Meet the scientist
Amy Dickman on saving lions and getting to know the locals in Tanzania
n 2009, having just completed her PhD, Amy Dickman moved to a small village on the southern edge of Ruaha National Park, slap bang in the middle of Tanzania, where she established a small bush camp. Some nights, she was kept awake by local people celebrating lion kills – strange as it may sound, it was the reason Dickman was there.
Having worked on cheetah conservation in Namibia, and other big-cat projects, Dickman was drawn to the issue of why people kill carnivores – lions especially – and what can be done about it.
“During my studies, I found there was a lot of reported conflict locally, but no one admitted to doing much killing,” she recalls. “This didn’t seem right. I didn’t feel we were getting to the truth of it.”
Dickman wanted to get to know the villagers and find out what she could do to improve their lives. If she could do that, she might then also be able to persuade them to leave the lions in peace.
For months, she made no progress. It was something totally unplanned that helped her make the breakthrough. “We put up two solar panels for our laptops, and they used to turn up to charge their mobile phones,” Dickman says. “It was a slow start to a relationship.”
She knew lion killing was taking place to protect livestock, but other factors were at play, too. “Local warriors were doing it for the same
Ithings that drive people all over the world – money, power and sex,” she says. Young women came to local dances hoping to pair off with lion killers, as they had the highest status.
Dickman and her team had to find a way to reduce conflict levels but also to make lion killers less alluring to the opposite sex.
Reinforcing livestock enclosures proved highly effective at reducing attacks, but the team also persuaded warriors to reinvent themselves as Lion Defenders (modelled on the Kenyan Lion Guardians project) for which they’d be paid and be taught to read and write.
FIND OUT MORE
Ruaha Carnivore Project website: ruahacarnivore project.com
Suddenly, it was the men protecting lions that had a high status.
In 2011, Dickman’s team detected 25 lion kills in a small arc of village land – about 100 times higher than would be allowed under trophy hunting. She hasn’t eliminated the problem entirely, but it’s significantly smaller nearly a decade on.
Today, the project works across 16 local villages and has a budget of more than £300,000 a year. Some of the funds reach local people by way of a novel competition – the more wildlife villagers maintain on their land (as demonstrated by cameratraps), the more community benefits they receive. Carnivores result in more benefits than antelopes.
With over 70 people employed by the project, Dickman now spends more of her time in the UK, managing proceedings and fund-raising. The project is currently collaring lions (nine so far) to provide better information on where they go and how many are being killed.
Lions fascinate people, Dickman says, “They have beauty and the power to kill you. Our generation has the ability to decide if they are allowed to survive.” James Fair
There was reported human-lion conflict but no one admitted to doing much killing.