Lion Landscapes, a LRF grantee that merged with Ruaha Carnivore Project, was recently featured on CNN’s environmental series, Call to Earth, and in an article about their work reducing human-lion conflict in central Tanzania.
In the article, Amy Dickman, joint CEO of Lion Landscapes and Director of the University of Oxford’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit, explains how the pastoralist Barabaig tribe of Ruaha National Park traditionally hunted lions that threatened their livestock and community. But through the interventions of Lion Landscapes to teach the importance of conserving these endangered big cats, the tribe has now become some of the lions’ most stalwart defenders.
Lions populations have declined by half in the last quarter century, disappearing from over 90% of their historic range. This pushes them into closer proximity to human communities, who often clash with lions over livestock predation and, in rare cases, human fatalities. Tanzania is home to about 50% of sub-Saharan Africa’s lion population, so the work of Lion Landscapes to promote human-lion coexistence is critical to protecting the remaining lions and giving them a chance to recover.
Watch the Call to Earth segment featuring Lion Landscapes here.
You can read the full CNN article here.