Last month, our team had the incredible fortune of discovering a den of four-day-old lion cubs nestled in the heart of Kafue National Park. This heartwarming sight served as a powerful confirmation that our dedicated efforts to help lions in the park are yielding positive results. Later, when a nearby fire threatened the den, we intervened to save the cubs, bolstered by the progress we were making.
Video courtesy of Charlotte Searle/WildCRU
The driving force behind our success in the area and the discovery of these newborn cubs is the Panthera Kafue Carnivore Action Team (CAT), spearheaded by me, the leader of the team as the CAT coordinator. Dr. King Chidakwa, our Panthera veterinarian, and Nicolas Kalembelembe, an experienced safari guide, provide invaluable support to our team. When a wildfire approached the cubs' den from the west, the team sprang into action. We created a firebreak, a gap in the vegetation that would prevent the fire from burning through to the lions' location. This measure proved successful and the cubs were saved.
While this helped protect these cubs, sadly, fire isn’t the only danger lions will encounter in the country: Zambia’s wild cats are threatened by persistent poachers and human-wildlife conflict. That’s why Panthera implements the “Halo Approach”, along with our partners, Zambia’s Department of National Parks and Wildlife and African Parks. The Halo Approach can be best described as a thorough, all-encompassing monitoring and protection of a wild cat as it moves through a landscape. To protect these cats, patrol teams remove deadly poacher snares from the landscape, making sure the terrain is safe to move through. We surround the cat with foot patrols informed by GPS focal monitoring systems that employ EarthRanger technology. Finally, to avoid human-wildlife conflict, we alert and support nearby communities to a wild cat’s presence as it journeys through community areas.
The Halo Approach hasn’t just helped ensure a positive future for these tiny newborn lions. Their presence symbolizes a more significant, exciting trend in Kafue National Park’s conservation story: a recent Panthera study indicates that lion and leopard numbers in the park have stabilized or increased. In a landscape where rampant poaching of large prey significantly limited the growth of wild cat populations, we are revealing signs of hope — lion population dynamics in Kafue are improving due to increased lion cub recruitment and prey species population increases over time. In fact, trends in population densities indicate that lion numbers nearly doubled in Central Kafue. Similarly, trends also indicate that leopard populations in Kafue are recovering, with leopard densities in southern and central Kafue National Park doubling and in north Kafue NP stabilizing.
When we first started monitoring Kafue National Park’s lion prides, pride sizes were small, with only one to three females and a few cubs in each pride. Now, this specific pride has 11 members (adult and sub-adult) with five cubs in tow. I cannot overstate how much of an accomplishment this is. Because we were able to protect the mother and her pride mates with the Halo Approach, the entire population can thrive.
What will the future hold for these little cats destined to regenerate Kafue’s prides? In the not-so-distant future, these lion cubs will learn to hunt, and the males will disperse to find a new territory. Whether they stay home or disperse, their life journey is likely to be filled with many dangers, including deadly snares, determined poachers and potentially perilous conflicts in otherwise human-occupied landscapes. But if there’s one thing that we’re certain of, it’s that they’ll have a halo of protection surrounding them, helping to provide protection wherever they go. We look forward to the day that we get to protect their own little cubs. Then, we’ll know that the Halo Approach has come full circle.
While we may have dampened the fire that threatened these cubs, there will be new blazes to extinguish and new problems to face. Nevertheless, we remain prepared to face any obstacle that comes our way. These tiny cubs depend on our team just as their ecosystem relies on the presence of lions. Together, we are dedicated to preserving their future and the delicate balance of wildlife in Kafue National Park.
We hope to bring you more stories of these cubs in the future! For now, please read how the Halo Approach helped one of southern Kafue’s most charismatic young cheetahs.
Update: As of January 8, 2024, three of the cubs continue to thrive alongside their mother.
Learn more about these cubs in this piece from The Dodo.
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© Sebastian Kennerknecht
