Hunter-funded conservation reaches new heights as wild lions are reintroduced to one of Africa’s most important ecosystems.

In June 2018, 24 wild lions were flown from South Africa to Mozambique’s Zambezi Delta where they would spend the next six weeks in fenced bomas for observation before eventually being released. This project—the largest wild lion transfer across an international border in African history—is essential to the future of the  species, but completing such an ambitious project required years of planning, research, and millions of dollars of funding—funding generated by hunters.

In truth, the story of this lion reintroduction began in 1994 when professional hunter Mark Haldane brought his first client into the Zambezi Delta to hunt buffalo. In the mid-twentieth century Mozambique was a premier African hunting destination. The firm Safrique controlled much of the Zambezi Delta and counted such legendary ivory hunters-turned-PHs as Harry Manners and Wally Johnson on their payroll. However, the area was decimated during the lengthy Mozambican Civil War that raged from 1975 until 1992 when local militias set up a base of operations in the delta and indiscriminately killed the local wildlife to feed troops and for profit. After the end of the war, displaced natives repopulated the depleted delta. At that time Mozambique was one of the poorest nations in the world and starvation was killing thousands of Mozambicans each year. In order to obtain meat, delta residents constructed lengthy brush fences with periodic openings which they lined with snares and leghold “gin” traps that further depleted the already devastated wild game populations in the area.

Initial game counts in the delta following the civil war told a grim tale; an aerial survey found that the population of 45,000 cape buffalo had been reduced to roughly 1,200 animals in Coutada 11’s half-million acres. A total of 44 sable antelope were found in the area, and there were less than 100 waterbuck. Selous zebra were once numerous in the area, but by the time the war ended only 5 animals could be located. A long-time delta resident recalled that when he arrived in 1998 it was not uncommon to drive for several hours without seeing any game in the area at all.

That didn’t stop Haldane.

“I fell in love with the area and I saw its potential,” he told me as we waited for the lions to arrive. Mark Haldane bought into the first safari company that operated in the area following the civil war—Zambeze Delta Safaris—and immediately began building an anti-poaching unit that initially numbered 5 officers who patrolled the vast area on foot. Haldane provided full-time employment for delta residents—a luxury few people in the area had ever known—and supplied starving villagers with a steady supply of meat, building strong relationships with the local people. Perhaps more importantly, he convinced the residents of Coutada 11 that a thriving ecosystem with healthy populations of wildlife could provide them with a valuable, renewable resource that would help improve their lives and the lives of their children. Mark’s work paid off, and the tide began to turn in the delta.

By 2013, the Zambezi Delta had been transformed by these efforts. Under Haldane’s watch buffalo numbers had risen to roughly 20,000. Sable antelope were estimated at 3,000, and the area currently has more sable per square mile than any other wilderness hunting area in Africa. Nyala, hartebeest, warthog, and eland were common on the floodplains. When Haldane began hunting the area he was offered one waterbuck tag per year that oftentimes went unfilled because he rarely saw a mature bull. When I arrived for the lion release in 2018 I saw a single herd of waterbuck bulls that numbered over 60 animals—one of several herds we saw that day. Selous zebra, nearly extirpated in the delta by the mid-90’s, now number in the thousands. Additionally, Haldane oversees one of the most successful and well-trained anti-poaching units anywhere in Africa. The area is now patrolled daily by helicopter which was funded by the Dallas Safari Club and fast-reaction anti-poaching teams that rely on motorcycles to rapidly intercept poachers. The funding for all of this came directly from hunters, though Haldane has reinvested a substantial amount of his own earnings back into the community and the delta. In addition to employing over 90 local villagers full-time, Haldane routinely patrols the area himself by helicopter. As game numbers increased so have the number of foreign hunters coming to the delta, and that influx of revenue has allowed the Zambezi Delta team to build a school which they supply with books and stationary, to dig wells, install a mobile corn mill (villagers previously had to carry corn over 35 miles to the nearest mill, and a portion of their corn was collected as payment for the service) and to provide villagers with transportation to hospitals in the event of a medical emergency. Prior to that delta residents had to walk a half-day to obtain medical attention—which they oftentimes didn’t reach in time.

