July 26, 2025

The savanna wakes early. Around 5:30 am, the faint sounds of roosters crowing in the neighboring homesteads and an occasional donkey bray drifting over the chorus of crickets begins to pull me toward consciousness. If I’m lucky, the softest echoes of a whooping hyena may carry in the darkness. By 6:00, the roosters are adamant, as if they could pull the sun over the horizon by sheer willpower. The acacia trees become dark masses against a mercury sky. Birds are beginning to chatter and call. The camp dog, Moto, may shuffle softly past all of the bandas (open-air shelters that support our tents), waiting for someone to stir in the hope of an early breakfast. Dawn blushes in the east.

I’ll occasionally hear faint footsteps on the path near my banda as one of the night guards moves toward the central kitchen, where the wapishi (cooks) will soon be boiling water for the day’s tea and coffee. The guards are young Barabaig herders, wiry and fearless, who once would have killed a lion on sight. Now, one of the guards explained to me, they are advocates for lion protection in their community, and help to prevent encounters between lions and people both in and outside of camp.

Camp is situated on the outskirts of Kitisi village, and less than 10 km (6.2 miles) as the crow flies from the nearest Wildlife Management Area (WMA) that borders Ruaha National Park. The WMAs and Game Management Areas (GMAs) were created by the communities surrounding the Park, and serve as an extension of the Park’s wild landscapes, but allow limited economic development activities. For instance, tourism or game hunting operators can lease land in these areas from the communities for a lodge or other infrastructure and activities.

Unlike the cattle ranching area where I grew up in the American West, boundary fencing is almost unheard of here. The Park isn’t fenced. Individual homesteads and farms aren’t fenced. Camp isn’t fenced. A couple nights ago, we encountered a pair of greater Kudu on the dirt road between Kitisi and the next village, with the buck’s head nearly as tall as the field truck. They can leave Ruaha National Park and simply walk for hundreds of kilometers through a landscape that is only demarcated by the relative presence and intensity of human disturbance. This is the dry season, where resources are becoming more scarce by the day in Ruaha. The kudu will thread their way stealthily through the wildest, least disturbed areas in search of forage, earning their nickname as “grey ghosts.” Lions are a different story.

Since I arrived at camp seven days ago, there have already been two separate lion attacks in Kitisi. Both occurred in the early morning hours, and both resulted in the loss of multiple livestock. Young male lions who have been forced to leave their maternal pride by dominant males lose access to the prime hunting grounds in Ruaha. They will form alliances with other outcasts, and the rebel gang will venture further and further afield in search of prey to satisfy their caloric intake needs. Cattle, goats, and sheep are much easier targets than a darting impala or pugnacious water buffalo. The lions may overcome their natural wariness of human settlements out of desperation, and after multiple successful kills, may come to see the strange landscape of the village as part of their hunting grounds. It isn’t a great leap to move from livestock to small children or unsuspecting adults given enough time.

Part of Lion Landscapes’ work is focused on preventing this kind of habituation. By providing local communities with resources to deter attacks in the first place, or minimize their success, they are helping to redraw the lines of fear that should keep lions away from settlements. For instance, educating local communities about the benefits of corralling their animals in fortified bomas (pens) at night may help to minimize losses and frustrate predators. Helping communities to purchase flashing "lion lights," which simulate the presence of humans around the homestead, can deter carnivores from approaching.

While we continue to pursue the last government approval I need to begin field work, my research advisor and I visited Ruaha National Park to get a better grasp of what local communities are living with. This immense protected area—one of the largest in Africa at over 20,000 sq. km (7,800 sq. miles) not including the adjacent GMAs—feels like stepping back in history. Imagine a time when megafauna roamed freely and humans blazed thin trails through the wilderness that were quickly erased by nature. As we passed giraffes, elephants, zebras, hippos, crocodiles, large herds of impala, and angry baboons, we were the wageni (guests) and they were on their home turf. 

While it felt strange at first to be told that we were not allowed to step out of our truck, even to get a clear line of sight to snap a photo, there was a kind of rightness about it. These places will only remain wild, these animals will only remain untamed, free to live and die in a savage cycle of survival that has persisted for centuries, if we humans discipline ourselves to tread lightly. Yet the interconnection of animal and human fates is inescapable; what happens in the Park spills over into the neighboring communities.

A good year for lion cub survival? That could mean a very bad year for pastoralists is coming. Is drought driving herds of ungulates to migrate in search of fodder? Then people already coping with a poor cropping year may face heavier browsing pressure from wildlife too. I think this is the great challenge facing conservation: to somehow balance the rights of people and the rights of nature. To find a way to translate the respect for wildlife that we observed inside the Park into a more successful coexistence of people and wildlife outside the Park, and all in an increasingly crowded and resource-constrained world.

To join me on this journey, you can follow along with new posts in the Field Notes blog on this website or LinkedIn. My work is partially supported by the Center for Human-Carnivore Coexistence and the Salerno Lab. I am actively fundraising for the next phase of my research, and welcome referrals to funders who are interested in supporting work on global challenges including human-wildlife conflict, poverty alleviation, biodiversity conservation, and the impacts of a changing climate on all of these issues.