Amy Dickman Interviewed by The Telegraph about Fighting to Save African Lions from Extinction

The Telegraph recently sent journalist Jessamy Calkin to visit the Oxford University’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit’s (WildCRU) Ruaha Carnivore Project (RCP) in southern Tanzania, which is led by Dr Amy Dickman, the Kaplan Senior Research Fellow at Pembroke College.

Jessamy published an article about her conversation with Dr Dickman, titled ‘Why this British Woman is Fighting to Save African Lions from Extinction’. It highlights the importance of this kind of work for long-term lion conservation and rural development.

Dr Dickman completed her PhD at the University of Oxford and applied for a five-year fellowship in cat conservation at WildCRU. No one had studied Ruaha’s carnivores previously and it has the second largest population of lions in the world, making it the ideal site.

Today there are less than 25,000 wild lions left and, as the article explains, the main cause of decline is not trophy hunting as we might commonly think, but rather human-carnivore conflict. Dr Dickman and her team aspire to save lions, conserve their habitat and benefit the local community. She explains that the aims of RCP are to give locals meaningful incentives for conservation; to get to the root causes and provide solutions that empower, rather than disengage local communities. 

In the article, Dr Dickman recounts a frightening encounter with a lion at night, who settled himself against her tent  and fell asleep, lying on top of her arm! In the final section Dr Dickman reflects on her love for big cats and her long-term commitment to the project. She explains that it is something about the lion’s power and beauty that captured her; for her, they symbolise wilderness.

Read the article here. To learn more, visit the Ruaha Carnivore Project website or email Dr Amy Dickman.