June/July 2019

June/July 2019

Return of the Skeleton Coast Lions
by Philip Stander

The image of a lion walking along an isolated beach has captured the imagination of many filmmakers, scientists and wildlife enthusiasts. It is a phenomenon that has, in recent times, only occurred along Namibia’s coastline. This is due to the Namib Desert: the oldest and near-driest desert on the planet that forms a 100km band along Namibia’s entire coastline. The coastal zones of the rest of Africa are productive and nutrient-rich areas, and humans have occupied and dominated those habitats for millennia. Along the hyper-arid coast of Namibia, however, humans have lived at low densities, and therefore have not had the same impact on the environment as they do elsewhere along the coast of Africa. As a result, several large mammal species, including Black rhinos, giraffes and elephants, found refuge here and developed unique adaptations to the arid conditions. In 1971 the Skeleton Coast Park was proclaimed in an effort to protect the unique habitat and its endemic animals and plants.

The Skeleton Coast lions became famous in 1985 when legendary wildlife filmmakers Des and Jen Bartlett captured remarkable images of lions on the beach. The staff and researchers of the Skeleton Coast Park monitored the lions regularly, and in 1986 we started a rudimentary research project on the lions, focusing mainly on movements and population ecology.

At that time, the land-use practices in the areas bordering the Skeleton Coast Park were not geared towards the protection of wildlife, especially not of lions. The Namibian tourism industry was just cutting its teeth, and community-based conservation was a foreign concept. In an area with tremendously high tourism value, local communities living just outside the narrow Skeleton Coast Park were attempting to survive on uneconomical and unsustainable livestock farming. Conflict between the lions and the farmers was inevitable. Lions raided their livestock and the farmers retaliated (legally) by shooting or poisoning lions. By 1990 all the known and radio-collared lions had been killed. And that was the end of the coastal lions of the Namib Desert.

Then, in 1997, a small remnant group of approximately 20 desert-adapted lions was discovered in a mountainous region on the eastern edge of the Namib, and the Desert Lion Conservation project was launched. Much had changed since the 1980s: several years of good rainfall saw an increase in wildlife numbers, the Namibian tourism industry was booming, local people derived benefits from wildlife and tourism through the communal conservancies system, and the conditions were right for lions to find their way back to the Skeleton Coast.

During the next two decades the lion population increased and expanded to most of its former range. Today there are between 130–150 lions that live in an area of 35,000km2 between the Ugab River in the south to the Hoaureb River in the north. Lions slowly found their way back to the Skeleton Coast, and some even visited the coastline briefly. But the knowledge of the rich marine food-source along the coast was lost. The lions showed no interest in patrolling the beaches in search of seals, as they did during the 1980s.

It required a remarkable lioness and her descendants to make the breakthrough that eventually saw the return of the coastal lions nearly 35 years later. She was born north of Plamwag in 1998 and became the subject of an intensive study until her death in May 2014. Xpl-10, or “the Queen” as she became known in later years, dispersed first to the Hoanib River and then to the Hoaruseb River where she produced her first litter of two female cubs. When the cubs were two years old she led them to the mouth of the Hoaruseb and they began exploring the coastline (photo 1). During her rich and eventful life, the QueenXpl-10, produced five litters, managing to raise 7 lions to adulthood. Her daughters, in turn, had six litters and successfully raised an additional 11 cubs. The QueenXpl-10 exposed all her descendants to the ocean, and gradually they started exploring more of the coastal habitat. The first confirmed evidence of their utilising marine food resources came in 2002 when they fed on a Cape fur seal at the mouth of the Hoaruseb River. Several more isolated cases of their killing seals followed over the years. But it was only in 2017 that three young lionesses, the great-granddaughters of the QueenXpl-10, rediscovered the rich food resources that the coastline has to offer.

The young lionesses had a rocky start. Their mother died of natural causes when they were barely a year old, and they became known as the “Orphans”. Driven by hunger and desperation, the young lionesses found their way over the dunes and swam onto an island at a fresh-water spring near the coast. Here they started killing cormorants that roost on the island at night. This was their saving, and soon they became specialised in hunting a wide range of wetland birds, including flamingos and ducks. But it was the large numbers of resident Cape and White-breasted cormorants that provided them with a nutritious and reliable marine diet. The “Orphans” began following the large flocks of cormorants, and hunting them at night on the mud-flats and along the coastline. This brought them into contact with Cape fur seals that occasionally rest on the beaches. At first the lions scavenged seal carcasses that they found along the beaches, and then they expropriated seal carcasses from brown hyaenas. Early in 2018 the Orphans started killing seals themselves. Initially they took only juveniles of less than a year old, but with experience came confidence, and during the past few months the Orphans have killed several larger seals, including a few adult females.

After an absence of nearly 35 years the coastal lions of the Skeleton Coast are back in force. The legendary lioness, the QueenXpl-10, was the founder of a new era of lions that are suitably skilled and adapted for survival along the Skeleton Coast. It required all that time, and several generations, for the lions to regain the knowledge that was lost so quickly at the end of the 1980s. With the growing tourism industry in Namibia these lions have become National assets. We will now, hopefully, provide sufficient protection to ensure the long-term conservation of this iconic and uniquely adapted species – for it is not every day that you see a lion on a beach.

 

Philip Stander

Desert Lion Conservation                                                                   www.desertlion.info

Namibia

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1 comment

An incredible story but not surprising. Animals’ ability to adapt to a habitat is not instinctive but behavioural. These remarkable observations that now can be so readily shared thanks to modern communication give us a glimpse into the world of animal behaviour and their intelligence.

Dr Raymond Berard

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