{"id":579701,"date":"2010-05-26T14:06:32","date_gmt":"2010-05-26T18:06:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.earthportal.org\/news\/?p=3350"},"modified":"2010-05-26T14:06:32","modified_gmt":"2010-05-26T18:06:32","slug":"drought-spurs-life-or-death-struggles-in-kilimanjaro%e2%80%99s-shadow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/579701","title":{"rendered":"Drought spurs life-or-death struggles in Kilimanjaro\u2019s shadow"},"content":{"rendered":"

Greenwire:<\/a> The attack came swiftly and silently in the night.The lioness bounded over the thatch of acacia thorns that surrounds the Maasai village and headed for the donkey pen.<\/p>\n

The predator was clawing at a donkey’s haunches by the time men stirred in their dung-covered huts. A warrior confronted the dusty tangle of teeth and fur, and sunk a spear through the big cat’s right rear leg.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Then, as swiftly as she had appeared, the lioness scrambled over a rooftop and vanished in the darkness.<\/p>\n

The donkey survived, but the lioness died of its wound. Villagers blame hunger and parched conditions for the late-March attack.<\/p>\n

“This wasn’t the first time,” said Wilson Koite, chief of this encampment of more than 300 people in southern Kenya, near the Tanzania border. “There’s no wildlife inside of the park, so [lions] just come into the villages.”<\/p>\n

When the rains failed for the second straight year in 2009, plants withered to their roots in this critical dry-season refuge. Marshes and the shallow bed of Lake Amboseli, usually fed by seasonal rains and runoff from snow-capped Mount Kilimanjaro, cracked in equatorial sun. With little to eat or drink, more than 70 percent of Amboseli’s zebra and wildebeest died of starvation, predation or opportunistic infections.<\/p>\n

The onset of long rains in recent weeks has begun to rehydrate Amboseli’s landscape. But with their traditional prey diminished in numbers, the park’s top predators are targeting livestock and risking death. At least nine Amboseli-area lions have been speared or poisoned to death during the past six months, say wildlife managers and conservationists.<\/p>\n

“We suspect that there are many more happening,” said Paula Kahumbu, executive director of WildlifeDirect, a Nairobi-based organization founded by conservationist Richard Leakey. “[Predator] attacks have been going on for years, but things are really escalating.”<\/p>\n

Killing lions and other wildlife is illegal but often goes unpunished in Kenya. If goats or cattle are slain by predators, the government or a handful of nonprofit organizations may compensate herdsmen for the loss. But cash is often not enough to cool tempers.<\/p>\n

Violence escalates<\/h3>\n

In late March, Maasai warriors stalked a lioness into the bush and speared her after she slaughtered cattle south of the park, Amboseli warden Joseph Nyongesa said. In ensuing weeks, conservationists confirmed the poisoning deaths of five Amboseli-area lions and three more near the Maasai Mara National Reserve, 175 miles to the northwest.<\/p>\n

At the height of the drought some southern villages were suffering lion attacks several times a week, Kahumbu said. Young lions, apparently unfamiliar with how to hunt natural prey, were also stalking permanent settlements for livestock.<\/p>\n

“The rate has declined, but lion attacks continue because their natural prey is still diminished,” she added. “It will take a while for wildlife to recover.”<\/p>\n

A March 2010 aerial census recorded three lions in a 24,000-square-kilometer area encompassing Amboseli and parts of northern Tanzania. A May 2007 census recorded 10 lions.<\/p>\n

The population is likely higher, the latest census underscored, as lions are difficult to spot from the air and are most active at night. Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) officials and conservationists who study Amboseli estimate that the area had about 30-40 resident lions prior to the recent killings.<\/p>\n

What’s certain, wildlife managers say, is some Amboseli lions are roaming unexpectedly long distances in search of wildebeest, zebra and other wild prey. Six lions fitted with KWS satellite collars have been tracked far into northern Tanzania, said park warden Nyongesa.<\/p>\n

“We have heard there are quite a number of lions killed on that side, but most of them are the lions of Amboseli,” he said.<\/p>\n

Wildebeest and zebra constitute the greatest biomass in Amboseli but suffered the greatest losses during the drought.<\/p>\n

The wildebeest population fell by about 83 percent, from 18,538 in 2007 to 3,098 in 2010, according to the aerial counts. Zebra declined by around 71 percent, from 15,328 to 4,432.<\/p>\n

The prolonged dry spell also took a heavy toll on livestock.<\/p>\n

The area’s cattle population is less than half of what it was three years ago, the counts show. Livestock are critical to the Maasai, who build their homes with dung, cover their blades with leather, and fill their bellies with meat, milk and blood.<\/p>\n

Maasai elder Kayian Olekiraku said the drought killed all but 20 of his 200 cattle. The same night of the attack in Koite’s village another lion broke the leg of one of Olekiraku’s bulls before being chased off.<\/p>\n

“When I was young, we just killed the lion,” he recalled at the edge of his hardscrabble village. “Now we don’t. We fear the government will take us to jail.”<\/p>\n

‘Predator proof’ fences<\/h3>\n

Wildlife service officials say they have been meeting with southern Kenya residents over the past few months to discuss better animal husbandry practices and changes to the ecosystem.<\/p>\n

“We had to calm down the situation by talking to them,” said KWS senior scientist Charles Musyoki. “We know they are incurring losses, but we needed to talk to them so that they don’t retaliate by killing the animals.”<\/p>\n

In February, the wildlife service launched nationwide strategies for managing lions, cheetahs, hyenas and wild dogs. The plans are intended to preserve ecologically viable predator and prey populations inside of reserves, create carnivore conservation zones outside of government-protected areas and cull animals that attack livestock repeatedly.<\/p>\n

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Greenwire: The attack came swiftly and silently in the night.The lioness bounded over the thatch of acacia thorns that surrounds the Maasai village and headed for the donkey pen. The predator was clawing at a donkey’s haunches by the time men stirred in their dung-covered huts. A warrior confronted the dusty tangle of teeth and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7025,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-579701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7025"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=579701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579701\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=579701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=579701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=579701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}