Ecology

I relocated from California to Placencia, on the coast of southern Belize, in 1995, when there were no paved roads, no vehicles and everybody walked around barefoot. Back then, I was working as a research assistant and scuba-diving instructor. That meant that I had access to Belize’s stunning coral reefs, but also that I began to witness — and document — an ever-more depressing decline in the reefs’ health.In 1999, while managing Glover’s Reef Marine Reserve for the Belize Fisheries Department, I saw the effects of the 1998 global bleaching event caused by an El Niño followed by a strong La Niña — weather patterns resulting from variations in ocean temperatures in the Equatorial Pacific.Coral reefs deserve evidence-based management not heroic interferenceThen in 2001, the category-4 Hurricane Iris hit Placencia and the Laughing Bird Caye National Park 12 miles offshore, causing catastrophic damage. Laughing Bird Caye, part of the Belize Barrier Reef World Heritage Site, is crucial to local tourism. The devastation, for both the reef and the community, got me thinking about whether the corals could be re-established.Coral-reef restoration or rewilding has since become the subject of often intense debate, with a growing number of scientists maintaining that it is a losing battle in a rapidly warming world. Specialists continue to argue over even such basic questions as ‘what is a coral?’ and ‘what is a reef?’, before you get to ‘how much coral cover restored counts as restoration?’ Some researchers question whether reef restoration can be done at scale, whereas others have made overzealous assertions about how easy it is, what it can achieve and how. Reef restoration has taken off — like yoga, I often joke — with ever-wilder ideas about how to ‘save the reefs’. Instead of ‘yoga with babies’, ‘yoga with goats’ or ‘yoga with snakes’, it’s ‘feed the corals’, ‘shade the corals’ or ‘mix in some probiotics’.My and my team’s experiences, over almost two decades in Belize, show that coral-reef restoration projects can be an uphill battle. But — for now at least — done in the right way, the work can help the corals, their surrounding ecosystems and the communities that depend on them.Great Barrier Reef’s temperature soars to 400-year highIt took four years to find funding to trial transplanting coral fragments from Belize’s outer reef to Laughing Bird Caye. But since 2010, a team of Belizeans and I have moved genetically distinct colonies of elkhorn coral (Acropora palmata), staghorn coral (A. cervicornis) and hybrids (A. prolifera) — amounting to more than 96,000 fragments — to Laughing Bird Caye and more than 20 other sites across 7 marine protected areas.To better assess changes in coral cover, in 2014 we started using an imaging approach called diver-based photomosaics, a type of large-area imaging. Annual analyses of nine plots (each measuring 50–200 square metres) showed that coral cover increased from 4–6% in 2014 to more than 60% in 2021.In 2019, we began using drones to assess larger areas, and, by 2021, showed that we had re-established live corals in more than 0.2 hectares of reef around Laughing Bird Caye alone. Although survival rates could turn out to be a lot worse this year, even after two major coral-bleaching events in 2023, nearly 80% of 1,200 transplanted A. palmata fragments at four Cayes in southern Belize had survived (these data are yet to be published).‘Ecological grief’ grips scientists witnessing Great Barrier Reef’s declineWe are trying to keep portions of shallow reefs alive for as long as possible in a warming world, partially in the hope — which admittedly is thinning — that humanity begins to bend the warming curve so that corals can thrive again. But our experiences suggest that these efforts are likely to prove beneficial only if the water quality is good enough, and if living corals and macroalgae grazers are present. Macroalgal mats interfere with the settlement of coral larvae when they switch from their planktonic phase to the sessile one; sea urchins, crabs and other grazers keep levels of macroalgae down. No-take or highly protected marine zones are also crucial because they preserve species such as lobsters, which feed on the snails that feed on corals.Restoration can have all sorts of benefits. It can provide a habitat for hundreds of species and protect shorelines from erosion and flooding. It can provide an economic boost, too — and not just by driving tourism. In 2013, a group of us founded an initiative called Fragments of Hope to continue our coral-restoration work. Since then, we have employed only people who live in Belize. More than 100 have trained with us so far. Last year, more than 70% of our operating costs (nearly US$250,000 per year) were spent in Belize. Each person who worked with us last year (for 20 hours a week) earned around $5,000. And this year, it will be around $10,000. This is in a country where the minimum wage is $2.50 per hour and the gross domestic product per capita was less than $7,000 in 2023.Today, around 25 researchers from different disciplines use Fragments of Hope for their work. Environmental engineers are trying to quantify wave attenuation or work out how to improve waste-water treatment, and anthropology students are pursuing socio-economic studies.I often feel like giving up. But as long as the corals don’t, nor will I. Whenever I see tiny remnants of coral fusing together — often in the space of a year — to create a living coating over what had looked like a huge dead coral skeleton, I am persuaded to keep trying. Fragments of Hope and other interdisciplinary learning hubs should not be abandoned yet. More

