Rewilding Gorongosa: Lions | National Geographic
Everyone comes to a national park in Africa and they want to see lions. They are among the most incredible species I've ever worked with. [Music] My name is Paula Boule. I'm a National Geographic explorer and associate director of lion conservation for Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique. [Music]
When we began, nothing was known about how many lions we had. It was all about collecting data to really put this population on the map. [Music] This country endured 16 years of civil war, and that war was centered in Gorongosa. During that time, there was a lot of overhunting, so we lost about 95% of our large mammals in a very short time. After the war, recovery began slowly, and by 2006, the Greg Carr Foundation and the government of Mozambique forged a long-term plan to restore this national park to the gem that it used to be. Before, over the past decade, we've seen a remarkable recovery of wildlife populations, with the exception of lions. They didn't make a strong comeback, and our research was specifically to ask why. To be effective in conservation, you have to collect data, which will guide you in the right direction. [Music]
When we first got started, we knew we had to collect data on how many lions we had, how many females, how many males, and what they were eating, and where they were ranging. So we collect data using a variety of techniques. One is we collect spatial data from the GPS satellite collars. These collars, besides pinging with satellites, also have a radio signal that's pinging off them. Every lion with a collar has a unique number, so we can tune in on the dial on the radio and actually hear where they are.
Secondly, we use camera traps to collect data on lions and other species across the park. We collected so much data that we launched WildCam Gorongosa, which allows anybody with a Wi-Fi connection to log on and help us identify species in conservation. These days you need to be able to react fast; we don't have time on our side.
Thirdly, we are actually on the ground with teams collecting data in the field. Through our data collection, we learned that snares were the biggest threat to lions. The snare is a piece of wire or a steel jaw trap that is set by hunters in the park to catch buffalo or wartog, but incidentally, lions are in these very same places and they become entrapped. So we began to intervene. Patrols go out and sweep areas clean of devices that lions and other wildlife are getting trapped in. They can come back with 20; sometimes they come back with 200. But they are actually collecting data on where these snares and traps are set because there are patterns: closer to water, forest edges, closer to the boundary.
So, where before snares were such a threat, today, thanks to the lion patrols and data that we've collected, we've been able to reverse that. We're trending for a couple of very large lionesses. [Music] One is very, very pregnant, and the other [Music] has, over the past year, seen such high cub production. Wherever we look, all the lionesses we've been studying have cubs. At this point, we feel like we're on the path to recovery.
The time is now. If we don't act today, in 20 years we could lose lions on this continent. That's why we care, and we believe we can do something to better the situation. Data collection will always be important in conservation. New threats will emerge; they won't be the same as threats we encountered five or ten years ago—they may—but in the meantime, as we bring data in, we can act on that data. And that's the most important thing for us. [Music] Now [Music] you.