The Lion Who Stole My Arm (8 page)

Luckily, groups of scientists and local people all over East Africa are working together to keep both people and lions safe.

Sometimes, this is just about changing the way people do things. The Niassa Carnivore Project in Mozambique found that lion attacks could be prevented by asking people to follow a few simple rules, like never sleeping in the open and always carrying a flashlight at night. They spread the word about this by using posters that even people who couldn’t read would understand.

Good, strong fences really help, too. Fences around villages and crops keep lions’ wild prey out, so that they have no reason to wander in after it and come face-to-face with a human. Putting domestic animals inside a barn or behind a fence at night keeps valuable cattle, sheep, and goats — which can be a family’s lifeline — from ending up as a lion’s dinner.

Knowing exactly where lions are can keep people and their animals from getting into danger. Putting satellite or radio tags on lions means they can be tracked over long distances, and if lions get close to villages or grazing cattle, people can be warned. The Living with Lions project in Kenya employs local Maasai warriors — who once hunted lions — as Lion Guardians.They use tracking equipment and cell phones to spread information about what lions are up to, they help to find lost cattle before lions do, and they keep a lookout for poachers — people who hunt and kill wild animals like lions and elephants illegally.

In many parts of Africa, lions struggle to find wild prey because the habitat where their prey lives has been taken over by farms, villages, or roads. In some places, humans kill and eat the same wild animals as lions. It’s known as bush meat, and it’s an important part of many Africans’ diets. Without their natural wild prey to eat, lions turn to domestic animals and humans for their meals. But if the wild habitat is protected and people have domestic animals to eat, not wild ones, then there is more food for lions, and they aren’t so eager to eat humans or farm animals.

Keeping humans and lions apart, tracking lions, and safeguarding their natural food all help people to live safely with lions. This makes people less likely to want to kill lions and more likely to see that they can be useful. Lions keep down the numbers of crop-munching animals, like bush pigs, which is important in Africa, where many families grow their own food. What’s more, lions make money. Lots and lots of it.

Millions of tourists visit Africa every year to see big, exciting animals like lions. A single male lion brings about $500,000 worth of tourist money into its country in its lifetime, and Kenya’s 2,000 lions bring $30 million into their country every year.

The problem is that the people who make money from lions, such as those in the hotel and airline industries, are not the people who have to pay for living with them. Keeping safe from lions by building fences, carrying flashlights, and using tags and cell phones costs money — money that people who live on farms and in villages simply don’t have. For the people who have to live with lions, who sometimes lose their lives and loved ones to them, killing lions is the cheapest way to stay safe.

So what can we do to help save lions? One way is to make sure that some of that tourist money gets to the farmers and cattle herders who live with lions, so they can pay for fences, strong houses, lights, and all the other things that keep them safe from lion attacks. Another way is for people like you and me, all over the world, to give some of our money to the conservation projects that are working to help people live with lions, in hope and pride, not fear.