Researchers in central Mexico have planted a forest of firs. Now they’re hoping the imperiled Eastern monarch butterflies will come.

Almost 1,000 oyamel firs

(Abies religiosa)
have been transplanted to a mountain in Michoacán, where they are growing at elevations beyond what was considered the species’ upper limit

1

. If the trees survive over the next few decades, they could help to shield the migratory eastern population of monarch butterflies (

Danaus plexippus
), which spend the winter roosting in oyamel fir forests, from the impacts of climate change.

This population of monarchs, which migrates up to 4,500 kilometres from the United States and Canada to Mexico, has declined dramatically since the 1990s, owing to climate change and habitat destruction.

Part of the butterflies’ remaining habitat — the fir trees in the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve in Michoacán — is slowly shifting upwards as the climate warms. But the firs will eventually “run out of mountain”, says Cuauhtémoc Sáenz-Romero, a forest geneticist at the Michoacan University of Saint Nicholas of Hidalgo in Morelia, Mexico, and the lead author of the study, which was published in

Frontiers in Forests and Global Change
this week.

Relocation project

To test whether the butterfly habitat could be relocated in the reserve, Sáenz-Romero and his colleagues

shifted hundreds of seedlings up a mountainside
by 400 metres several years ago. Since then, they have launched a pilot project on Nevado de Toluca — a nearby mountain that crests roughly 1,000 metres higher than the reserve. Local rangers discovered a new colony of butterflies wintering there in 2019, which suggests that it could be a suitable site to create a new habitat, Sáenz-Romero says.

Forest geneticist Cuauhtémoc Sáenz-Romero leads a team that have relocated firs in an attempt to save the butterflies.

Credit: Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times/Getty

The researchers grew nearly 1,000 oyamel fir saplings, and planted them at four elevations in circles beneath shrubs, which provide shade and protection. They then measured the firs’ survival and growth after three growing seasons.

The natural elevation limit for the fir was thought to be around 3,550 metres. But the team found that 68% of saplings planted at 3,800 metres survived, as did 44% of those planted at 4,000 metres — the two highest elevations. They did, however, grow more slowly than those planted at the two lower altitudes.

John Pleasants, an ecologist at Iowa State University in Ames, says that this feasibility study has great significance. It would require lot of effort to plant enough trees to provide refuge for the butterflies, “but that may be the only choice down the road,” he says.

Growing milkweed (

Asclepias
) and nectar plant species east of the Rocky Mountains and reducing pesticide use are also important for butterflies’ survival, says Sáenz-Romero, but such strategies are “not enough” to save them from climate change. He estimates that at least 5,000 trees would need to reach maturity in central Mexico’s higher elevations by the 2060s to ensure that the eastern monarchs have a winter home. More

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Guerrillas from the FARC movement were involved in a long-running conflict in Colombia, which is one of the world’s most biodiverse countries.Credit: Joaquin Sarmiento/AFP via Getty

Since Russia’s invasion in 2022, 3 million hectares of Ukraine’s protected areas have been affected by military activities1. For example, our independent analysis of satellite imagery shows that in the Sviati Hory (Holy Mountains) National Nature Park in the east of the country, 16% of forested areas have been physically damaged by fires, shelling and the movements of military vehicles (see ‘Assessing impacts in conflict zones’). Protected areas have lost their staff and equipment, and properties have been damaged or destroyed.Today, more armed conflicts are under way than at any point since the Second World War. Conservationists and others are increasingly investigating the impacts on biodiversity2–4, yet governments and conservation organizations have been reluctant to explicitly address the issue in conservation policy. In 2022, when nearly 200 countries agreed in Montreal, Canada, on the Global Biodiversity Framework — a set of goals intended to prevent catastrophic loss of the world’s biodiversity — armed conflict was left unmentioned.

