Peek in on a health check for a lioness chosen to repopulate the Zambezi Delta ecosystem. With luck, she will be pregnant with the next generation of predators!
About Defenders of the Wild: Join conservationist Ivan Carter as he seeks solutions to create a balanced wildlife ecosystem! Experts join Carter to spotlight the conservation efforts happening worldwide. Ready! Set! Adventure!
This clip comes from Season 1, Episode 2: "The Once And Future Kings"
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00:00The team head out in search of the lions with the aim of re-collaring them to continually monitor the health of the seed population and gather valuable data.
00:30The team head out in search of the lions with the lions with the lions with the animals with the lions.
00:48The lions are still a little bit different.
00:52The lions are still a little bit different.
00:55Is that good?
01:22On purpose, the lions that we put into this area were very young.
01:25We wanted to put young lions in here so they could spend their entire breeding lives in
01:29this ecosystem.
01:30So we could get the maximum number of babies and generations out of these particular cats.
01:35So really important that they check for their collar size because when they're quite small,
01:40these collars need to be loose enough that it's not a hindrance, but tight enough that
01:45they don't slip over their head or they can't get a paw through.
01:48So this is actually the second time in the course of a year that we've actually darted
01:51these cats to check on their collars.
01:53Just an important safety step to make sure that this all happens correctly.
01:57Taking a bit of the hair for genetic purpose.
02:02So we're going to keep in our records most of the details that they know where they come
02:07from, the age and everything that we need here.
02:10So we just, the lion nest that we just darted just to check the collar and to take some
02:20genetic samples.
02:21But while they're down, we're just doing some pregnancy testing, just palpating, just to
02:26see if they're pregnant.
02:28So when they all arrived about a year ago, we purposely caught young animals.
02:33So this would probably be her first, her first litter and some of them have had cubs already.
02:38I'm just feeling, yeah, this one actually feels quite positive as though there might be,
02:44might be a pregnancy here.
02:48And hopefully this girl, once we reverse her and she gets up and runs off, is going to
03:06give us lots of nice healthy babies into the future.
