The dogs heard the lions before anyone else did. Three hungry cats had come to Benjamin Kordom’s family farm in Namibia’s Kunene region, where goats, poultry and children were close at hand. The children ran for the farmhouse. That night, the lions killed a duck and a chicken; after rangers chased them away, they went to a neighbouring farm and killed 12 dogs.
The encounter happened in 2018, about 80km south of Khorixas. It showed how easily desert lions and people can come into conflict as changing rainfall patterns bring the animals into unfamiliar places. The lions are a rare population adapted to survive in the dry landscapes of north-west Namibia. Their numbers rose from about 20 adults in 1997 to around 180 in 2015, but the wild prey they depend on has since fallen by about 72.5%. With less prey available, lions have increasingly turned to livestock.
That same year, Namibia’s Lion Rangers programme began working to ease the strain on both wildlife and farmers. The community-based project operates across 11 conservancies. Kordom joined through the Doro!Nawas conservancy, first as a volunteer. He is now a paid field coordinator, overseeing more than 40 rangers, patrol leaders and rapid-response team members. Many are farmers themselves.
Together, they track lions across a 40,000-square-kilometre area, from the Skeleton Coast to the edges of Etosha National Park. Rangers can walk up to 40km in a day. They record lion sightings, tracks, droppings, kills and deaths, along with signs of injury and the condition of each animal. They also note prey and other carnivores. These observations help the team understand where lions are moving and where people may need warning.
Until 2021, rangers wrote their findings in notebooks. In such a vast region, getting those records to someone who could respond could take days. Now, smartphones carry SMART, a free conservation tool that tracks ranger patrols and lets them record sightings and actions. The information can be shared in real time when a phone has a data connection. Rangers also log work such as repairing predator-proof livestock enclosures and arranging vet visits. Camera traps and GPS collars add more ways to keep watch.
The technology does not replace local knowledge. Rangers’ observations on foot, built from experience reading tracks and the land, help make the digital records useful. Their feedback has also shaped what information the system collects. Lion Rangers coordinator Mathilde Brassine analyses the reports and sends them back to patrols and conservancies. The conservancies share ownership of the raw data with Namibia’s Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism.
For Kordom, the combination of people, equipment and quick response matters most. “Having rangers on the ground, with this equipment, plus rapid response drivers ready with vehicles – that’s what makes this work,” he says. The programme cannot remove the pressures on lions or farmers, but it gives communities a faster way to act when the animals approach. In Kunene, a phone alert and a ranger’s trained eye can help turn a frightening encounter into a warning in time.