and insight throughout the operations.

Rapid Response Team Leaders Cliff Tjikundi and Linus Mbomboro took the lead in area patrols, assisted by Lion Ranger Rodney Tjiuara and community members. Extensive tracking throughout the Anabeb Conservancy provided an important overview of recent lion movements. These patrols were not in response to critical human-lion conflict threats, but rather in response to information coming from community members that lions were resident within the area. This is an important note of progress: communities are working with the Lion Rangers to proactively address lion presence before they become a human-lion conflict problem. In particular, the community around Mbokondja – never known for their tolerance for lions in the past – has been a fantastic partner in providing lion movement information.

Finally, the Lion Rangers were able to erect a logger tower near the Mbokondja homestead. Logger towers are a technological innovation developed specifically for collecting data on the northwest lion population in northwest Namibia. This new system is an important part of better understanding the lion population here, as well as proactively providing information about lion movements to the local communities.