For all Haldane’s success in the delta there was something missing, and that something was the roar of wild lions. The reason that lions had not repopulated such a game-rich area has not been positively identified, but a flight around the perimeter of the delta offers some insight into the forces that likely kept the big cats at bay. Flying in from Beira, south of the delta, there are vast unprotected areas where forests have been cleared for subsistence farming and villages. To the north, one of Mozambique’s busiest roads—and the human populations that reside along it—prove a natural boundary between the delta and nearby Gorongosa National Park. The delta, and all its rich wildlife resources and miles upon miles of prime habitat, was an island the cats could not reach due in large part to human interference.

In 2013 Haldane and Ivan Carter were sitting around a campfire at Haldane’s Mungari Camp in the delta and Carter proposed an ambitious plan to offer his support in reintroducing lions to the area. Though he was in favor of lion reintroduction, Haldane understood how difficult the task would be. But slowly the two men developed a plan of action that would, as Ivan Carter puts it, “move the needle” on wildlife conservation in Mozambique. There would be many risks and challenges involved with moving lions, and the cost in time and resources would be high, but both men agreed that the potential outcome—the return of a viable wild population to one of Africa’s most intact and well-protected wildlife areas—was worth the effort.

Carter, through his Ivan Carter Wildlife Conservation Alliance, began raising funds to help Haldane’s efforts. The ICWCA, as Carter says, “identifies heroes on the front lines of conservation and provides them with the tools, training and financial resources they need”. Haldane was the perfect candidate for such a program. ICWCA provided funds to purchase motorcycles for the anti-poaching teams, brought in experts from the Southern African Wildlife College to help train troops in modern anti-poaching tactics, provided support for helicopter reconnaissance operations to stem poaching and assisted with community engagement and upliftment projects. Of equal importance, the ICWCA enlisted the help of Doctor Byron du Preez, a lion biologist with 10 years of experience who played a crucial role in the highly-successful Bubye Valley lion restoration project in Zimbabwe. With the use of helicopters and radio collars provided through the alliance, Dr. du Preez began a long-term sustainability project to study the delta wildlife and determine whether or not a lion population would be viable in the delta. He found that, in addition to abundant prey animals, the delta had an especially attractive feature for lions—extensive ecotones. Ecotones are boundaries between various habitat types, and in the case of Coutada 11 these are represented by miles of palm savanna that separate the delta’s floodplain from the region’s sand forests. Lions, according to Dr. du Preez, tend to prefer these ecotones and spend most of their time there. To find an area with so few people, plentiful prey, zero livestock and long stretches of ecotones made the Zambezi Delta an ideal landscape for lions.

With the scientific data to support the lion move, Carter looked to enlist the financial support needed to begin the ambitious process, and that came through the Cabela Family Foundation. The Cabela family is one that is familiar to hunters, and they wanted to provide the financial assistance required for such an important recovery effort.

“Preserving wild Africa is very important to our family,” says Dan Cabela. “Ivan brought several different projects to us, and they were all great, but this lion project hit home. I knew this is one we would be interested in because of my mother’s (Mary Cabela) love of Africa and love of lions.”

All the essential elements were in place. The important next step was to procure lions, and for that the team turned to South African game reserves with wild, free-ranging cats. But moving wild game—especially a species like lions—is not an easy task. With Dr. du Preez’s data in hand, the team began finding lions with varied genetic backgrounds to prevent the possibility of inbreeding. The operation required filling out mountains of paperwork that included permits from local and national authorities, veterinary clearance, and much more. The process was anything but streamlined due in large part to the complexity and scope of the project, and the last official documents were signed and delivered only hours before the scheduled charter flights were booked and the darted lions were set to be transported to the delta. Another key element to the success of the project was to bring residents of the delta on board with the project so they would support the team’s efforts. Because of the presence of tsetse flies in the delta and the diseases they spread to livestock there were no domestic herds in Coutada 11, but if the local population was not in support of the lion move it could never succeed. Haldane’s long-standing relationship with the local villages plied the way for discussion, and Byron du Preez spoke to every individual in Coutada 11 about the cats and answered questions from an audience that was, at times, understandably skeptical about the prospect of having wild lions released near their villages. But the strong relationship that Zambeze Delta Safaris had forged with local communities provided the framework for an agreement to be reached, and with the support of the community and Coutada 11’s Chief Thozo the last hurdle was cleared. The largest international lion transfer in African history as set to begin.

