A History of Human-Lion Interactions in Northwest Namibia, 1800S-1980S. John Heydinger University of Minnesota Macquarie University
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Submitted for Review – Not for Circulation A History of Human-Lion Interactions in Northwest Namibia, 1800s-1980s. John Heydinger University of Minnesota Macquarie University ABSTRACT Within the history of human-lion interactions in northwest Namibia the presence or absence of livestock is shown to be the critical mediating factors. By contextualizing mid-twentieth century human-lion interactions withing the contrasting spaces of Etosha and Kaokoveld in relation to a longer history of humans-lion interactions, the formative factors of human-lion conflict (HLC) are revealed. Asymmetric racialized colonial-era policies which marginalized HLC among African inhabitants while privileging the perspective of white farmers and conservationists have had ongoing effects on the survival of lions. Drawing together archival documents, published sources, and extensive interviews, this article uses historical approaches to contextualize ongoing HLC for wildlife conservationists, human-animal studies scholars, and historians of African environments. INTRODUCTION At independence (1990), Namibia ushered in a new era of wildlife conservation, based upon a paradigm of devolving conditional rights to local communities. This approach has been deemed a success.1 However, challenges remain. Among these are high levels of human-lion conflict (HLC) on communal land in northwest Namibia. HLC affects both the livelihoods of the region’s pastoral inhabitants and the viability of its free-ranging lion population.2 These linked economic and conservation challenges are a contemporary manifestation of the history of human-livestock-lion interactions in northwest Namibia. The presence or absence of livestock was, and remains, an important mediator of human-lion interactions. This case study compares the history of human-lion interactions in the neighboring spaces of Etosha National Park and the Kaokoveld ‘ethnic homeland,’ emphasizing the mid-twentieth century. I begin by reviewing the long history of human-lion interactions in northwest Namibia. This long history indicates that human-lion interactions were altered by the arrival of livestock in the region. Though human-livestock- lion interactions were generally agonistic, the rise of wildlife conservation in the 1940s-50s gave birth to 1 B. Jones, 'The Evolution of a Community-Based Approach to Wildlife Management at Kunene, Namibia,' in African Wildlife & Livelihoods: The Promise and Performance of Community Conservation, ed. D. Hulme and M. Murphree (Oxford, 2001), 160–76; G. Owen-Smith, An Arid Eden: A Personal Account of Conservation in the Kaokoveld (Johannesburg, 2010). 2 J. Heydinger, C. Packer, and J. Tsaneb, 'Desert-Adapted Lions on Communal Land: Surveying the Costs Incurred by, and Perspectives of, Communal-Area Livestock Owners in Northwest Namibia,' Biological Conservation 236 (2019): 496–504; Namibia Ministry of Environment and Tourism, 'Human-Lion Conflict Management Plan for North West Namibia' (Windhoek, 2017). 1 Submitted for Review – Not for Circulation what became modern-day Etosha National Park as a space where lions thrived. In contrast, Kaokoveld remained a space inhabited by people and livestock; there lions nearly disappeared. These spatially distinct human-lion relationships yielded dissimilar outcomes for lions’ survival and HLC. I close by showing that HLC on communal land within modern-day Kaokoveld remains a challenge to the viability of the region’s lion population and continues to undermine pastoral livelihoods. Human-lion interactions in northwest Namibia have only recently become a topic of study. Historical source material is thus diverse in format. I have recovered colonial-era accounts of human-lion interactions from Namibia’s National Archives. Nineteenth and early-twentieth century encounters between European ‘explorers’ and lions provide glimpses into the northwest before widespread settler incursion. Grey literature and limited-circulation documents indicate the extent of lion range, and detail lion conservation efforts within Etosha and Kaokoveld. Oral accounts of communal pastoralists, which I have collected and are also drawn from published anthropological work, help reconstruct contemporary and historical human-lion interactions.3 Interpretation of primary sources are colored by secondary literature, primarily from the fields of human-animal studies and published scientific studies of lions. I draw upon these sources, as well as my own interpretive lens developed through more than three years of lion conservation and community extension work in northwest Namibia. My commitment to providing historically-informed perspectives on human-lion interactions, and lion conservation, contributes to locally- centered strategies for addressing HLC as well as human-predator histories of colonial era Africa. The specificity of treating human-lion interactions in northwest Namibia is itself an important aspect of this study. Lions and humans are highly adaptable, dynamic, historical entities. It follows that human-lion interactions will be site-specific. 