Community‐based livestock protection 543
programme in 2013. This includes a reduction in the illegal killing of lions using wire snares, probably because lions found in proximity to villages were deterred by non-lethal methods (Petracca et al., 2019). Farmers may also perceive the actions of their local Community Guardians as effective in mitigating depredation risk and therefore be less inclined to take retaliatory action themselves. In addition, for fear of repercussions or arrest by wildlife authorities, farmers may have been hesitant to illegally kill lions that they knew were being closely monitored. Our findings are comparable to those in Amboseli, Kenya (Hazzah et al., 2014), where the retaliatory killing of lions by farmers decreased by almost 99%8 years after the Lion Guardian programme was imple- mented. Involving local people in lion conservation and re- cruiting influential young warriors as Lion Guardians were factors contributing to the decline in lion killings. Active participation of local communities in decision-making and planning can increase trust and foster a sense of stewardship towards carnivores (Morehouse et al., 2020). Collaborative approaches can also ensure that the aims, actions and out- comes of interventions are relevant for all stakeholders and aligned with the interests of the community (Chase et al., 2004). Similarly, in the Long Shields programme, local farm- ers were directly involved in selecting the Community Guardians and informing the design of the programme. The importance of this approach, and the resulting outcomes, cannot be overstated. We found that the legal shooting of lions by government
officials remained constant over time, suggesting that au- thorities did not change their policy or behaviour in re- sponse to the implementation of the Long Shields pro- gramme. This may reflect a situation in which government officials shoot perceived problem animals to appease af- fected communities (Hoare, 1995), in a so-called ritual palliative response, which has been described as common in addressing human–elephant conflict (Hoare, 2012). In our study area, this may negatively affect local lion popula- tions. We therefore recommend further research into this aspect of lion management, including examining the bar- riers to and opportunities for policy change, and related capacity-building for behaviour change, amongst wildlife managers. Wefound only aweak correlation between the number of
livestock depredated by lions and the number of retaliatory lion killings by farmers. This suggests that farmers do not necessarily kill lions that attack their livestock. This could be attributed to farmers being aware that killing lions is illegal and punishable by imprisonment. In addition, most farmers lack the skills and weapons to kill a lion, and the killing of lions is not a strong cultural tradition in this area (unlike in other areas in East Africa; Loveridge et al., 2010). Although our findings are encouraging, we acknowledge
there are some limitations. The allocation of villages to the Long Shields programme was not random: we focused the
programme on villages that had experienced higher levels of livestock depredation. Non-random treatment allocation may result in regression to the mean, a statistical phenom- enon thatmakes natural variations in data appear like a real change (Barnett et al., 2005). However, in our study this is not likely to be a problem because villages that experienced higher levels of livestock depredation had been in this situ- ation for some time prior to the commencement of the study; they did not happen to experience high impacts at the time of the study.
Conclusion
Using farmers’ reports of livestock depredation and retali- atory killing of lions, we examined the effectiveness of the community-based Long Shields Community Guardians programme, which aims to promote human–lion coexis- tence. Overall, we found that participating farmers reported a significant reduction of livestock loss to lions, compared to those not included in the programme. The primary mech- anism resulting in the decrease in livestock depredation was the alerting of farmers to the presence of lions, and farmers consequently moving their livestock to areas of lower risk (Sibanda et al., 2021). The Long Shields pro- gramme did not have a detectable effect on depredation by other carnivores because it was designed specifically to prevent incidents involving lions. As hypothesized, the number of retaliatory lion killings by farmers was reduced by 41% since the inception of the Long Shields programme, which we attribute to the alerts farmers received of ap- proaching lions and the fact that lions were hazed to encour- age them away from human settlements (Petracca et al., 2019). Our findings indicate that the Long Shields pro- gramme, and particularly the collaborative and participa- tory approach used for its development, is an effective conservation model that could be applied at a larger scale to promote human–lion coexistence. Weconclude that live- stock depredation by lions can be effectively reduced through locally relevant community-based approaches, and this con- servation model could be implemented in other contexts to address the negative impacts of lions on people and vice versa.
Acknowledgements We thank the farmers and the Chiefs in Mabale, Victoria Falls and Tsholotsho for their participation, and the Hwange and Tsholotsho Rural District Councils and the Zimbabwe National Parks and Wildlife Authority for their support and permission to undertake this work. This study was initiated as a partnership with Panthera and was funded by the Darwin Initiative for Biodiversity (grant number 22-3270), The Cecil Fund, the Robertson Foundation and the Recanati-Kaplan Foundation. Fun- ders did not influence study design, analysis or interpretation of the results.
Author contributions Study design and fieldwork: LS, EvdM, BD, LJM, JEH, RHP, AJL; data analysis and writing: LS, PJJ, EvdM, CH, DWM, AJL.
Oryx, 2022, 56(4), 537–545 © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Fauna & Flora International doi:10.1017/S0030605321000302
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