Good fences make safe lions

During the 1960s when most African nature reserves were being established, lions tended to be born free. But today, freedom doesn’t always serve them well.

Fifty years ago, human population densities were low in the areas where lions roamed. But since then, the human population in that part of Africa has increased fourfold to fivefold and demands on land have intensified. The prey that lions rely on has been reduced by poaching and habitat loss, which means that lions living in unfenced preserves roam out into farms and pastures where they kill livestock-or humans. In the last 20 years, lions have attacked more than 1,000 people in southern Tanzania.

The big cats have become a problem not because of anything they’re doing wrong. They’re just being lions. The problem is that few African nations can invest adequately in the management of their parks. Lions live at the top of the ecological pyramid and they can only thrive in healthy ecosystems. But although African nations have allotted more than 400,000 square miles as wildlife areas-more real estate than California, Oregon and Nevada combined-the money to take care of those parks is inadequate.

Unfenced lion populations needed budgets of about $5,000 a square mile each year to reach even half their potential size. Without that, lion populations are losing ground. Nearly half of the “unfenced” populations are at risk of extinction in the next 20 to 30 years. In parks that are surrounded by wildlife-proof fences-such as South Africa’s Kruger National Park, which is about the size of New Jersey-it’s a very different picture. They have lion populations that exceeded 80 percent of their potential, and the cost of conserving them is only about $1,250 annually a square mile. Moreover, none of the fenced populations are heading toward extinction.

Yet wildlife fencing is surprisingly contentious. Some conservationists worry that physical barriers disrupt fundamental ecological processes; others seek to retain a sense of untouched wilderness in romantic destinations such as Kenya and Tanzania. But open plains cannot protect wildlife, especially because so few unfenced reserves are able to raise the necessary revenue to effectively manage themselves.

It’s true that fencing could destroy migratory ecosystems like that of Tarangire National Park in Tanzania, where wildebeest leave the park and mingle with livestock each year. But many of the places lions thrive such as Tanzania’s Selous Game Reserve, which holds the largest surviving lion population in Africa, would be suited to fencing. Selous encloses an ecosystem the size of Switzerland and its management budget is about $5 million a year. To maintain the reserve’s lion population at even 50 percent of what the area could sustain would take about $110 million a year. But if Selous were fenced, a $28 million annual budget could safely secure 80 percent of the lion population the area could sustain.

Conservationists are already failing to save elephants and tigers, and lions won’t fare any better unless there’s a change in approach. If the world really wants to conserve iconic wildlife for the next 1,000 years we need a latter-day Marshall Plan that integrates the true costs of park management into the economic priorities of international development agencies.

Lions are too valuable to take for granted.

Ecologist Craig Packer is a professor at the University of Minnesota and director of the Lion Research Center.

Editorial, Pages 14 on 04/30/2013

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