24 Jun 2020

A team from the Department of Wildlife and National Parks has embarked on an exercise to capture and translocate lions that are terrorizing Hainaveld farmers.

The regional wildlife officer, Mr Dimakatso Ntshebe confirmed in an interview that so far, they have managed to capture and translocate two lions to Moremi Game Reserve, adding that efforts were on going to capture the remaining ones.

He said they experienced challenges to capture more lions due to bad terrain and thickets. He, however, said to beat that, they had engaged an individual from CharlesHill, who owned tracing dogs to assist them.

He said a decision to translocate the lions was a response to the farmers’ complaints and reports about lions that were killing their livestock.

He explained that they had registered 97 dead animals comprising of 82 cattle, six horses, five sheep, four donkeys and five goats since January to date.

The lions, he said, were from Central Kalahari Game Reserve and were attracted by livestock and wildlife due to proximity of game ranches and livestock farms.

He observed that efforts were made to control the situation, but that did not bear any positive results as farmers continued to lose livestock.

Mr Ntshebe said conflict of land was the main cause of the problem, noting that initially the ranches were for livestock and some people decided to mix by venturing into game farming.

To address the problem, he said there was a need to review the land use policy and ensure game farming was separated from pastoralism. He said they had engaged both game and livestock farm owners to consider putting an electric fence between the farms, appreciating that some had already heeded the advice.

Farmers who had lost livestock, he said, were entitled to compensation as they had provided evidence, but stated that currently funds were depleted and that they were still compensating people who reported in 2018.

This financial year, he said they were allocated P1 million for compensation, but they have not started the 2019 list.

He said they had requested P3 million from the Ministry of Environment, Natural Resources Conservation and Tourism and awaiting a response. ENDS