A century ago, some 200,000 lions roamed Africa. Today, there are just 20,000. It's a startling statistic that conservationists Ivan Carter and Mark Haldane have discussed around the campfire numerous times over the course of their long friendship. In 2016, they decided to take action to reverse the dramatic decline.
Mr. Haldane, especially, was in a unique position to help: In 1994, the South African safari company owner had leased a 500,000-acre (202,300-hectare) concession in Mozambique's Zambezi Delta.
“It was an absolutely stunning area on the vegetation and habitat side, but it had very little game,” says Mr. Haldane, CEO, Zambeze Delta Safaris, Durban, South Africa. “I thought with my heart and not my head.”
Mr. Haldane's careful conservation efforts—including stringent anti-poaching measures—yielded a complete concession turnaround: Today, the population of buffalo in the delta has grown from 1,200 to 25,000; in the Coutada 11 hunting reserve, zebras have increased from five to 800; and sable numbers have risen from 44 to 3,000. The only thing missing was an apex predator. That's where the lions would come in.
In partnership with the Cabela Family Foundation, Mr. Haldane and Mr. Carter, who lives in White River, South Africa and is CEO of the Ivan Carter Wildlife Conservation Alliance, launched a project that would become the largest international lion relocation in history.
PREDATORS AND PREY
The team wasn't sure if such a lofty project scope would be feasible. To assess that, it launched a study aimed at answering three questions: 1. Did the ecosystem have lions in the past (and could it support lions in the future)? 2. What had killed off the lions, and had that problem been mitigated? 3. What would the ecosystem need for lions to thrive again?
PHOTOS BY SEAN VILJOEN COURTESY OF THE IVAN CARTER WILDLIFE CONSERVATION ALLIANCE
Villagers with materials for a beekeeping project
Answers were quick and encouraging for the first and third questions. But drawing a conclusion for the second was more complicated.
“There was lots of interfacing with communities; there was lots of questioning elders,” says Mr. Carter.
Through one-on-one interviews and group meetings with local stakeholders, the team was able to construct a tentative history of lions’ earlier demise in the area. “What we came up with was a very sound theory that during the civil war, there was no infrastructure and people literally poached the area flat.”
Their research findings suggested that Mr. Haldane's concession could be an ideal habitat for a new pride (or two or three) of lions. The team moved forward with the relocation initiative.
STARTING A NEW
With land at hand, the team turned its attention to defining specific requirements for the lions that would serve as the seed population: They needed to be healthy, genetically diverse and not part of a captive-bred bloodline. The project also needed enough lions to ensure the entire undertaking wouldn't be threatened if one or two fell ill or died during the early stages of relocation.
The team began placing calls to local game reserves, quickly narrowing in on a promising candidate—the Bubye Valley Conservancy in Zimbabwe, which had a surplus of 200 lions it was looking to relocate. With buy-in from the conservancy secured, the team began the laborious process of securing the necessary permits, hiring veterinarians to care for the lions and erecting a series of holding pens, or bomas, to house the lions in Zimbabwe before transporting them to Mozambique.
But just as the team had the execution phase nearly entirely mapped out, a major setback struck. Roughly three weeks before the move, Zimbabwe's government pulled the plug by banning all exports of wild animals, says Mr. Haldane. “We were virtually blown out of the water.”
While restarting lion outreach slowed the schedule, it was an even bigger blow to the budget. As this was the first time Mr. Carter and Mr. Haldane had partnered with the Cabela Family Foundation on an initiative, the duo determined it was necessary to cover the budget overrun themselves.
“Mark reached into his own pocket and I reached into my pocket,” says Mr. Carter. “But the reward for doing that was this feeling of trust and integrity among all three parties.”
Ultimately, the seed population came from multiple reserves—spanning the Kalahari Desert over to Kruger National Park, as well as the Tembe Elephant Park and Zululand, all in southern Africa—further ensuring a diverse population. Though the team had secured permits to capture and transport 25 lions, during the allotted time frame it was only able to find 24 (six males and 18 females)—and a project dubbed “Twenty Four Lions” roared to life.
LION'S SHARE
The lions’ soon-to-be home spanned a sizable swath of central Mozambique—one that included a couple of small villages. The team knew parachuting two dozen big cats into the villagers’ backyard without warning wouldn't go over well, so it made stakeholder outreach a top priority.
The team brought in scientist Carlos Bento from Mozambique to help educate villagers about the project and earn their support, Mr. Haldane says. “He came back and said, ‘Do you know that they believe in spiritual lions? It's their firm belief that all the strong leaders become lions.’”
