Did you know protecting wild lions in their natural environment is the absolute best way to preserve the species long term?

He’s back! Great news for wild lions.

After several challenging months addressing the usual permit and funding related matters Walking For Lions is back. When we first met Marnus, a few years ago, he was working in Botswana saving wild lions in a very innovative, practical and cost effective way…. With lights.

In many parts of Africa human populations continue infringing on wild places. Humans bring with them cattle, goats and sheep. This causes human wildlife conflicts. In particular predator conflicts. Typically lions stay away from humans, however, when their wild prey gets killed or moves on livestock become easy targets. Especially when most farmers and pastoralists don’t keep their domestic animals in protected enclosures. In many African countries domestic and wild animals use the same waterholes, even the same grazing areas.

Naturally, this also attracts predators like lions, leopard, cheetah and hyena. Naturally, farmers don’t like having their livestock killed. Naturally, they retaliate by shooting, poisoning and snaring the unwanted predators.

Once upon a time when wildlife was abundant and humans were few this might have been a sustainable situation. However, not today. With predator numbers plummeting intervention is an absolute must.

Roughly sixty years ago there were an estimated 450,000 lions in Africa. Today less than 20,000. Some would say that when we exclude the captive bred lions of South Africa the number is only about one tenth of that.

Protecting predators in the wild is essential. Unlike other endangered mammals that can be bred in captivity and reintroduced into the wild, predators cannot. Or at least the successful cases are few and far between. Think about it. A lion is hand raised, is used to humans and is then released. Wild lions naturally avoid humans, while a captive bred lion won’t. You can see the problem. A hand raised lion will easily move in close to humans. Can you imagine a lion showing up at dinner?

Protecting wild lions is happening in small pockets across Africa. One reason why we support Marnus with Walking For Lions is his track record of success. Not only does Marnus know how to save the lions, his whole heart is in it. He lives frugally in a tent. He lives and works among the people who kill lions. He helps them change their ways. He helps keep livestock safe, farmers happy and lions alive.

What follows comes directly from Marnus regarding his latest work to save wild lions.

From Marnus about saving wild lions

It has been a LONG time coming but we are pleased to announce that we will continue our lion conservation work in Namibia starting shortly. We would also like to announce that our paper work is in order and that we are extremely excited to be working with the authentic Bushman of Bushmanland, in the North East of Namibia. We are also proud to have officially partnered up with another local organization that’s been doing phenomenal work with the empowerment of the local Bushman community. Nanofasa Namibia Trust will proudly collaborate with us on the predator surveys and human/wildlife conflict. We have a lot more developments that will occur with this project but will keep you on your toes until further notice. The last data made available from this area was conducted several years ago, thus determining the estimated predator densities will be one of our main priorities this year in conjunction with reaching out to local farmers within this concessions, strategically identifying conflict areas and developing predator mitigation strategies. The area is large and outside of “protected area” status with additional information required as to predator population densities, sex ratio’s etc. What excites us even more is that we will not be focusing on lions only, but will have the opportunity to focus on other predators as well. We have learnt a lot from our previous work conducted in several African countries and the magical part is that we cannot take what we have learnt and do our best to implement our methods with adjustments as soon as possible. We will be working with the local Bushman on several projects that will only enhance the experience as we will combine the old methods with the new technology.

Nikela is committed

Nikela is committed to assisting Marnus in a more major way than before. Our goal is to contribute $10,000 in 2017 and increasing, with your help, to $20,000 beginning in 2018.

Yes, we believe that much in what he is doing to save wild lions!

Remember, 100% of your gift goes to help Marnus save those lions.