In the last 25 years, more than half the lions have vanished from the plains of Africa, largely due to conflicts with communities. As human populations have expanded, the animal\u2019s range has shrunk, leaving remnant isolated groups. Today, there are fewer than 25,000 lions left across the continent. But in southern Africa, one large continuous population still roams the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area<\/a> (KAZA TFCA), the world\u2019s largest transnational land-based protected area, which runs across Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we started working there in 2014, as we spoke to people, we realized they felt that all lions are the same. They are all out there just killing cattle,\u201d Stein said. \u201cWe thought if we could show that each individual has a different approach \u2014 a different behavior or personality \u2014 we might be able to trigger individualized management with non-lethal approaches.\u201d<\/p>\n Desperate to curb the conflict, Stein and his colleagues introduced the first-of-its-kind lion early warning program known as the Lion Alert System. By outfitting lions with GPS collars and tracking their movements, the group sends automated alerts to local community members\u2019 mobile phones when a lion is detected lurking near a human settlement or livestock area. This allows farmers to act before an attack occurs, bringing their animals together in an enclosure or adjusting their herding practices.<\/p>\n CLAWS also encouraged locals to name the lions in their Indigenous languages in hopes of fostering a stronger connection. \u201cThat\u2019s important because they are the ones that are going to decide whether these animals live or die at the end of the day,\u201d Stein said.<\/p>\n Some of the names, he reminisced, were admirable: like Mayenga, meaning the \u2018one who is decorated by the Gods.\u2019 \u201cAs conflict persisted, some people gave them rough names like Kufakuduze, which means, \u2018If you come for my cattle, I will find you.\u2019 But then there were others like Shedipatera, which means \u2018the one who belongs to us.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n One of the reasons for heightened conflict, the conservancy realized, was that traditional hands-on herding practices had fallen away. In decades past, young boys were often responsible for carefully moving cattle herds to graze. But as more children began to go to school, an unintended consequence was that there were fewer people left to watch over the herds and keep lions away.<\/p>\n \u201cOf course, we want people to get educated, but it left a gap. And the adult men of the village did not want to be perceived to do the low-status job of a child,\u201d Stein said.<\/p>\n Jack Ramsden grew up in northern Botswana, in the village of Maun on the edge of the Okavango Delta. \u201cDuring my dad\u2019s days, it was active herding 24\/7 with the cattle,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen I was growing up in the 1980s, the permanent herding of cattle in Botswana had already somewhat changed \u2026 the herders were now more likely to release the cattle in the morning and then in the afternoon go look for them and bring them back. It has just gradually eroded.\u201d<\/p>\n At the time, Maun also had a much larger lion population. That has gone. Struggling farmers have steadily shot and poisoned the prides. \u201cNow if a lion comes there, it\u2019s like a comet flying through the skies. It\u2019s something that some generations never see,\u201d Ramsden said.<\/p>\n Today, he works as the herding program coordinator for CLAWS, reintroducing traditional and lion-resilient methods. This includes consolidating cattle into communal herds managed under trained herders who stay with the animals throughout day and night. Ramsden also teaches the herders \u2014 roughly 24 are currently enrolled in the program full-time across three villages \u2014 about rangeland ecology and rotational grazing, as well as basic veterinary care.<\/p>\n At night, the group deploys mobile canvas bomas \u2014 circular stockades \u2014 to keep the cattle safe from predators. \u201cWhen the cattle are behind the canvas sheet, the lions will approach. They\u2019ll walk along the outside. They can hear the cattle. They can smell the cattle. But if they don\u2019t see them, they don\u2019t actually jump in and attack,\u201d Stein said.<\/p>\n CLAWS is working in five villages in northern Botswana, which host around 5,000 cattle. Of those, about 700 are currently in CLAWS\u2019 herding program. \u201cIn the past five years or so, we\u2019ve probably only lost a maximum of 10 cattle,\u201d Ramsden said, which marks a dramatic decline from the dozens and sometimes hundreds that were lost each year prior to CLAWS\u2019 interventions.<\/p>\n One of the program\u2019s greatest achievements is not only that fewer cattle and lions are dying, but that cub survivorship is stronger. From 2014 to 2017, only about a third of the cubs in the area reached adulthood, primarily due to infanticide. As villagers poisoned or shot alpha male lions, new lions would move into the area and purge the cubs in hopes of establishing their own genetic line within the pride. Now that fewer males are being killed, 70% of cubs are pulling through. In turn, the northern Okavango\u2019s lion population has increased by 50% over the past four years.