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Lions and People in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area
One of our current projects concerns the relationship between people and lions in the
Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tanzania. The NCA encompasses the Ngorongoro Crater as well as
the surrounding areas, and was the original "community conservation" experiment; here Masai tribes
continue their traditional way of life alongside resident animal populations. The Masai are allowed
to live anywhere in the NCA (outside the floor of the Ngorongoro Crater) as long as they maintain
their pastoral lifestyle. However, since the establishment of the NCA, the Masai population has
increased to more than 40,000 people, and now they can barely survive on their cattle. Lions sometimes hunt cattle, bringing them into direct conflict with the Masai; any livestock losses to predation have a greater impact than in earlier years, and the Masai do everything they can to destroy the cattle killers. On top of this, Masai warriors are highly motivated to kill lions as a "rite of passage." Successful warriors gain enormous status, so they are motivated to kill any lion they see -- cattle killer or not. Although the rules established by the NCA permit the Masai to hunt and kill lions which have raided their cattle, they are prohibited from killing lions for any other reason. Our goal is to determine what impact the Masai are having on the NCA lions and whether there are ways to minimize the conflicts between them. To address these questions, Dennis Ikanda, a Master's student at the University of Dar es Salaam, is surveying the lion population in the NCA and meeting regularly with the Masai to document cases of cattle killing and lion hunting. One of Dennis's questions concerns the timing of cattle killing vs. lion hunting. Due to the extreme seasonality of rainfall in this region, few ungulates live in the NCA on a year-round basis, and consequently, only a small number of lions live there permanently. These resident lions appear to primarily attack Masai livestock in the dry season, when the large ungulate herds have migrated north, and they are extremely wary of the Masai. However, the NCA is immediately adjacent to the Serengeti National Park, and substantial numbers of Serengeti lions follow the migrating herds into the NCA in the wet season. These lions are much less wary of Masai, making them much easier targets. Dennis's preliminary findings suggest that while most cattle killing occurs in the dry season, more lion killing occurs in the wet season suggesting that such killing is largely for sport. Dennis is also finding that most human victims of lion attacks are herd boys less than 10 yrs of age who are left to herd cattle alone in the dry season. Given these findings, Dennis is currently developing lines of communication with the Masai elders in the NCA to try to reduce the hunting of Serengeti lions and to reduce the risks of lion attacks on the Masai and their cattle.
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