Herding cats and the art of the Vuvuzela

             

                Herding cats and the art of the Vuvuzela!

The mighty vuvuzela, so maligned in international football circles and capable of making a "monkey bite it’s mother", has finally been put to good use.
Not for scaring fancy European football teams but for intimidating cattle killing lions!

The relationship between lions and livestock is an ancient one with something of a battle of arms continuing to this day and more lions in Africa are killed in retaliation for livestock depredation than for any other reason. Often, the call is for a "quick fix"…..usually in the form of a bullet but today we are trying something different. We are trying to teach individual lions that have resorted to a diet of beef that they are not welcome amongst the people. We do this by collaring the lions in satellite collars and monitoring them in real time. When we see that they have entered or are about to enter a communal area where they may predate on livestock we jump into action. Local men employed as "Long Shields" are sent the location of the lion via txt message and there they gather for the showdown with neighbours, drums, dogs and vuvuzelas. Creeping to within 60m of the lion’s location (usually in thick bush) the people fan out to give the lion the sense that he is outnumbered and on the command of three….the vuvuzelas open up like the death bellow of a locomotive!!!

We have performed this not so subtle mitigation technique on a number of occasions recently with some amazing results. Almondo the lion is one particular individual who repeatedly returns to an area outside of the national park. It is broken country, made up of hills and gullies and thick
combretum bush. His modus operandi is to lie up during the day in the hills and descend at night to prey on unattended livestock. Whilst trying to convince people to bring their cattle into stockades at night we are also making life for Almondo as uneasy as possible in his hilly hideaway. We scare the wits out of him!! He has been fleeing into the park, only to return a week or two later but we are hopeful that this repeated disturbance will take its toll and he will change his ways….best case scenario….he will become vegetarian!
We need to be creative in coming up with locally sustainable but modern adaptations of traditional mitigation methods! And who knows…
Perhaps one day the safest place to keep cattle will be near the local football ground!

Brent Stapelkamp
The Long Shields project
Zimbabwe