GPS Radio Collars on Desert Lions

Through a generous donation six GPS radio collars were bought from Televilt in Sweden. The GPS collars were earmarked for specific individual lions in six different prides in order to collect important data on Human Lion Conflict, lion eco-tourism and behaviour ecology. By 22 May 2008 five GPS collars had been fitted to lions and efforts to fit the last collar is ongoing. During the course of 2008 the Uniab lioness was shot and two intruding males killed the Ugab male. As a result of these events and the fact that the preliminary GPS data shed new light on the movements of the lions, some of the GPS collars were swapped around or fitted to another lion. Real-time animations of the movements of these lions can be viewed (when data become available) under each pride. The movement data for the Hoanib Male is currently being updated every 3-5 days. New!!! View the 2009 Research Report on Analysis of GPS collar data.

	The map indicates the approximate areas occupied by the six prides in relation to the ephemeral rivers.
	Pride area Age/sex Hoaruseb River Adult male Hoanib Floodplain Adult female Hoanib Male Adult male Hoanib/Hunkap Rivers Adult female Uniab/Obab Rivers Adult female Springbok River Adult male Ugab River Adult male Hunkap Pride Adult female

Televilt supplied two types of GPS collars. One with "Tellus Remote Satellite Download" and the rest with "Tellus Remote UHF Download".

The Satellite GPS collar was programmed to record eleven position co-ordinates (fixes) per day. At the end of each day the collar transfers the fixes to the Televilt server in Sweden via the commercial satellite communications network and an email, with the GPS fixes, is sent to the Desert Lion server.

The GPS collars with Tellus Remote UHF Download option were programmed to record position co-ordinates more frequently. Due to different conservation/ecological questions relevant to the different prides, two sampling regimes were designed. Under the first design, GPS collars were programmed to record GPS fixes every hour throughout the 24-hour day. The second design records GPS fixes every 15 minutes during the period of activity (night), every 30 minutes during the period of intermediate activity, and every hour for the remainder of the day when lions are inactive. The data stored in the GPS collar can be downloaded from a distance of approximately 1 kilometre. This is done by establishing a communications link in the field between a laptop computer and the GPS collar using a UHF terminal and software supplied by Televilt. The remote download attempts have thus far been successful.