Throng

Wednesday 24th December at 8:00pm on five

The documentary series examining freak occurrences in the natural world continues. This instalment explores the growing incidence of lion attacks on humans in east Africa and investigates the reasons behind this sudden shift in behaviour.

Over the last two decades, lion attacks have quadrupled in Tanzania –600 people have been eaten by the beasts since 1990. The government has called in wildlife capture specialists like Dairen Simpson to help cull the problem animals. “We’re not talking about regular old lions,” says Dairen. “We’re talking about lions that walk into a village and kill.”

With a team of government rangers, Dairen heads north to Singida, where a pack of three lions have hunted and killed 20 people in the past year. Although these big cats are a protected species, the threat that some of their number pose to human life has become far too great to ignore. Government ranger Dennis Ikanda theorises that the man-eaters are strategically targeting humans after becoming familiar with their community and environment. “They actively seek human beings as prey, and they do it very well,” he says.

In Singida, the three felines are known to approach a cluster of villages from the road and it is here that the rangers set up a trap. Exactly why certain lions are hunting people instead of zebra, wildebeest and impala is the subject of much deliberation.

Depletion of traditional prey is one popular theory. If there is a lack of food, the predators are forced to
eat livestock instead. While stalking cattle, the big cats come into contact with their human herders. “A smart creature like a lion begins to figure out the easy opportunity,” says Dairen. Human-lion conflict expert Hadas Kushnir has been researching the phenomenon of the man-eater for four years. She is based near the Rufiji River to the south of the country, an area that has also been plagued by lion attacks. Hadas believes that local farming methods make the people in the region vulnerable. The fields are isolated from the villages by bush and must be monitored at night to ensure that the nocturnal bush pigs do not decimate the crops. As bush pigs are another source of prey for lions, the proximity of the slumbering farmers proves too great a temptation. “You get a collision between people and lions with bush pigs as the link,” says Hadas.

Global warming is also a factor in human-lion conflict. In the late 1990s, a spate of attacks coincided with the weather system El Niño. Flooding in Africa meant that game animals had to search for higher ground, and the big cats were forced to look elsewhere for food.

Lion biologist Henry Brink thinks that Tanzania’s conservation programme is also partially to blame for the increase in man-eating lions. Lion numbers have skyrocketed in Selous Game Reserve, which is the second largest protected park in Africa. The big cats spill over into surrounding areas in search of sustenance, but options are limited so they begin to stalk human prey. “What’s a marker to a lion?” says Henry. “It goes where it wants.”

Back in Singida, Dairen and his team have managed to capture two of the three man-eating cats on their black list. Although official culling programmes are having some measure of success, Dairen has concerns that local farmers may begin to kill the creatures indiscriminately. “People will take it into their own hands and begin poison campaigns,” he predicts. “You will not just lose one or two problem lions –you’ll lose all the lions.”