Conservationists in the central African country of Cameroon are trying to save the rare animals that lend their name to the national football team, the Indomitable Lions.
A 2015 study of the Bénoué complex in Cameroon, which contains the national parks of Faro, Bénoué and Bouba Ndjida and covers an area a third the size of Wales, estimated that there was only 250 lions remaining there.
The lions in Cameroon are different from those in southern or eastern Africa: they have a generally lighter build and the mane of the male lions grow in later and are shorter, so can be mistaken as female lions from a distance.
Serge Alexis Kamgang, a conservation biologist and BEDD, a biodiversity conservation NGO in Cameroon, has been working in the area since 2009 and leads the only lion conservation project there, building a community-based conservation approach to ensure a sustainable and peaceful human-wildlife coexistence.
“The lion, as a top predator in the savanna, regulates the population size of prey, controlling pressure on photosynthetic plants which are essential for life,” he says, adding that camera traps and tracking collars allow the monitoring of lion and prey populations, helping park authorities to reduce pressures from habitat fragmentation and nomadic livestock.
“Our biggest challenge is to secure a sustainable source of funding and involve all stakeholders: we hope to one day attract the attention of our national football team, The Indomitable Lions!”
In April 2023, UK charity Whitley Fund for Nature honored Kamgang with a Whitley Award, which will be used to train 45 park guards and 6 community lion guards, with the aim of monitoring lion and cattle movements, and reduce human-lion conflict.
Chimps and Lions in Cameroon
Kamgang grew up in Fokoue, a small village in the central African country of Cameroon, where people mostly depend on subsistence agriculture.
“I loved to see monkeys around our farm where the coffee, potatoes and plantain grew, but after I left to study at the University of Deschang, they disappeared,” he says, adding that the monkeys were hunted for consumption and their habitat was cleared for increased agriculture.
This guided him to study a wildlife conservation as part of his engineering degree in 2000 and then to pursue a Diploma in International Wildlife Conservation and Practices at the University of Oxford in 2016.
Kamgang has spent more than 10 years working to conserve the Nigeria-Cameroon chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes ellioti) in the Mbam-Djerem Conservation Landscape of Cameroon and the lion (Panthera leo leo) in the northern areas of Cameroon.
“I believe it is important for all scientists to investigate solutions to global challenges, not just scientists from the Global South, even though they are both resilient and familiar with the geography,” he says, “My view is to consider indigenous knowledge (traditional rules of managing natural resources), a local community-based strategy when investigating the solutions to global challenges.”
Saving Manatees in Cameroon
Another researcher in Cameroon trying to save a beloved big mammal there is Aristide Takoukam, founder of the African Marine Mammal Conservation Organization (AMMCO).
When Takoukam was in university, he had never heard of the African Manatee (Trichechus senegalensis) but after learning to swim in just 3 days, he would go on to become the first person from Cameroon to earn a PhD studying this endangered mammal.
Takoukam’s earned a Fulbright scholarship and was able to complete his PhD with funding from the Wildlife Conservation Society, the Wildlife Conservation Network and the University of Florida.
“A key result of my PhD work was that I was finally able to estimate African manatee population using DNA isolated from free-floating feces of the animals,” Takoukam says, “This had never been done before that a manataee is identified using feces without having to see them.
“The method I developed is very critical for the study of the species as they are shy and live in an environment where it is difficult to see and count them,” he says.