Haldane and Alvaro Rola, who owns the government lease on the neighboring Coutada 10, forged an agreement between the two companies—essentially competitors—to work closely together on the transfer. Lions would be introduced to both coutadas, and I was present when the very first load of sedated lions, ten young females of breeding age, arrived at the airstrip beside Haldane’s Mungari Camp deep in the delta. A crowd of perhaps a hundred locals, most of whom had never seen a wild lion, watched as the first jetload of lions arrived on the delta. Carter and Haldane flew customs officials from Beira to Mungari Camp to facilitate competition of transfer permits when the lions arrived, the symbolic last step in the five-year process.

One-by-one the ten lionesses were offloaded as a veterinarian kept close watch over them while a sea of onlookers caught their first glimpse of a lion. Once the cats were loaded into Land Cruisers they were transported 45 minutes through the delta to a fenced boma where they would spend the next six weeks before their release into the wild. Local school children were brought out from the surrounding villages to examine the cats first-hand, a critical step since their attitudes toward the lions would eventually determine, in large part, the success or failure of the entire operation. Dan and Mary Cabela were on hand throughout the entire process. In addition to the lion transfer, the Cabela Family Foundation, in keeping with their “whole community benefit” philosophy, also funded construction of a medical clinic that would provide health care to the local residents. It was due to open the month after the transfer and would provide a higher level of health care to the residents than they had ever known.

As darkness fell there was a rush to transport the sedated lions to the boma where they would spend the next several weeks. Just before dark, the convoy of trucks and helicopters arrived and the cats were rushed one-by-one into the fence with no time to spare. Already having been under anesthesia for ten hours, the veterinarian made the decision that the cats must be given the antidote immediately and as quickly as the lions were laid out in the boma they were given a shot that would reverse the effects of the drug. Within a few moments the first of the eight lions (two others were on their way to a similar boma in Coutada 10) lifted her head and looked out into a foreign landscape hundreds of miles away from where her journey began as the last member of the lion transfer team slipped through the boma’s gate. Eventually all the lions rose and walked on unsteady legs into a grove of trees to sleep off the drugs. Byron du Preez watched their progress through a FLIR thermal scope to ensure that there were no ill effects from the anesthesia. When the last of the eight lionesses disappeared into the tall grass the long day ended with celebration.

I asked Mary Cabela, wife of the late Dick Cabela, why she was involved in the program.

“They say one person can’t make a difference,” she told me. “But we were able to make a difference here. I think Dick would be very proud.”

I agreed. As Dr. du Preez kept watch over the cats, accompanied by his wife and daughters, we loaded into the trucks and headed back to camp through the African night. In two days the second load of lions would arrive, and three lays later the final shipment would be in the delta.

The return of lions to the Zambezi Delta served to heal one of the last scars of Mozambique’s gruesome civil war. But there’s hope that the delta lions will become more than just a symbolic gesture of the return of wild Africa. Coutada 10 and 11 cover roughly a million acres of the finest game habitat on the continent, and with no cattle and very few people the area is a crucial wilderness. For perspective, Kruger National Park in South Africa covers an area that is roughly twice the size of the Zambeze Delta Ecosystem but Kruger is home to over 20 permanent camps and sees over a million visitors each year. The cats of the Zambezi Delta will live, in large part, free from human interaction. According to Dr. du Preez’s estimates the delta cats could eventually represent ten percent of the entire wild lion population on the continent. And even though the transfer was funded by hunters these cats were not brought here to hunt—a fact that Haldane and Carter both emphatically point out. Once the population rebounds there may be hunting here, but that days lies far in the future. These lions were relocated to improve the overall health of the delta’s ecosystem.

