Tracking Lions

Hwange National Park is home to one quarter of Zimbabwe’s lions and, as elsewhere in Africa, survival of the population is threatened by over-hunting. Although hunting is illegal inside the park, it is permitted in adjacent hunting concessions. Lions from within the park are regularly lured out of the park (using bait), where they can then be legally shot.

To be able to collect information on the lions, some of the lions have been equipped with a radio/GPS collar.

What is a radio collar?

A radio collar is a leather collar with a small radio transmitter and battery attached. The transmitter on each collar emits a signal at a specific frequency, which researchers can track from a vehicle. When a researcher is trying to locate a particular collared lion, they will dial in her frequency and drive around her territory listening for the signal (little "beeps"). On top of the vehicle is a directional antenna, and once the signal is detected, the researcher simply drives in the direction where the signal is loudest.

Why use radio collars?
Finding a specific pride of lions isn't easy. Their territories may be as large as 400 square kilometers, and because lions spend most of their time asleep, they often hidden in the grass or on top of kopjes where they are difficult to see. In order to closely monitor the health of the lion population as well as the behavior of specific individuals, it is necessary to see them on a regular basis. This is only possible with radio collars.

The lions are regularly tracked from the ground using a hand-held receiver connected to a directional antenna to gather information on their social structure, reproduction, mortality rates, causes of mortality and feeding ecology.

So to be able to help on the lion research one of the first things we had to learn was to track lions.

Much of the time is spent looking for lions, not looking at them.