Sources: Land cover: ESA/OpenStreetMap; National park boundaries: Emerald Network; Burnt areas: Analysis by D. Weir et al.

This month, ministers of the environment, conservationists, Indigenous peoples and others are gathering in Cali, Colombia, to help to translate the biodiversity framework into action at the 16th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP16). Colombia is one of the world’s most biodiverse nations. Since 2016, it has also been facing challenges in implementing a peace agreement signed after five decades of conflict, much of which was between its government and the guerrilla movement FARC.Linking to the experiences of the Colombian people, COP16 organizers have specified that the meeting should be “a COP of the people”, and that it should prioritize “Paz con La Naturaleza” or peace with nature. In doing this, they are encouraging attendees to focus on how the exploitation of natural resources, and the conflict that this brings, can harm biodiversity, as well as on how interventions to protect biodiversity might help to foster peace (see go.nature.com/3y95zgv).We urge world leaders and conservation, humanitarian and other organizations to follow Colombia’s lead and give greater priority to the impact of armed conflict on biodiversity — and to conservation’s role in promoting peacebuilding — in research and policy agendas.What’s knownResearch on the effects of armed conflicts on ecosystems has been limited for obvious reasons. But over the past decade, the use of satellite imagery, the tracking of social media and other open-source intelligence, and the increasing involvement of local communities in research have allowed investigators to improve monitoring of the impact of armed conflicts in settings that are difficult or dangerous to work in.Between 1950 and 2000, more than 80% of armed conflicts took place in 34 recognized biodiversity hotspots5. According to data published in July, 39 countries — including many that are rich in biodiversity, such as Colombia, Myanmar, Brazil and Cameroon — are currently experiencing sustained or escalating levels of conflict (see ‘Far-reaching effects’ and go.nature.com/3btgzrn).

Source: ACLED Conflict Index 2024

The impacts go far beyond the direct effects of warfare. Access to small arms and light weapons, such as pistols, rifles and light machine guns, makes it easier for people to kill animals for bushmeat or trade. Indeed, increases in the ownership of small arms following conflict have been implicated in the decline, and in some cases the extinction, of large mammals across the Sahara–Sahel region of Africa6. Conflict can even bring long-term changes in the threats to wildlife. In Cambodia, for example, increased access to weapons through conflict was one factor that allowed an illegal wildlife trade to emerge, one that continues to supply international markets with (among other items) the body parts of Sunda pangolins (Manis javanica; often called scaly anteaters) and gaur (Bos gaurus, a wild cattle species) for traditional medicine, meat and handicrafts7.Several studies have shown that illegal hunting and logging often accelerate during and after conflict — either because governance and institutions are weakened, or because traditional management systems disappear when people are displaced8. Likewise, conflicts can increase people’s dependencies on wood for fuel and thereby drive overharvesting9.
No basis for claim that 80% of biodiversity is found in Indigenous territories
The effects of armed conflict on biodiversity can be extremely diverse, depending on the context. In Angola, almost three decades of conflict beginning in the mid-1970s displaced millions of people, which left some areas of the country relatively free of human impacts. Also, the widespread use of landmines (which are still being cleared) prevented people from returning to large areas of wilderness. As a result, certain populations of threatened wildlife species in remote areas of the country, for example in the centre and near the border with Namibia and Zambia, have been able to persist10,11.Conversely, in some areas closer to urban centres, such as the coastal Quiçama National Park near the capital Luanda, widespread hunting during and after conflict has led to declines in many mammal species12 and probably to the local disappearance of some species, including the common eland (Tragelaphus oryx) and roan antelope (Hippotragus equinus). And since the conflict ceased, large mammal populations across Angola’s wilderness and protected areas have declined owing to a breakdown in law enforcement and governance — disruption that began with the conflict but that persists to this day.Alongside studies of the effects of conflict on biodiversity, there has been a growing interest in the use of ‘nature-based solutions’ to support people’s well-being and livelihoods during and after conflict — and to help avoid future conflict. As part of the Kibira Peace Forest project, which was established in Burundi in 2021, for example, a coalition of regional and international organizations and donors engaged the government, private sector and local community — particularly women — in the stewardship of biodiversity. An assessment of the project suggests that it strengthened social cohesion and improved people’s livelihoods, which in turn reduced levels of conflict and deforestation (see go.nature.com/47xztpy).Putting conflict on the tablePromising as these efforts are, much more research is needed — for example, to probe the interactions between biodiversity loss, armed conflict and climate change. There are also questions about whether Indigenous or community-led management of natural resources is more resilient than, say, government management in the face of conflicts. A 2023 study showed that in the world’s biodiversity hotspots, ecosystems on Indigenous peoples’ lands are less degraded than are those on non-Indigenous lands, even though armed conflict is more likely to occur in the former13.