African lions don’t benefit from good will or caustic social media debates. What African lions need is habitat and protection from poaching, and both of those are now offered in the delta because of efforts Mark Haldane began a quarter-century ago. When these lions are released from their bomas they will walk out into an oasis that, not all that long ago, was virtually a wasteland. Hunters helped change the face of the delta, and now hunters have had a hand in one of the most ambitious and important wildlife relocation efforts in Africa’s history. But the work is not done. Poaching continues to be a problem, as evidenced by the mountain of wire snares and steel traps Haldane has collected, and his anti-poaching team recently arrested two Malawians who had heard about the delta’s wealth of wildlife and traveled hundreds of miles to exploit the area’s riches for profit. For now, though, these poachers will be met with a team of dedicated individuals who are willing to risk everything for the future of wildlife.

It won’t be long until the roar of lions can once again be heard in the delta. The needle has moved.

Learn more about this initiative at www.24lions.org. If you want to play a direct role in funding habitat restoration and anti-poaching efforts, please visit Zambeze Delta Anti-Poaching (www.zambezedeltaantipoaching.com), the Ivan Carter Wildlife Conservation Alliance (www.ivancarterwca.org), or the Cabela Family Foundation (www.cabelafamilyfoundation.org). You can also support the initiative through Ivan Carter’s Raindrop Initiative at www.theraindropinitiative.org.

Photo by Donald M. Jones

Good news and bad news from sheep country.

The world of North American wild sheep has been rocked by plenty of news lately, both good and bad.

First, the good news: Sheep populations, overall, are larger and healthier than they’ve been in decades. The Wild Sheep Foundation (WSF) estimates that somewhere between 170,000 and 190,000 sheep roam the North American continent. About 50 percent of these are “thinhorns,” the Dall and Stone sheep of Alaska, Yukon, Northwest Territories, and British Columbia. Some 80,000 are bighorns, an impressive number. And these sheep are growing big, especially in Montana, as evidenced by a couple of tremendous Rocky Mountain bighorns that stormed into the record books this year. A ram found dead on Montana’s Wild Horse Island in 2016 shattered the world record when it was found to score 216 3/8. Also this year, a young Montana hunter named Justin Sheedy shot a beautiful ram that tied the longstanding hunter-killed world record of 208 3/8.

All of this means that the hard work and years of effort on the part of wildlife managers and hunters to enlarge and nurture wild sheep populations are paying off.

But an ominous cloud formed on the sheep-hunting horizon in March with the long-feared news that Mycoplasma ovipneumoniae, a pathogen that carries a respiratory disease fatal to wild sheep, had been discovered for the first time in Dall sheep and mountain goats in Alaska.

Unfortunately, wild sheep are highly prone to fatal respiratory disease, which can sweep through herds and cause massive die-offs. Domestic sheep and goats are known to carry this pathogen, infecting wild sheep when they come into contact with them. Wildlife managers have long struggled with deadly pneumonia outbreaks in bighorn sheep herds, but the diseases have never been a problem in Dall and Stone sheep, which tend to live in wilder country farther removed from their domestic cousins.

“This alarming news out of Alaska confirms what many wild sheep conservationists have dreaded, that a domestic sheep and goat pathogen has somehow made its way into Dall sheep in Alaska, home to more than 25 percent of all wild sheep in North America,” said WSF president and CEO Gray Thornton.

The news seems to have galvanized at least some lawmakers on the state and federal levels, with the Alaska legislature passing a resolution (unfortunately nonbinding) to “support enhanced efforts to protect wildlife and domestic animals in the state from infectious diseases…” Meanwhile, in Washington, in the final proposed spending bill for FY18, Congress reissued its directive to the Department of the Interior and U.S. Forest Service to “find solutions to the risks of pneumonia die-offs in bighorn and potentially thinhorn sheep.”

