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lions are an iconic species of africa
and to have the opportunity to work in a
wild place like this and to
actually be able to make a difference
it's hard to describe how important it
is to me
in northern botswana lions move out of
the delta
because all the territories are occupied
and so as they move out
they get into these high conflict zones
around these villages where
livestock are often the only food that
the lions can find
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that was really the genesis of pride in
our prides we knew we had to do
something
we're working with communities to help
people coexist with these cats
if livestock are killed people are going
to be more motivated to go after the
lions so it's really about helping
people
protect their livestock and in the end
protect lions
the early warning system is based on the
satellite tracking collars that we put
on the cats
so we can warn the village that a
particular lion is approaching at a
particular time so make sure that your
livestock
are protected
we're closing in on one of our lionesses
which we hope to color tonight
myenga is one of the lions that we
started the program with
about a year and a half ago when we put
out our first satellite callers
she was one of our target animals
because we know she's one of the
individuals that likely moves into this
flood plain where that conflict
interface
happens
well the footage we're collecting is to
learn some more about line behaviors
and particularly things that
interactions with cattle
are coming into community properties the
caller will go on the line and the
collar is meant to stay for a couple of
years
this is the critter cam the critic cam
is a short-term tool
it's only meant to stay for a few days
and as the animal walks around the
camera hangs
below the battery pack
myenga mated back in july one of the
things that we had in mind is that she's
likely with cubs that are about
three to four weeks old and she's not
she's not she's she's feeling close
yeah i'm looking at this you know these
trees
but i would like to go this sizes and
just maybe we can get him behind him
i think i
the vet didn't hesitate
we had a bit of an operation to try to
make sure that she was safe
that the cubs were safe and that we were
able to swap the callers quickly
the animals wake up like that during
anesthesias different animals and i mean
their impulses to get away
she's obviously has some adrenaline to
try to
fight the drug she's big she's got a big
belly
i think she's down but listen when she
wakes up she's not going to eat us
but not that quickly let me put it away
and look
explains why she doesn't want to go down
it may be that she's heavily pregnant
because they tend to
then fight the drug tremendously since
we hadn't seen the cubs in that moment
and
she had a full full belly you know we're
starting to second-guess
ourselves what's going on is she
actually still pregnant you may actually
see
something in the critical
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and so as we're watching this footage
she's doing what lions do
basically rest and then
there's the cups oh my god you gotta be
kidding me
we see this little fuzz ball in the
corner and this small
cub starts moving towards her
later in the footage we start to see two
cubs come out
cup is at least three weeks old so then
it means that she has
so we had the date right a few weeks old
just as we had previously predicted
and then they start to play and tumble
on each other
it doesn't get better than this this is
exactly what we were looking for
oh man we were so surprised and happy to
have that confirmation of the cubs
to see them so healthy and to get that
inside view
at that early stage is hugely valuable
we've already started using this footage
and it's been edited down
it's the villages that actually name the
individual
lions in our study and we've gone to
some of these communities to be able to
show them
oh you know myenga she's actually has
cubs
and when there's a trigger of our early
warning system when
she starts approaching the village we'll
be able to send messages
using that name the critic hams
help us personalize and individualize
these cats
people who live in these villages close
to the lions that
have just basically a negative
association
lions mean dead kettle they get this
window into the lives
of these lions and they get to see them
in a different context
we hope that this helps drastically
reduce the killing of livestock
drastically reduce the killing of lions
and create greater tolerance and to
create greater connection
and then we hope that that helps us get
closer to coexistence
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you