To reverse the trend, lion conservationists are enlisting every ally they can find. In early 2006, for instance, two groups — the World Conservation Union (IUCN) and the Wildlife Conservation Society — held a “lion summit” in Johannesburg, South Africa. They invited Africans from all walks of life to share their views on what it might take to keep lion numbers from dwindling.

Community leaders, for instance, discussed the threat that lions pose to Africa’s growing livestock operations. As cattle herds push into lion habitat, some of the cats have developed a taste for the easy-to-kill cows. Farmers desperate to protect their livelihoods often kill the predators. One key to protecting lions, summit delegates agreed, is to find ways to help farmers better protect their herds. Sometimes the solution is just a stronger fence.

Other delegates discussed the importance of protecting the lion’s natural habitat and sources of food, such as large herds of gazelle. “If there is nothing for them to eat, they turn to livestock and people too, occasionally,” IUCN cat specialist Kristin Nowell told reporters. One key will be making sure prey species have enough room to roam, perhaps by creating new protected areas or better protection in existing parks.

Innovative ways of conserving lions were also on the agenda. In some areas, for instance, tourists will pay big money to see the big cats. If that income can be funneled into local communities, it can create a strong financial incentive to protect the animals, the delegates agreed. Local people often know best “how to live together with lions; they have been doing so for a very long time,” said James Murombedzi, who directs the IUCN’s office in Zimbabwe.

Ironically, even lion hunting might help protect the species, some delegates noted. As NATURE’s The Vanishing Lions shows, trophy hunting for lions can be an important source of income for guides and local inns. The trick is to make sure that hunters don’t kill too many, researchers explained. If limits are set correctly, delegates said in a statement, “trophy hunting [is not] a threat but rather a way to help alleviate human-lion conflict and generate economic benefits for poor people to build their support for lion conservation.”

Overall, organizers are optimistic that the summit will set a new course for lion conservation in Africa. “It helped us to understand where other people are coming from — different backgrounds, different philosophies,” said Julius Kipng’etich, who directs Kenya’s Wildlife Service. “At the end of the day, we boiled it down to one main problem: unsustainable lion populations.”

Now the challenge will be finding the money and political support needed to translate plans into action. Conservationists recall that last century, African governments created parks and reserves in order to to protect lions threatened by overhunting. That success proved fleeting, however, as other problems, including human population growth, emerged. Addressing these problems will take far more sophisticated and cooperative solutions, cautions the IUCN’s Kristin Nowell. But she says the history of lion conservation has provided an important lesson: “We don’t want this century to be a repeat of the last.” This time, conservationists say, people will need to learn how to live with lions…or end up living without them.

It’s called the Laikipia Plateau. It sits along the equator in central Kenya, in the shadow of snow-capped Mount Kenya. Laikipia’s vast grasslands, riverbanks, and watering holes attract a rich array of wildlife, including some of Kenya’s largest numbers of rhinos, elephants, leopards, and buffalo. Researchers say the area — about 2 million acres — also supports nearly 200 African lions.

Laikipia is also home to people, including Maasai herders, who often come into conflict with lions that have learned to prey on easy-to-catch cows. The end result, too often, is dead cattle and dead lions.

In hopes of protecting both lions and farmers, local communities have embarked on a model experiment in wildlife-friendly land management called the Laikipia Predator Project, sponsored by the Wildlife Conservation Society and an array of other conservation groups. One of its main goals is to help local farmers protect their livestock from lions so they don’t have to kill them.

“Our studies have shown, not surprisingly, that properties that lose fewer livestock to predators tend to kill fewer predators,” write project leaders Laurence Frank and Rosie Woodroffe of the Mpala Research Centre in Kenya. “This suggests that we can conserve predators more successfully if we can prevent them from killing livestock. Better management may not only reduce livestock losses today — it should also prevent young predators from learning to take stock in the first place.”

The science of predator management is in its infancy, the pair says, “and every livestock producer has their own opinions on which practices best protect stock.” So one aim of the project has been to test which approaches work best. So far, the tests show that the best solutions employ basic common sense and are not very expensive, project leaders explain.

For instance, the studies have found that the design and construction of “bomas” — traditional corrals for sleeping livestock — are key to protecting livestock from lions. “The stronger the better,” project officials advise, adding that bomas built from thorny acacia bushes work better than those made from solid posts or stone. The researchers also discovered that the height of boma walls was much less important than their thickness. “Thick walls were especially effective at preventing lion attacks, presumably because they prevented cattle from breaking out,” the researchers concluded.

The studies have also revealed some other tricks. It helps to divide bomas into several “rooms,” for instance, and to place them near human residences. An armed guard nearby, along with a dog or two, also helps, although dogs can sometimes transmit diseases to wildlife. (In the Serengeti, domestic dogs were the source of a virus that killed many lions in the 1990s.)

The Laikipia researchers are now testing the idea that lions are less likely to attack livestock where there is plenty of wild prey nearby. In The Vanishing Lions, for instance, viewers follow scientists with the Wildlife Conservation Society as they track lions that are wearing radio collars. The collars are used to study the cats’ hunting patterns and to try to understand why some prides develop a taste for livestock while others do not.

Ultimately, project officials hope that the “predator-friendly management that we develop as a community in Laikipia will be a model for better conservation in the rest of Africa.” So far, the results are promising, as the Laikipia plateau continues to be one of the few places in Kenya where predator populations are growing, not dwindling.