Integrating community managed livestock grazing and wildlife management is actually very compatible, as long as each has enough room to roam. In northern Kenya, wildlife conservancies like Loisaba are created to protect wildlife habitat while also creating jobs and taxable income for local governments via a primary ecotourism business model. Many conservation organizations, like The Nature Conservancy, are trying hard to protect nature both for wildlife and as the source of all our food, water, and energy.

Africa’s population is expected to rise from 1 billion people to 2.5 billion in the next 35 years. Maintaining the balance of competing land uses is a global issue. So if lions are doing well, then the entire ecosystem is also doing well. Lions provide for all the scavengers like hyena, jackal, and vultures who eat the lions’ leftovers. Without lions, the ecological balance of our African savannas would be severely altered. Even more dramatic is the fact that lions now occupy only 8 percent of their historic habitat in Africa.Īs the top of the food chain, lions are critical to wildlife management. When settlements and farms pop up in the landscape, lions aren’t just more likely to fight with each other, they become targets of the humans who rightly don’t want their cattle to become the lions’ next meal.Ī recent study by Panthera found that lion numbers have dropped 43 percent over the last 20 years to as few as 20,000 individuals living in the wild. While Livingstone’s death won’t make headlines like “Cecil the Lion,” habitat loss - from development, overgrazing, and conversion of land to agriculture - is the biggest threat people pose to lions. And so he stayed, lurking around the edges, until eventually he was killed.

Livingstone, who is wearing a collar through a project with partner Lion Landscapes and Ewaso Lions, has shown us that, despite the threat of territorial males near Loisaba Conservancy, he decided that venturing into the surrounding communities was an even greater risk. While it is not uncommon for male lions to kill each other in territory disputes, this problem is made much worse when lions have nowhere to go. Livingstone chose what he saw as the safer option, and it cost him his life. On a cold night in September in northern Kenya, a young male lion named Livingstone was stuck between a rock and a hard place: He could venture into an area populated with people or with other male lions who would try and defend their territory.

Trapped Indoors With Kids by Matt Brown