<\/p>\n CLAWS\u2019 work is funded through various conservation grants. But Stein\u2019s long-term goal is to make the program self-sustaining. To do that, he and his colleagues are working to integrate the program into the regional market, building economic incentives for farmers to continue traditional herding practices in their eventual absence.<\/p>\n In May, CLAWS held the first sale of 14 cattle as certified Wildlife-Friendly Beef. That means they were raised using herding practices that avoid overgrazing and that herds have pledged not to kill lions. The beef sells at a 10% premium above typical rural market rates, bought by wilderness safari lodges in the Okavango.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is giving them greater market access where their cattle are actually worth something,\u201d Stein said. \u201cThen they are going to be more likely to look after them.\u201d CLAWS said it hopes to have quarterly sales this year of around 15 animals to supply Vumbura Plains Camp<\/a>, a luxury safari lodge in the delta, with plans to later expand to other ecotourism ventures.<\/p>\n The hope is that the majority of the region\u2019s cattle will eventually be covered by the program. \u201cThen you can actually go back to rotational grazing, the way it was done in the \u201850s and \u201860s,\u201d Ramsden said. \u201cYou can get better rangelands. And better rangelands will lead to healthier and more productive cattle.\u201d<\/p>\n Efforts to improve cattle health and bolster hands-on management in KAZA live alongside a greater push to take down some of the veterinary cordon fences that bisect the Okavango Delta and have stymied animal migration for decades.<\/p>\n In the 1950s, governments in southern Africa began installing fences stretching thousands of kilometers to keep wild ungulates and domestic livestock apart. The hope was that the fences would block the transmission of diseases like foot-and-mouth and bovine pleuropneumonia, thereby opening up European markets.<\/p>\n Before importing beef, countries require proof that the product comes from healthy animals and therefore cannot spread diseases, based on strict standards regulated by the World Organisation for Animal Health<\/a> (WOAH). In Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe, fences became a key \u2018sanitary\u2019 tool.<\/p>\n While the fences have been successful at reducing the spread of disease \u2014 when properly maintained \u2014 they have taken a bloody toll on native wildlife. Hundreds of thousands of wild herbivores, if not millions, have perished due to these fences. In some cases, their bodies are caught in a tangled snare of steel cables. Sometimes, lions chase them into the fences as a hunting strategy. Wildebeest, zebras, giraffes, buffaloes, antelope and hartebeest have all met with fatal encounters along the fence line.<\/p>\n For conservationists, the legacy of harm extends far beyond direct fatalities. The vet fences have prevented free-flowing movement through the region. Whole herds have been cut off from seasonal movements to water and grazing areas, dying of thirst and starvation.<\/p>\n Adult elephants, for example, can easily step over or crush the fences. But if calves can\u2019t make it through, the whole herd will stay put. In some parts of northern Botswana, fences have bottled up elephant populations to the point where matriarchal herds can\u2019t cross into Namibia, worsening conflict with local villages.<\/p>\n For millennia, elephants in northern Botswana and northeastern Namibia moved freely as one single population across the region\u2019s floodplains. Migrations were shaped by the wet and dry seasons. But fences have cut off those traditional routes. Namibia\u2019s Caprivi elephants are now more isolated, and Botswana elephants concentrate around permanent water.<\/p>\n Steven Osofsky served as the first wildlife veterinary officer for Botswana\u2019s Department of Wildlife and National Parks (DWNP) in the early 1990s. Since then, he has made it his mission to roll back some of the fences that have cut up the fertile landscape.<\/p>\n \u201cBack in the 1950s and 1960s, wildlife was not considered a valued resource,\u201d said Osofsky, who now works as a professor of wildlife health and health policy at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. \u201cAnd what followed over the ensuing decades could be described as a slow-motion environmental trainwreck.\u201d Osofsky bore witness to the ripple effects of the fences during his time in Botswana: animals cut off from grazing, freshwater, minerals and breeding opportunities.<\/p>\n But as wildlife ecotourism has ascended as a key economic driver in the region \u2014 often surpassing the income that can be gleaned from cattle herding, cutting off wildlife corridors no longer makes sense. Agriculture \u2014 which includes livestock production \u2014 now contributes between 2% and 4% to Botswana\u2019s gross domestic product. Tourism, on the other hand, accounts for between 5% and 12% of the nation\u2019s GDP, so the economy depends on robust wildlife populations. In turn, governments are rethinking the prevailing paradigm of management.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the key questions for decades has been: \u2018Is there a better way to manage this disease risk issue than fences?