3 Heydinger, J. (2020) Humans, Livestock, and Lions in northwest Namibia. PhD thesis. Macquarie University/University of Minnesota. 2 Submitted for Review – Not for Circulation Map of northwest Namibia, created by author. HUMAN-PREDATOR HISTORIOGRAPHY Human-animal scholar Etienne Benson has shown hierarchical understandings of human over animal improperly conceptualize human-animal relationships.4 Human-animal histories account for animal agency and question the categories into which people place animals. Works by Tim Ingold and Donna Haraway provide useful introductions to the human-animal studies field.5 In particular, this article contributes to scholarship examining historical human-predator interactions. Peter Boomgaard’s study of tigers (Panthera 4 E. Benson, 'Animal Writes: Historiography, Disciplinarity, and the Animal Trace,' Making Animal Meaning, 2011. 5 T. Ingold, What Is an Animal? (London, 1988); D. Haraway, When Species Meet (Minneapolis, 2008). 3 Submitted for Review – Not for Circulation tigris) as dynamic historical entities in the Malay world, has provided a useful guide for interpreting human- lion interactions across different social settings.6 This article applies Boomgaard’s insight that humans, big cats, and landscapes are interwoven dynamic entities; in this case contrasting wildlife designated areas with spaces shared by lions and pastoralists. Jon Coleman’s history of settler-wolf (Canis lupus) interactions reveals the colonization of North America to be ‘a profoundly zoological event;’ one that pitted wolves and settlers against each other in a ‘battle of reproduction.’7 Coleman’s emphasis on livestock as a mediating factor is applied here. However, Coleman is largely mute on interactions between predators and differently positioned (human) groups. Anthropologist Marcus Baynes-Rock examines how people and spotted hyenas (Crocuta crocuta) in Harar, Ethiopia, engage in a mutual ‘co-shaping.’8 Baynes-Rock’s emphasis on (human) culture as an interpretive lens of human-predator interactions is deepened by my emphasis on political, geographic, and historical comparison. Mahesh Rangarajan’s differentiation of human-lion interactions along socioeconomic positions reveals how livestock, and the danger lions pose to them, can reinforce positions of power and vulnerability.9 Michael Wise’s history of human-wolf relations in the United States’ northern Rockies shows how categories such as predator, and the human-imbued implications of these categories, are historically constructed.10 Wise explores the cultural, as well as biological, valence of human-nonhuman boundaries. I show that human-lion interactions were interwoven with ideologies of human safety, livelihood security, and dominance within colonial landscapes. Human actions regarding lions depended greatly on the historical and geographic setting of human-(livestock-)lion interactions. As noted by geographer Steve Hinchliffe, where species meet is as important as when or how.11 Livestock owners generally found lions fearsome and destructive, while in the second half of the twentieth century, professional conservationists began implementing efforts to protect them. HISTORICAL HUMAN-LION INTERACTIONS Recent human-lion history is primarily defined by lion disappearance and human-centered accounts of lion destruction. Wild lions’ confinement to Africa (save a remnant population in India) is an historical aberration. From 130,000-10,000 years ago lions had the greatest intercontinental range of any large 6 P. Boomgaard, Frontiers of Fear: Tigers and People in the Malay World, 1600-1950 (New Haven, 2001). 7 J. Coleman, Vicious: Wolves and Men in America (New Haven, 2004), 196. 8 M. Baynes-Rock, 'Hyenas like Us: Social Relations with an Urban Carnivore in Harar, Ethiopia' (Macquarie University, 2012). 9 M. Rangarajan, 'Animals with Rich Histories: The Case of the Lions of Gir Forest, Gujarat, India,' History and Theory 52, no. 4 (2013): 109–27. 10 M. Wise, Producing Predators: Wolves, Work, and Conquest in the Northern Rockies (Lincoln, 2016). 11 S. Hinchliffe, 'Where Species Meet,' Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 28, no. 1 (2010): 34–35. 4 Submitted for Review – Not for Circulation mammal, excepting humans.12 The American lion13 was eradicated approximately 11,000 years ago, while the last European lion was killed in Greece in approximately 100 CE.14 Lions inhabited such arid environments as the Aïr Mountains of Niger until ca. 1910 and may