The marsh tit and the lions

Last night a lovely Tanzania tour client sent me these photos of a marsh tit and friends in Ngorongoro.

A marsh tit in Ngorongoro by Lin Arney

The aim of my Big Cat Quest has always, since I conceived it last year, been to support projects around the world which benefit cats, their habitats and the people whose lives are affected by them. I was therefore extremely touched to be told by my group as we left Tanzania that, quite unprompted, they had decided on my behalf to make a donation to the Serengeti Lion Research Project. If you have an hour, it is greatly worth watching this video of Dr Craig Packer the project head, on his team's discoveries on lion sociality in relation to habitat, the evolution of males' manes, and the grave threats faced by lions as a result of conflict with humans and their livestock, including the tragic persistence of man-eating and the mismanagement of trophy hunting. Their findings are striking and most alarming. Two messages worth keeping are that lions have declined to 30,000 individuals occupying just 18% of their historic range; and that half of Africa's surviving lions are understood to live in Tanzania.

Dr Packer highlights the fact that in the Developed World we perceive lions as easy to preserve and their conservation an obvious moral obligation: 'But you go to Africa, where lions live, where lions are abundant, and you get a very different picture. The lion is something to be destroyed; the lion is something that needs to be removed. Lions are one of the most hated species in Africa. Lions should all be dead.' There will be more here on conflict between cats and people in the months to come.

Of particular, and more positive, interest is the remarkable citizen science project Snapshot Serengeti, which may be found on Twitter here, in which members of the public all over the world help analyse camera trap data from the Serengeti and thereby contribute to the work of the Serengeti Lion Research Project.

Long may you roam there.