\u2019 And we think we came up with [the answer],\u201d Osofsky said.<\/p>\n Restoring herding, scientists have found, is a game changer. Herding keeps livestock away from wild herbivores and farmers know where their animals are so they can tag and identify them. And it\u2019s easier to vaccinate the herd with the animals close by.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s almost crazily magical,\u201d Osofsky said. \u201cIf we can restore herding, we can get all these co-benefits. Because this is good for wildlife, the government [of Botswana] has agreed to at least consider taking down key sections of fences.\u201d<\/p>\n Osofsky is working with CLAWS to raise $11 million, in part, to expand the herding program to the 14 main communities in Botswana\u2019s Eastern Panhandle over the next five years. He said this would be a prerequisite for the government to consider removing some fences.<\/p>\n Among the first fences that could theoretically come down is the top 62 kilometers (39 miles) of the Northern Buffalo Fence, which runs for about 129 km (80 mi) and cuts off a key corridor area between the Okavango Delta and the Zambezi-Chobe floodplain.<\/p>\n The eastern 35-km (22-mi) portion of the Zambezi fence is also ripe for removal, according to a January 2026 study<\/a> by Osofsky and colleagues. Conducting a qualitative risk assessment, they found that removal of these fences did not increase the risk of disease and that, when combined with other measures such as herding, the overall risk of disease transmission would be lower compared to the status quo. \u201cWe literally have the data to say, you can take this down and it wouldn\u2019t change anything,\u201d Osofsky said.<\/p>\n Under a best-case scenario, he added, the first fences would come down within the next five years. \u201cBut we have to prove to the government that communities are willing and able to adopt strategic herding.\u201d<\/p>\n Banner image: A lion in Africa. Image by Esteban Andr\u00e9s via Unsplash<\/a> (Public domain).<\/p>\n Learning to live with lions: Interview with Claw Conservancy\u2019s Andrew Stein<\/a><\/p>\n Citations:<\/p>\n Osofsky, S. A., Cleaveland, S., Karesh, W. B., Kock, M. D. \u2026 Yang, A. (2005). Conservation and development interventions at the wildlife\/livestock interface: Implications for wildlife, livestock and human health. The IUCN Species Survival Commission, Occasional Paper, 30. Retrieved from: https:\/\/wildlife.cornell.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/2018-09\/wildlife.AHEADbook6.5MB.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n Rosen, L. E., Amuthenu, N. S., Atkinson, S. J., Babayani, N. D., \u2026 Osofsky, S. A. (2024). Veterinary fences in the KAZA TFCA: Assessment of livestock disease risks of potential removal of specific fence sections, with an emphasis on the Botswana-Namibia. AHEAD Programme, Cornell University on behalf of the KAZA Animal Health Sub Working Group, 300pp. Retrieved from: https:\/\/wcs-ahead.org\/documents\/livestock-dz-risk-assess_lo_res_final_20240917.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n Rosen, L. E., Atkinson, S. J., Babayani, N. D., Mokopasetso, M., \u2026 Osofsky, S. A. (2026). Using qualitative risk assessment to re-evaluate the veterinary fence paradigm within the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area. Frontiers in Veterinary Science, 12, Article 1702631. doi:10.3389\/fvets.2025.1702631<\/a><\/p>\n![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/3G2A1557-1.jpg\")
<\/a>An African lioness. Image by Sam Calle.<\/p>\n![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Atkinson2.png\")
<\/a>An aerial view of the Okavango Delta, Botswana. Image courtesy of M. Atkinson, AHEAD.
\nCommunal herding protects livestock and lions<\/p>\n![\"After](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/cattle-in-botswana.jpg\")
<\/a>After grazing during the day, cattle are returned to their kraal (or boma) in the Zambezi Region, Namibia. Kraaling cattle overnight reduces predation risk. Image courtesy of M. Atkinson, AHEAD.
\n![\"Cattle](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/HH-CLAWS-Aerials-8.jpg\")
<\/a>Cattle inside a collapsable boma in Botswana. Image courtesy of Helicopter Horizons \/ CLAWS.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/botswana-lion.jpg\")
<\/a>A lion in Botswana. Image courtesy of M. Atkinson, AHEAD.
\nBreaking down barriers<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Atkinson-Vet-Fence-2.jpg\")
<\/a>A typical veterinary cordon fence in the region. Makgadikgadi Pans, Botswana. Image courtesy of M. Atkinson, AHEAD.
\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Atkinson6.png\")
<\/a>A farmer herding his cattle in the Zambezi Region, Namibia. Image courtesy of M. Atkinson, AHEAD.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/ES_Botswana_Andy_Maano_Claws_DSC_9756-scaled.jpg\")
<\/a>Oscar Mbathera, \u00a0herder in Botswana who was trained and is outfitted and paid by CLAWS, poses with a GPS collar that will be fitted on a lion to track its movements. Image by Andy Maano, CLAWS.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1771976892_127_92a8467a68ba6484f5372dc6c0c8580efd7d81cc823c1a1f46c9977026eb411e.png\")
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