The Kibira Peace Forest project in Burundi, funded by the United Nations Nature Facility, engaged local people in biodiversity stewardship.Credit: UN Capital Development Fund

More immediately, changes to some of the instruments that will be used to implement the Global Biodiversity Framework could help countries to mitigate the impacts of conflict on biodiversity, build biodiversity governance and help to restore biodiversity following conflict.The Convention on Biological Diversity is the international treaty that governs the conservation of biodiversity, its sustainable use and the sharing of benefits from the use of genetic resources. Since entering into force in 1993, it has been ratified by 196 parties. But it is silent on the issue of conflict. Also, neither the convention’s previous Strategic Plan for Biodiversity and its accompanying Aichi targets, nor its current Global Biodiversity Framework — which lays out 23 actions or targets needed to protect and restore biodiversity between now and 2030 — address the relationship between biodiversity and armed conflict.
Ditching ‘Anthropocene’: why ecologists say the term still matters
In our view, countries should be urged to incorporate language that explicitly considers the needs and challenges arising in the face of armed conflict — and during peacebuilding — in their National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plans (NBSAPs). These lay out the actions that nations will take to address threats to biodiversity, and so help to achieve the ambitions of the Global Biodiversity Framework. For example, countries could set out how restoration of biodiversity will be used to build and sustain peace. Countries could also include plans to monitor the impact of armed conflict on biodiversity in their NBSAPs. Data on conflicts are already available should governments want to use them, such as the ACLED Conflict Index, which is derived from data on incidents of political violence worldwide.There is little appetite for adding further indicators to the official list of more than 100 that will be used to monitor progress towards the Global Biodiversity Framework’s targets. Yet the development and future inclusion of indicators that help governments, scientists and policymakers to measure and understand the impact of armed conflicts on the environment and biodiversity over time, and hence their effects on countries’ abilities to deliver on their commitments, could bring tremendous value.Crucially, more technical and financial support must be directed towards countries affected by conflict. This is especially important during the early years of recovery following conflict, when continuing insecurity and weak environmental governance can exacerbate deforestation and other threats to biodiversity. The Convention on Biological Diversity and other international conservation agreements, such as the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, represent vehicles for collating expertise, focusing people’s attention and mobilizing funding and technical assistance. These should be harnessed specifically for this purpose.Donors often view conservation projects in conflict areas as too risky or too prone to failure. This can mean that community projects, local non-governmental organizations and front-line staff, such as rangers, go unsupported. As long as those involved ensure that they have an in-depth understanding of the local context, and prioritize the local ownership of projects and resource management, a shift in mindset would enable the growth of sustainable, impactful conservation projects to mitigate the effects of conflict on biodiversity, and to help to foster peace.

Refugees from Angola who fled the country during its 27-year civil war were able to return after a peace accord was signed in 2002.Credit: Alexander Joe/AFP via Getty

