“Ramping up protection efforts of Endangered Central African lions, a team of Cameroonian rangers and biologists from the Ministry of Forestry and Wildlife (MINFOF) and Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), has placed GPS collars on seven of the big cats in Cameroon’s Bouba Ndjidda National Park; this brings the number of collared lions to ten…
The ten collars are the latest high-tech tool to support the efforts of MINFOF rangers to safely and efficiently protect the park’s wildlife. Paul Bour, the Landscape Director for WCS assists the Cameroonian government in planning and preparing anti-poaching patrols. ‘The data from the collars help us to be strategic,’ he said. ‘We receive lion locations four times a day, from the collars via satellite directly to our laptops, so we see which areas of the landscape lions use almost in real time. We can proactively prioritize those areas for patrols, to ensure they are well protected and poachers cannot access them.’
The collars will also provide insights into the ecology of lions from a region of Africa where the species is poorly known. Dr Paul Funston of African Lion Conservation worked with the team to capture the lions and said ‘Lions are Endangered across Central Africa and most populations are very depleted with a high level of threat. Bouba Ndjidda is exciting because lions are breeding well in parts of the park but they do not seem to be raising as many cubs as we would hope. Strong science with data from the collars will help to unravel that mystery and other unknowns in the population.'”