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Popular explanations of Maasai lion-hunting are too simplistic, CU-led team finds

To many observers, East Africa’s Maasai pastoralists hunt lions for two distinct reasons: to retaliate against lions that kill livestock or to engage in a cultural rite of passage. But that binary view reflects mistranslations of Maasai terms and simplification of their cultural traditions and their relationship with wildlife, a team of researchers led by a University of Colorado geographer has concluded.

Further, some conservation initiatives have either failed to work or in some cases appear to have incited Maasai to hunt more lions as a form of political protest, the researchers report.

Such nuances are important, because it’s harder to control the hunting of lions unless society knows precisely why lions are hunted, the researchers contend.

Many populations of Panthera leo—African lions—are falling, and the species is classified as “vulnerable” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources’ Red List.

Lion-hunting is limited in Tanzania to mostly tourist hunting with permits, unless the hunt is to eliminate a lion in defense of life or livestock, and outlawed in Kenya. Still, lion-hunting regularly occurs in both countries, usually without the hunters’ following the law.

“We saw an inaccurate representation of the exact reasons for why Maasai hunt lions, and we had a lot of ethnographic background to correct that,” says Mara J. Goldman, the assistant professor of geography at CU-��«����Ƶ who led the study.

Goldman collaborated with Joana Roque de Pinho, a post-doctoral researcher at the Instituto Superior de Ciencias Sociais e Politicas (Universidade Técnica de Lisboa, Portugal), and Jennifer Perry, a CU-��«����Ƶ geography alumna now studying law at the university.

Goldman and her fellow researchers conducted 246 in-depth interviews of Tanzanian and Kenyan Maasai between 2004 and 2008. They found that Maasai hunt lions for multiple overlapping reasons, some relating to predation on livestock and some not.

In some cases, Maasai said they hunted lions to prevent the potential killing of livestock, especially by lions that had killed livestock before, rather than just as a retaliation.

And while Maasai still celebrate successful lion hunts and the prowess of the warriors who hunt, that cultural tradition can be less of a motivation to hunt than political discontent.

In Kenya, for instance, conservation programs aim to curb Maasai lion-hunting by financially compensating Maasai for livestock killed by lions. In Tanzania, suggestions have been made by some to start such ‘compensation’ programs, but the Maasai themselves explain why this strategy has limitations:

“We cannot agree (to compensation) because we do not have cattle to be killed every day,” an elder Maasai told the researchers. “If they pay money today, then tomorrow, they will pay every day because the lion will keep coming back to eat cattle until all the cattle are gone. And then what will we do with the money?”

These sentiments were expressed in a village bordering the Manyara Ranch, a Tanzanian conservation trust on which hunting is prohibited but over which Maasai from neighboring villages are meant to share governance . In the beginning, the elders kept the warriors from hunting lions, the researchers found.

After Maasai representation in ranch governance was diminished, the Maasai felt disenfranchised. Lion hunting increased in frequency and severity and was no longer discouraged by elders, the researchers report.

“We have no reason to follow the rules,” one elder told the researchers. “We no longer have any faith in the Manyara Ranch.”

Goldman researches human-environment relations with the Tanzanian and Kenyan Maasai, one of the most recognizable ethnic groups in Africa, known for its distinctive, colorful dress and social customs, and most recently for their lion hunting practices.

Although the primary motivations for lion hunting differed somewhat between Tanzania and Kenya, the researchers emphasize that Maasai have multiple, overlapping reasons to hunt lions: to reaffirm the protective role of young warriors, to help select brave leaders among warrior groups, for individual warriors to gain prestige, to eliminate lions that prey on livestock and to prevent lions from becoming habituated to eating livestock and sometimes harming people.

“The overlapping reasons reported for hunting lions illustrates the limitations on the dichotomous explanation of Maasai lion hunting as either a cultural manhood ritual or a retaliatory act,” the researchers write.

Further, they observe, lion-hunting patterns by Maasai are not static. “They fluctuate with social transitions and conservation politics.”

“Participatory conservation interventions that respect Maasai knowledge and promote full engagement with management processes are likely to have far better success in persuading Maasai to change or moderate such behaviors themselves,” the research team states, adding:

“Lion conservation projects rarely address such complex politics.”

Goldman, also a faculty research associate at CU-��«����Ƶ’s Institute of Behavioral Science, is the first author on a study that was published in May in the journal Oryx.

“If you want to protect lions, it’s not just about teaching Maasai how to protect lions but also about understanding to begin with why they’re hunting lions and then recognizing that this is partly related to conservation politics.”

Having such understanding and making these links has been a “really big missing piece” of discourse on Maasai lion hunting and lion conservation, and one that is “important if we want to in fact have improved conservation efforts,” Goldman says.

“Most of the people who are studying Maasai-lion interactions are lion researchers, so they’ve got their training in conservation biology and they’re doing social science/using social science tools to better understand the relationship between lions and people,” Goldman observes, adding, “which is a good thing.”

However, research efforts on human-wildlife relations really need to include in-depth ethnographic engagements with communities to avoid the simplification of issues, translation breakdowns and “nuances that you really need to take a more complex approach to.”