The chief of a local tribe that lived in the village explained it would be necessary to call upon his ancestors for their blessing before he could give his own—a process undertaken through an elaborate ceremony attended by Mr. Haldane, Mr. Carter and Dan Cabela, chair of the Cabela Family Foundation.
To solidify buy-in, the team agreed to fund and build a clinic for the village, as well as providing alternate sources of income such as the start of a beekeeping project, a sustainable fishing project and a tractor for a ploughing project.
“If you don't have your community involved and benefiting from a project, it's never going to last,” Mr. Haldane says. “So I think we're incredibly blessed to have them on our side and feeling that they have ownership of it as well.”
—Mark Haldane, Zambeze Delta Safaris, Durban, South Africa
ON THE MOVE
With requirements met and major stakeholders on board, the relocation phase carried its own challenges. As a final precaution, the lions were quarantined in bomas in South Africa for six weeks leading up to the move. Veterinarians drew blood samples and ran tests to ensure they were free of disease.
Documentation for the relocation was so laborious that it became one team member's sole job to manage the load. Each lion required the same extensive signoffs: Upon capture, they were darted and microchipped with a unique identification number. That number was used for the export permit and would need to match the plane's manifest. Each lion's weight was recorded and added to the manifest. And every collar came with a unique tracking number and radio frequency identification. The tracking numbers needed to match with both the manifest and the previously recorded microchip number.
“All of that had to be in order for our export paperwork to be in line,” Mr. Carter explains. “That was a huge undertaking.”
After completing the necessary documentation, the team flew the lions in five loads from South Africa to Mozambique (about a four-hour flight) over the course of a few days. To maintain control of the lions during the crateless flight, each animal was sedated and blindfolded before being loaded, Mr. Haldane says. “We flew them out laying down like a bunch of sardines in a can.”
Upon landing at the reserve, the planes were met by customs and border control officials. To save precious time as the lions slept, Mr. Carter had earlier convinced the officials to come to the plane, rather than having to transport the live cargo to the officials.
When the final plane carrying three males touched down safely, the team cheered. “As those lions woke up, I don't think there was a single person with dry eyes,” Mr. Carter says. “You can imagine the amount of work, the false start, the amount of money, the amount of pressure. These hurdles came up and came up and came up, and all of a sudden, the last load of lions woke up in the boma, and that milestone was met.”
TRACKING THE RESULTS
Although the relocation was complete in June 2018, the Twenty Four Lions project isn't over. The project plan spans an additional six years, with researchers monitoring the lions and gathering data from tracking collars and weekly flyovers.
The ultimate ROI will be the lions’ ability to breed and multiply, so future generations can thrive. Mr. Carter estimates that the population has already increased in excess of 30 cubs—numbers never before seen in a lion relocation project. Scientists are also monitoring the area's ecosystem at large to determine the lions’ effect on the populations of prey.
“Nobody has ever studied how the behavior and the habitat use by prey species changes once an apex predator is not only introduced but establishes a viable population of its own,” Mr. Carter says. The team hopes this data can be used down the line to aid other relocation initiatives.
“Hopefully, other teams wanting to reintroduce lions into a landscape can take this blueprint and not have to make any of the mistakes we've made,” says Mr. Carter. “Those are the lessons learned that we can pass on to the next conservation group that wants to do the same thing and amplify it.” PM
—Ivan Carter, Ivan Carter Wildlife Conservation Alliance, White River, South Africa
Cat Tracks
May 2016: Conservationists partner with the Cabela Family Foundation to launch a project to reintroduce lions to Mozambique's Zambezi Delta.
October 2017: The Zimbabwe government places a ban on all animal exports, forcing the team to abandon efforts to secure 25 lions from the Bubye Valley Conservancy.
March-April 2018: The team sets a new capture period for 24 lions, which it sources from game reserves around Africa.
May 2018: The lions are quarantined for six weeks to test them for diseases.
June 2018: The lions are flown from South Africa to Mozambique.
August 2018: The lions are released into the Zambezi Delta.
October 2019: The team estimates that at least 30 cubs have been born since the relocation.
Pride Power
The original number of lions the team planned to relocate. That number dropped to 24 during the capture phase.
Number of airplane loads it took to get all 24 lions from South Africa to Mozambique
Expected lion mortality rate during such a relocation
Number of lions that died during the relocation
Number of original males that have died since relocation
Number of Mozambican males that have joined the new prides of relocated lions
Number of people who live within or directly next to the lions’ territory
Amount of meat distributed each year to the community to discourage poaching
Number of lions experts think the initial seed population could grow to in just 15 years