Ultimately, though, any solution will require broad cooperation between state agencies, hunters and other advocates for wild sheep, holders of public land grazing permits, private landowners, and the livestock industry. It won’t be an easy task.

As has been the case throughout the history of North American wildlife conservation, however, hunters are taking the lead in finding solutions. The Wild Sheep Foundation and its state affiliates are working hard to proactively address the disease issue and other problems in sheep country. Thousands of dedicated volunteers, most of them hunters who will probably never get to hunt a wild sheep themselves, are pouring time, money, and effort into ensuring that sheep populations remain strong for future generations.

If you love the mountains, and the magnificent game animals that call them home, these organizations deserve your support.

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Zimbabwe is struggling with an overpopulation of elephants in many areas, despite media reports to the contrary and public hysteria over the issuance of export permits for legally hunted animals. Photo by Denver Bryan/Images on the Wildside

Elephants in Zimbabwe are under threat from the very efforts intended to “save” them.

In the March issue of Sports Afield we looked at the story behind the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service’s (FWS) decision on Zimbabwe elephants under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in late 2017. The finding—that legal hunting will enhance the survival of elephant there–should have allowed American hunters to import elephant trophies once again, but the White House responded to the media firestorm by putting permits on hold.

The landscape has changed somewhat since then. In response to a DC Circuit Court decision, the FWS withdrew all country-wide enhancement findings in a March 1 memorandum, stating that permits for elephants, lions, and other listed species would be considered on a case-by-case basis. That means permits should, once again, be a go, but none have been issued.

Now is a good time to look at the gulf between the priorities of FWS and those of the Zimbabwe Parks and Wildlife Management Authority (ZPWMA), which faces complex elephant management issues that vary from region to region.

The FWS treats trophy hunting of elephants as though it were a key part of species management, lumping it in with other offtakes. In reality, hunting quotas are a fraction of a percent and the few elephants killed by hunters have no effect on the biological status of elephants in Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe’s expensive efforts to address the FWS import suspension have mainly distracted from what should be a more important issue: the fact that three of the country’s four elephant subpopulations are considerably larger than ZPWMA wants them to be.

Ecologist and wildlife consultant Rowan Martin worked for what is now ZPWMA from 1972 to 1997, also serving as Zimbabwe representative to CITES. According to Martin, much of the country’s protected woodland areas are paying a price for continued inaction over high elephant densities.

Says Martin, “Canopy woodlands begin to disappear when elephant densities exceed one elephant to five square kilometers, and the worst problems are in Matebeleland North. Hwange National Park itself is an ‘eco-slum,’ with over 45,000 elephants at a density of 3 per square kilometer. There has been an increasing migration of elephants from the park into neighboring safari areas (rather negating the hypothesis that elephants would seek haven from trophy hunting in the park) and Matetsi now has some 5,000 elephants at 1.1 per square kilometer.

“There is considerable vegetation damage in the Lower Zambezi Valley, which consists almost entirely of hunting areas, including communal CAMPFIRE areas. Despite the high level of illegal hunting taking place, elephant densities are still unacceptably high (0.7 per square kilometer). Elephants in the Southeast Lowveld, including Gonerezhou National Park, have reached densities exceeding 2 per square kilometer, causing widespread habitat degradation. Incredibly, Zimbabwe received a congratulatory message from FWS for the ‘good news’ that the park population had reached 12,000 elephants.”

Martin notes that biological species management and management for trophy game are separate matters, a point that seems to confuse FWS. “In the 2014 finding that started the suspension, they wrote ‘In order to manage any population to ensure an appropriate population level and determine whether sport hunting is having a positive effect, it is vital to have sufficient data on population numbers and/or population trends to base management decisions.’ This is incorrect. With adaptive management, sport hunting can be managed indefinitely using the feedback from trophy quality (e.g. mean tusk weight) to increase or reduce quotas. If trophy hunting is benefitting the population, it doesn’t matter what the biological status of the population is.”

