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Hi, my name is Kevin MacFarlane, and
I'm a PhD at the Australian National University. The official title of my research project is:
"Spatial and resource
requirements of the lions in the Central Kalahari
Game Reserve: Managing conflicts with neighbouring pastoralists."
This website is where you can find out more about what the project entails, what I'm doing on a daily basis over the next few years, see a few photos, and one day soon track the lions via satellite imagery. Thanks for showing interest in our research project.
mission statement
The main aim of the project is to
resolve the conflict between local African cattle farmers, and the lions from
the game reserve. Many people think of it as shocking that farmers can still
shoot a lion to save his cows, yet the same thing goes on with wolves in North
America and Europe, dingoes in Australia, and crocodiles in Asia. Native
animals and humans are in conflict around the world, and the animals are slowly
losing ground.
As many as 30 lions may be shot around the the Central
Kalahari Game Reserve every year. The government wants to take control of the
situation, finding a compromise where lions are no longer in conflict with
people, and we aim to find out how they can do that. You may ask, surely there
has been a lot of research in to lions and their biology. There has been,
starting with George Schallers seminal work on the
lions of the Serengeti, continued by Craig Packer to this day, and many others
across Africa. Actually what they all agree on, is that lions are so varied in
their response to different habitats, (they are able to survive in deep jungle
of the Congo, dry forests of South Africa, and the deserts of Namibia,) that we
need to study them again in each new environment. Added to that, our primary
goal with lion conservation today is the conflict with people and they are all
different. Some revere the lion, and can withstand small losses without
retaliation. Most fear the lion, but they all differ in the way the live, the
way they raise and protect their livestock, and the habitat around them are
very different. Before we can advise the people living around the CKGR, we need
to know how the lions are using the space in and outside the reserve, what
are their main prey items in the dry and then in the wet season, and how this
change in prey base may effect movements of lions into the cattle areas.
Of course there may be other factors that influence lions use of their environment, the most common is the landscape itself, and lion social factors such as the tendency to nomadism in non-dominant males, and the exclusion of some lions by more dominant individuals and prides. We hope to understand the full picture through the research herein. Follow the links above to find out more.