where it all started
our Journey
We collaborate with local communities to develop innovative approaches to promote human-carnivore coexistence.
The early start: From poisoned lions to alerted people
2013 was a devastating year along the northern Okavango, Botswana. Villagers were losing livestock at an exceptionally high rate and decided to take action. By setting poison and actively hunting them down, villagers killed over 30 known lions, representing nearly 50% of the area population. Poison was the biggest concern as it indiscriminately kills all in its path. Colleagues recorded the victims including scores of dead vultures and other predators along with targeted prides with cubs.
A year later, our founder, Dr. Andrew Stein launched a community engagement program, called ‘Pride in Our Prides’, to determine the root causes of the conflicts and promote peaceful coexistence between villagers and lions. With his graduate student, Eric LeFlore and field assistants Pro Tomeletso and Chris Dimbindo, on the ground, the team took a compassionate approach to mitigating conflict by assessing the scale of the problem and sharing information about lions for improved outcomes. Henceforth, we set about our mission in the heart of Kavango-Zambezi Trans-Frontier Conservation Area (KAZA TFCA) and in 2014, CLAWS was founded.
In 2015, we fitted 6 lions with satellite tracking collars. With a basic understanding of regional lion ecology and movement patterns, we developed our Lion Alert System. In its infancy, we manually sent out messages to participating farmers to warn them when collared lions were approaching their cattle posts. Concurrently, we constructed livestock enclosures(kraals) from woven mats of sustainably harvested branches for local farmers who had suffered substantial cattle losses to predators. With a range of models and structures, we sought to compare their effectiveness in preventing lion predation. A year later, we started using GPS trackers on cattle to monitor their movement and better understand the changing patterns of movement between seasons. With this data in hand, we incorporated it into the lion alert system to improve its accuracy: The movement of cattle and lions were monitored and we were able to collect clearer data.
Our greatest leap occurred when we partnered with the University of Siegen (Germany) to develop the first-of-its-kind automated, adaptable alert system. As collared lions move across the landscape, their locations are incorporated into a cloud-based algorithm to calculate their distance to registered cattle posts, homesteads and villages and deliver real-time messages directly to individual cell phones when lions are nearby. The individuals share their preferred warning type based on language (English or Setswana) or media (text or voicemail) for the most actionable result (see our program Pride in Our Prides).
Winning over communities for a holistic herding management
In 2017, CLAWS began a shift toward implementing programs on livestock husbandry for environmental health and conflict mitigation. Firstly, we collated the results of the kraals we had built back in 2015. Here, we found that the kraals were only effective when well maintained.
Despite extensive training in building and maintenance, the kraal slowly fell to disrepair and ineffectiveness. The high costs of constructing kraals and their limited effectiveness led us to look at new solutions. Thus, our attention turned to holistic livestock management principles, facilitated by our colleagues with the African Centre for Holistic Management, based in Zimbabwe. This collaboration enabled us to offer herder training courses and workshops to local farmers engaged in the program. The first of which was held in Beetsha village, located at the north-eastern edge of the Okavango Delta.
Sensing a great deal of success, we followed up engagements with the community to gauge progress and hosted another herder training course in Eretsha village for 25 local men and women, young and old. We particularly tried to target village leaders, as we identified them as the most influential agents of change in the community. Thankfully, we found support for our herding approach from National Geographic, Lion Recovery Fund and Great Plains Foundation. At the end of a landmark year and several successful rounds of lion darting and collaring, in December 2018 we reached our target of 10 collared lions. A few months later, we hosted the final training program in Gunotsoga village (not far away from the other two villages mentioned). Moreover, we returned to Eretsha to continue the success of the seeds that we had sewn the previous year. We were delighted to find that many individuals in the local community were eager to adopt several of the innovative approaches and herding techniques that we had introduced. Thus, in spring of 2019, our first communal herd was established in Eretsha, containing approximately 790 livestock. This constituted the first and largest combined herd in Botswana!
Downs and ups in paving path and spoors towards the future
Many livestock owners balked, retrieving their cattle at the first signs of struggle. With a reduced herd of stalwart supporters, we tightened up our approach and established a strong connection with Conservation International’s Herding 4 Health Program. With resources in hand and active trainings, things started to turn around and the small herd began to grow.
In 2020, we were delighted to be awarded AFD (France’s main agency for public development aid) and EU grants as implementing partners of Herding 4 Health. These grants helped to expand our communal herding program, creating the possibility to open the cattle market up in the Food and Mouth Desease-zone for Commodity Based Trade.
2021 improved gradually and Botswana was awarded a major climate adaptation grant, CLAWS’s communal herding actions in the Okavango Delta were chosen as a demonstration site for climate adaptation engagement. Moreover, under the Green Climate Fund (GCF- insert website URL) which aimed to deal with climate change adaptation strategies in Botswana rangeland, CLAWS was once again selected as a demonstration site, recognizing the great foundations set in place by several years of hard work.
In 2022, we received a significant grant from WWF to a) conduct lion surveys to explore movement and connectivity patterns in the KAZA TFCA landscape between the Okavango Delta and protected areas in Namibia and b) to scale up community engagement to reduce human-wildlife conflicts. We pool our expertise with our collaborators, WildCru, Kwando Carnivore Project and the Kalahari Wildlands Trust.
Over the years, our dedicated team grew. Today, we are proud of our twenty qualified local staff boosting our work towards a peaceful and safe coexistence between herders and wildlife. We feel inspired by what we do, who we do it with and what we do it for (see our impacts). There is more to come and we stay focused and engaged with our vision of today:
‘A world where people and wildlife thrive, empowered by local knowledge, innovation and ecological sustainability.’