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Update on Lions at Liuwa Plain National Park |
The past few weeks have been interesting times for the lions at Liuwa. The large herds of wildebeeste and Zebra have largely left the Park and are now to the North West of Liuwa in the Game Management Area. This shift in prey has put some pressure on the lions and their movements are a reflection on this. Early in the month they were all together in the Matamanene area, making occasional forays South towards Sausage Tree where some of the last herds of Wildebeeste were located. The males then took off on an epic 50 km round trip to the North West where the Wildebeeste herds have moved to. This trip they did in just 2 days! It is unclear what sparked their interest in moving as they did not settle where the food is located and just returned to Matamanene. All of this interesting information is available to us as a result of the state of the art remote download GPS collar that was fitted to one of the males in early July. This collar records the animals location every 4 hours and the data can be downloaded remotely using a special antenna and PDA device. It is certain that we will gather some very useful movement data in the coming months.
The question on everyone's mind is still "when will the lioness conceive?".
The update on that front is that the last mating was at the end of the first week of June, some 7 weeks ago. Since the arrival of the males, mating has taken place every 3-4 weeks. This change in frequency is unusual and we are watching with keen interest for any signs of pregnancy. The fact that the males are together with the lioness less frequently and now moving big distances could also be a sign that her breeding status has changed. As soon as there are any developments, we will update this site.
July 30th, 2010
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