Niassa Lion Project
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Niassa-Lion-Project/151483654889759?ref=stream
On the night of the 15th February, a lioness broke into a goat corral in a small village in Niassa and killed two goats. Community members chased her away, she returned and killed another 3 goats, and was chased away again. The third time she returned she was killed inside the goat corral. The community reported the incident the next morning and the Niassa Reserve management team immediately responded and sent a team out to the village to recover the lion and find out what happened. The goat owner wanted to keep the skin to sell it as compensation for the goats, but according to the law animals killed for HWC belong to the state. We are sorry the lioness died, but it is so encouraging to see the community report the incident and well done to Reserve team for responding so quickly. Chasing away and then killing a hungry lioness on prey at night with nothing but a bamboo torch and a spear is not for the fainthearted and we appreciate how much of a loss the 4 goats are to the goat owner and how terrifying it is to have a lion in the village at night. The NLP team will be going out to help the goat owner fix his corral so that this does not happen again. The majority of people in Niassa build corrals to keep goats in not to keep predators out, and are reluctant to fix a corral until a goat is taken. We need to use this opportunity to talk about safe behaviours and effective goat corral design and help the community fix their corrals so it doesn’t happen again.
