Namibia: rangers with smartphones protect lions and livestock

In the Kunene region of north-west Namibia, the community programme Lion Rangers has been helping farmers and lions live side by side since 2018. Rangers combine traditional tracking skills with smartphones, camera traps and GPS collars to give early warning of lions and reduce conflict.

Conservation helped north-west Namibia’s “desert lions” recover from about 20 adults in 1997 to around 180 by 2015. But since the mid-2010s their wild prey has fallen by about 72.5%, and the lions increasingly turn to livestock, which leads to conflict with farmers.

Today more than 40 rangers, patrol leaders and rapid-response staff, many of them farmers themselves, track lions over about 40,000 km² across 11 community conservancies. Since 2021 they have logged observations in the free SMART app, so information reaches those who act on it as soon as there is a signal, instead of days later.