Because of the ESA’s demand that hunting enhance the survival of the species, FWS has developed a fixation with high numbers and an obsessive concern with offtake. But concerns about elephant densities and the health of the ecosystem as a whole largely glossed over. Populations are artificially high in national parks, largely because of pumping that maintains water pans throughout the dry season.

Rose Mandisodza-Chikerema is the chief ecologist for ZPWMA, and oversees research and management across Zimbabwe. She confirms that Zimbabwe wants to address the high elephant populations, particularly in Matabeleland North.

‘There is an overabundance of elephants, and the biggest effect is modification of the habitat. Another impact that you also have is a decline in plains game species like giraffe, impala, and zebra. For example, game count results in northwest Matabeleland show increasing elephant and declines in a number of herbivore species.” Mandisodza-Chikerema says that there may have been even more marked declines in antelope during the rapid elephant growth after Zimbabwe halted culling programs in the late 1980s.

Despite this, current plans don’t involve culling elephants. “We may translocate some animals to areas like those in Sebungwe and the Lower Zambezi Valley, says Mandisodza-Chikerema. There may also be some live sales, not to manage the population, but to raise funds. In areas like northwest Matabeleland we may look at the option of closing some of the waterpoints.”

Mandisodza-Chikerema notes that culling would only be a temporary solution, because the artificial water holes allow the elephant population to rebound rapidly.

Vernon Booth is a freelance wildlife consultant who began his career as an ecologist with the ZPWMA, working in the Matetsi for thirteen years beginning in 1979. He says that the park is heading toward a critical juncture.

“What’s happening in the region now is the same thing has happened in Chobe National Park in Botswana, where the only trees left are miombo and other unpalatable species. In Chobe you still have buffalo in the floodplains, but virtually all antelope have taken flight. It’s an insidious and slow process. There isn’t a lot of hard data on the effects on other species, but impacts are visible. The area around Sinamatella Camp in Hwange was called ‘Impala Park’ with 200 impala per square kilometer in the 1980s, and now impala are virtually absent. That’s to say nothing of what’s happening to reptiles, insects, and other animals. No one knows. The big problem is the water pan pumping. I think somewhere along the line that population is going to keep growing and growing and we’re going to a situation like in Tsavo in Kenya on our hands, where much of the wildlife dies off.”

A fierce debate burns about whether there can be “too many elephants,” with some biologists arguing that elephant-dominated landscapes are part of a natural cycle that took place in the pre-colonial era. There are, however, very few protected wildlife areas in Africa that don’t have permanent artificial waterpoints within close proximity, causing elephants to complete dominate the landscape. Recent research has turned to waterpoints, suggesting that woodland biodiversity may be maintained if permanent pans are better managed. Waterpoint management may prove to be an effective strategy for Zimbabwe in curbing biodiversity loss. If so, elephant numbers will drop, a point that the international community should be willing to accept.

For hunters and wildlife managers, the bottom line is that elephant populations have exploded in much of Zimbabwe, and there is no reason why the country should continue to go without key revenue from elephant hunting. Says Mandisodza-Chikerema, “In some ways we have been punished for conserving our elephants while other countries have been less sucessful. FWS has treated the country unfairly by not allowing Zimbabwe to see the rewards from its successes.”

While revenue from trophy elephants may not make or break ZPWMA, it may tip the scales for communal wildlife areas in the CAMPFIRE program, some of which have already turned hunting areas to other uses, such as farmland. This means compressing elephants in ever-smaller spaces.

Whatever the good intentions of the FWS, the fixation on numbers and data around a few charismatic species will continue to obscure difficulties facing ecosystems in Africa. These problems are local in nature, and poorly served by the broad strokes of ESA policy.

In mid-March, Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke issued a statement on Twitter saying, “Let’s be clear: Since the President’s statement, we have not issued a single permit for elephant trophies. We support the President’s policy.” Zinke seemed to be referring to Trump’s November tweet putting permits on hold. It is not known when, or if, this policy will change. It clearly isn’t based on science, as ESA policy is supposed to be.

When the ESA is being controlled by political whims, it’s time for the U.S. to walk back our outsized influence on wildlife management in African countries.

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