Terror, shock, and fear engulfed 11-year-old Kiambwa Lekitony as a stalking lioness leaped on his three brothers, grabbed them by their throats and killed them instantly.
Distraught and terrified Lekitony, who was painfully aware of the danger he was facing after being injured by the predator, climbed on a thorny acacia tree to save his life. “I don’t know how I survived,” he recalled while talking to Anadolu Agency.
On the fateful evening of last Monday, the four brothers, aged between nine to 11 years and all primary school students at Orbalbal Ward in Tanzania’s northern Ngorongoro district, ventured out into the forest to trace their lost cattle only to face the wrath of a furious lioness.
The boys feeling a false sense of security were stalked by a lioness who mauled them to death.
“I held onto the tree all night long. I saw my brothers eaten by the lioness. It was very painful,” he said.
The lioness, one of the animals darted with a VHF (very high frequency) collar, ate the bodies of the boys.
As terrified Lekitony sat tightly on a branch of the tree for his dear life, a sharp smell wafted faintly through the air.
“It was all bones that I saw when I scaled down and ran away,” Lekitony said.
No sooner had the boys vanished into the forest, a wave of regret and anger welled in among Ngoile villagers, who embarked on a desperate search in the dew-laden forest.
The villagers woke up to a grim reality the following day when they spotted a hapless injured boy who pointed to grass tainted by blood.
The sad incident, which highlights rising hostilities between humans and wildlife, traumatized the injured boy who is still nursing terrible wounds.
“I will never be happy again without my brothers,” he mourned.
Human-wildlife conflicts
As the human population increases and encroaches on wildlife habitats, conflicts between people and lions intensify.
The Ngorongoro Conservation Area is a UNESCO’s World Heritage site known for its dazzling landscapes, volcanic highlands, dense forests, vast plains, and wildlife.
Although the Maasai, a semi-nomadic ethnic group known for their gleaming and distended earlobes, have for decades lived harmoniously with wildlife, their relations with lions have always been hostile.
Maasai pastoralists, who are normally armed with swords and sticks to protect their cattle from predators, depend on cattle to meet all their basic needs.
“In our culture when a lion develops a behavior of eating livestock and people, it has to be killed,” said Onesmo Ole Ngurumwa, a Dar es Salaam-based human rights activist who defends the rights of Maasai herders.Local residents who saw the boys’ corpses suggest the lioness was probably hungry or felt provoked in her sanctuary.
“When a lion pounces on a human, the attack is usually to weaken him so that the predator can escape,” Daniel Orkery, a former ward councilor in Ngorongoro who saw the gruesome bodies of the victims, told Anadolu Agency.
Orkery’s theory is supported by Emmanuel Shangai, the chairman of the Ngorongoro district council, who is surprised by a sudden change in lions’ behavior.
“A lioness rarely attacks children; the worse she can do is to tease or threaten them,” he said.
Shangai said local residents in Ngorongoro have in the past three years observed an unusual change in lions’ behavior.
Shangai blamed Kopelion — a non-governmental organization working to foster human-lions co-existence in Ngorongoro – for negligence and causing the tragedy.
“Kopelion brings lions in this area without tracking their movements. As a result, lions attack people. They cannot escape from this blame,” he told Anadolu Agency.
Shangai said the organization, which tries to beef up the dwindling population of lions in Ngorongoro, has brought animals that are not native to the area.
“We see them many times, bringing animals on stretchers,” he said.
However, the organization, founded in 2011, claimed on its website that it is working with local Maasai communities to improve friendly human-lions co-existence.
Real-time tracking
The NGO uses state-of-the-art GPS technology to track and monitor the movement of lions in real-time and share the information with Maasai pastoralists to avoid confrontation with wild cats.
The lions, known for their deafening roar, are endangered animals on the verge of extinction.
Their population in Africa has plummeted by 43% in the last two decades to 20,000, according to International Union for Nature Conservation (IUNC).
William Oleseki, the Kopelion founder, said the lioness’ attack which killed the children is “a lesson for us to re-examine human interaction with aggressive cats”.
“Such a sudden change in lion’s behavior is shocking. The lions probably no longer fear humans,” he told Anadolu Agency.
Oleseki admitted that the children were killed by one of the lionesses his organization monitors, adding that it will be relocated to avoid any further harm.
Oleseki said as part of its initiative, Kopelion has trained 25 young Maasai warriors to monitor the lions.
He said it is usually lone male lions that are likely to prey on soft human targets.
Activist Ole Ngurumwa, who is a native of Ngorongoro, said Maasai children always graze livestock alongside wild animals and are hardly attacked by lions.
“It is very strange to see a lioness killing people,” he said.
Monitoring dangerous animals
Yannick Ndoinyo, Director Traditional Ecosystems Survival Tanzania (TEST), an NGO working to empower indigenous and local communities to secure, plan, manage and utilize land’s resources, said there is no silver bullet to end human-wildlife conflicts.
He urged the government to harness modern communication technologies to track and monitor the movement of dangerous animals.
Ndoinyo blamed Kopalion for the attack, claiming the organization miserably failed in its mission.
“The villagers should have been warned about the presence of lions in the area,” he said.
According to Ole Ngurumwa, Ngorongoro is not a disturbed ecosystem, and animals and people have always been living harmoniously, although there are efforts to bring in exotic animal species and create unnecessary tension with wildlife.
“Humans and wild animals usually co-exist and live together without confrontation,” Ole Ngurumwa said.
“When you go out for grazing cattle, you find yourself surrounded by leopards, lions, buffalos and they don’t harm you,” he said.
(Text, excluding headline, courtesy Anadolu Agency)
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