Sea lions – Travel Africa Magazine

Remarkable relearned behaviour exhibits the resilience of Namibia’s fairly exceptional desert-tailored large cats. By Philip Stander. Image above by Carel Loubser, Shutterstock

The picture of a lion strolling alongside an remoted seashore has captured the creativeness of many filmmakers, scientists and wildlife fanatics. It is a phenomenon that has, in current occasions, occurred solely alongside Namibia’s shoreline.

The Namib Desert is the oldest and close to-driest desert on the planet. The coastal zones of the remainder of Africa are productive and nutrient-wealthy areas, and people have occupied and dominated these habitats for millennia. Along the hyper-arid coast of Namibia, nevertheless, people have lived at low densities, and subsequently haven’t had the identical influence on the surroundings as they do elsewhere alongside the coast of Africa. As a consequence, a number of giant mammal species, together with Black rhinos, giraffes and elephants, discovered refuge right here and developed distinctive variations to the arid circumstances. In 1971 the Skeleton Coast National Park was proclaimed in an effort to guard this distinctive habitat and its endemic animals and vegetation.

The Skeleton Coast lions turned well-known in 1985 when legendary wildlife filmmakers Des and Jen Bartlett took exceptional pictures of the cats on the seashore. Staff and researchers monitored the lions frequently, and in 1986 a rudimentary analysis undertaking was began, specializing in the lions’ actions and inhabitants ecology.

At that point, the land-use practices within the areas bordering the Skeleton Coast National Park weren’t geared in the direction of the safety of wildlife, particularly not of lions. Tourism was in its infancy and neighborhood-based mostly conservation was a overseas idea. In an space with tremendously excessive tourism worth, native communities dwelling outdoors the park had been trying to outlive on uneconomical and unsustainable livestock farming.

Conflict between the lions and farmers was inevitable. Lions raided their livestock and the farmers retaliated by taking pictures or poisoning the cats. By 1990 all of the recognized and radio-collared lions had been killed.

Then, in 1997, a small remnant group of roughly 20 desert-tailored lions was found in a mountainous area on the japanese fringe of the Namib, and the Desert Lion Conservation undertaking was launched. Much had modified for the reason that Eighties: a number of years of excellent rainfall had seen a rise in wildlife numbers, tourism was booming, native folks derived advantages from wildlife and tourism by means of the communal conservancies system, and the circumstances had been proper for lions to seek out their method again to the Skeleton Coast.

During the subsequent 20 years the lion inhabitants elevated and expanded to most of its former vary. Today there are between 130–150 lions dwelling in an space of 35,000 sq km between the Ugab River within the south and the Hoaureb River within the north.

Lions discovered their method again to the Skeleton Coast, and a few even briefly visited the shoreline. But their information of the wealthy marine meals supply alongside the coast was misplaced: the lions confirmed little interest in patrolling the seashores searching for seals, as they’d in the course of the Eighties.

It required a exceptional lioness and her descendants to make the breakthrough that finally noticed the return of the coastal lions almost 35 years later. Xpl-10, or ‘the Queen’ as she turned recognized, was born north of Palmwag in 1998 and have become the topic of an intensive examine till her demise in May 2014. During her wealthy and eventful life she produced a complete of 5 litters, elevating seven lions. Her daughters had six litters and efficiently raised an extra 11 cubs.

The QueenXpl-10 uncovered all her descendants to the ocean, and steadily they began exploring extra of the coastal habitat. The first confirmed proof of their feeding on Cape fur seals got here in 2006. Several extra remoted instances adopted, but it surely was solely in 2017 that three younger lionesses — the nice-granddaughters of the QueenXpl-10 — rediscovered the wealthy meals sources that the shoreline has to supply.

The younger lionesses had had a rocky begin. Their mom died of pure causes once they had been barely a 12 months previous, and so they turned referred to as the ‘Orphans’. Driven by starvation and desperation, they discovered their method over the dunes and swam onto an island at a recent-water spring close to the coast. Here, they began killing cormorants that roost on the island at evening. This was their saving, and shortly they turned specialised in searching a spread of wetland birds, together with flamingos and geese. But it was the massive numbers of resident Cape and White-breasted cormorants that offered them with a nutritious and dependable marine food regimen.

The Orphans started following the massive flocks of cormorants, searching them at evening on the mud-flats and alongside the shoreline. This introduced them into contact with Cape fur seals that often relaxation on the seashores. At first the lions scavenged seal carcasses, after which they expropriated them from brown hyaenas. Early in 2018 the Orphans began killing seals themselves. Initially they took solely juveniles lower than one 12 months previous, however with expertise got here confidence, and just lately the Orphans have killed a number of bigger seals, together with just a few grownup females.

After an absence of almost 35 years the coastal lions of the Skeleton Coast are again in pressure. The legendary lioness, the QueenXpl-10, was the founding father of a brand new period of lions which can be suitably expert and tailored for survival alongside the Skeleton Coast. It required all that point, and several other generations, for the lions to regain the information that was misplaced on the finish of the Eighties.

With the rising tourism business in Namibia, these lions have develop into valued nationwide property. We will now, hopefully, present adequate safety to make sure the lengthy-time period conservation of this iconic and uniquely tailored species — for it’s not daily that you just see a lion on a seashore.

Dr Philip Stander  is the founding father of the Desert Lion Conservation (www.desertlion.info) and the writer of the exceptional new ebook, Vanishing Kings.

This article was first published in Travel Africa magazine, edition 85, January-March 2019, which can be purchased here.