Walking with lions
I didn't expect to be stroking and speaking softly to a pair of young male lions as if they were big kittens.
Although they looked lionesque, with a "teenage" hint of mane, a walk with brothers Echo and Etosha through the bush was certainly a highlight of the trip.
The conservation organization Lion Encounters' "walk with the lions," on the Masuwe Estate in southwestern Zimbabwe, was much discussed as our tour group approached Victoria Falls. Tales of little cubs (and sometimes scratched tourists) gave some of us doubts. But in the end, two friends and I decided to make the leap.
We expected cubs and a small group of fellow sightseers. We were surprised when our little trio was shoehorned between two larger groups because of unforeseen delays and problems getting across the Zambia-Zimbabwe border.
We three were the only outsiders on this walk with Ian, our Zimbabwean guide, a couple of additional handlers, and Etosha and Echo, two 16-month-old "boys," as Ian liked to call them. They were "my boys," he said.
Today it is believed there are fewer than 20,000.
Projects like the Lion Encounter Programme, founded in 1972, are trying to replenish and preserve the big cat's population, while realizing the numbers will never be what they once were. The rising human population, new land uses, lost habitat, diseases, diminished prey and an ingrained native view of lions as an enemy mean a lot of work and education are necessary, Ian said.
The conservation effort follows a series of steps, he said.
Cubs born to lions in captive breeding programs are taken to be raised on reserves like the Masuwe Estate by people who feed and nurture them until they are about 18 months old.
"At the end of the day, they think I'm their mother," Ian said. "If I call them, 'Hey cubs,' they come and follow me into the bush."
This is the stage Echo and Etosha are in. They have their own "home," a fenced enclosure, but they are allowed to wander, except when they are coaxed into a walk with volunteers and tourists, whose fees help fund the project. There are otherwise no fences, Ian said. The Masuwe River and nearby roads serve as their range boundaries for now. The boys also have begun to hunt some prey on their own.
Recent comments
We also did this Lion Encounter walk and it was the most awesome…
Durnil family of 4 | July 20, 2008 at 1:42 p.m.
