Seasonal visitors, permanent residents and occasional guests

The Southern Pride’s territory is usually way down south, around Chiloveka Dam. But, during our water scarce winters this dam dries up and the pride are forced to push north and spend much of their time around the permanent water source of Hwata Pan. This makes them more vulnerable to conflict with the Nduna Pride and the River Pride, but it’s essential for survival – they need to eat and drink regularly, and their prey species are forced to drink from that pan too.

It’s difficult to know exactly how many lions are in the pride, but nine members have been seen together in one sighting, which included the young cub and the two adult males. The cub was born around December 2021 and January 2022, and is quite the character. At a recent sighting it elicited a lot of attention from its mother and aunts, but then grew tired of the attention from family and onlookers, and went and hid from all of us behind some grass (see photo on first page).

Two mating pairs were observed in this pride last month, so perhaps in about 110 day’s time this cub could become the big sibling to some new additions.