Influential organizations are beginning to make headway on this front. In 2020, the Global Environment Facility, one of the largest international donors supporting biodiversity projects, reviewed its portfolio of projects in ‘fragile states’ (countries with weak governance, chronic humanitarian crises, persistent social tensions and so on) and in countries dealing with ongoing conflict. It identified that ‘conflict-sensitive’ approaches can help to improve the outcomes of conservation projects, and has since been working to update its practices accordingly14. Elsewhere, partnerships between conservation and peacebuilding organizations, such as between Conservation International in Arlington, Virginia, and the PeaceNexus Foundation near Geneva, Switzerland, are beginning to provide insights that could be applied more broadly to projects in challenging settings15.Ultimately, much greater awareness is needed of the impacts of conflict on biodiversity. Incorporating the issue into the implementation of the Global Biodiversity Framework would be an effective way to achieve this, particularly because conflict reduces the capacity of countries to gather and collate data on biodiversity. Increased awareness could also create opportunities for other organizations to engage, from United Nations peacekeepers to humanitarian organizations. As an example, organizations that clear landmines, such as Norwegian People’s Aid in Oslo, are already increasingly examining how to mitigate the impact of their activities on sensitive habitats.Following Colombia’s leadThere is now consensus among scientists and most governments that healthy ecosystems are crucial for safeguarding human rights, livelihoods and well-being. Although there will always be limits to the degree of environmental protection that can be achieved in war zones, there are huge opportunities to reduce environmental harm stemming from conflict, to ensure that biodiversity protection in post-conflict recovery efforts becomes mainstream, and to ensure that the environment is integrated into peacebuilding processes.

An illegal wildlife trade in Cambodia — driven in part by increased access to weapons through conflict — supplies international markets with the body parts of Sunda pangolins (Manis javanica).Credit: Imago/Alamy

Multiple factors have encouraged Colombia’s COP16 organizers to push the issue at the upcoming meeting. Colombia has endured one of the longest armed conflicts in Latin America, which has been fuelled largely by illicit economies underpinned by natural resources, such as gold and timber, in turn severely harming biodiversity. Even today, ecosystems and local communities, including Indigenous peoples, Afro-Colombians and campesinos (small farmers), are trapped in the middle. And although deforestation in the country was reduced by 36% in 2023 thanks to collaborative work between communities, civil society and the government to protect forests from exploitation, escalating threats to leaders of social and environmental movements could drive rates up again. In the first 9 months of 2024 alone, 117 such leaders were murdered in Colombia.The links between Colombian biodiversity and conflict are so strong that the environment is included in the country’s Special Jurisdiction for Peace (Jurisdicción Especial para la Paz; JEP). The JEP is a transitional-justice mechanism that was launched in 2017 as part of the peace agreement between FARC guerrillas and the government. In 2019, the government declared that the environment had been a “silent victim of the conflict” and that it would investigate reparation mechanisms for the damage caused.Against a backdrop of such experiences — which are not unique to Colombia — the country’s two-year presidency of the Convention on Biological Diversity offers an unprecedented opportunity to at last bring attention to the interactions between biodiversity, conflict and peace. More

Samples of Colombia’s plant and animal species are housed at the Alexander von Humboldt Biological Resources Research Institute in Bogota. How to equitably share the benefits of digital genetic-sequence information relating to such samples remains unresolved.Credit: Luis Robayo/AFP/Getty

Next week, national delegates, including scientists, will meet in Cali, Colombia, for the United Nations COP16 meeting on biodiversity. Boosting the low levels of finance available for biodiversity conservation is high on the agenda, as is trying to tie up some unfinished business that goes back more than three decades. The hope is that negotiators will finally reach an agreement on how lower-income countries can better share in the benefits that stem from their resources — including any monetary benefits deriving from non-human genetic data.Yet even at this eleventh hour, an agreement on the sharing of these data is some way from being ready. The principle of equitable benefit-sharing is not in question, but more time is needed to bridge gaps between different perspectives on how to implement it. Those gaps will, in turn, be bridged only if policymakers can commission a programme of research to help answer some crucial questions. Researchers globally fear that rushing to finalize the agreement risks putting barriers in the way of the current practice by which researchers are able to quickly share genetic-sequencing data, which are the lifeblood of many scientific fields and are crucial to public health, particularly during health emergencies.
Conservation policies must address an overlooked issue: how war affects the environment
The history of these efforts stretches back to the start of the biodiversity convention, which was signed at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992 (see go.nature.com/3y0xs7q). A pledge made at that time for more equitable sharing of biological resources eventually led to the Nagoya protocol, which became international law in 2014 (see go.nature.com/3ab4q9g). This obliges researchers at universities and corporations in countries that are party to the UN convention to ensure that they have obtained all the necessary permissions when using non-human genetic material from another country. For companies, there is an added requirement to share profits from any commercial products that arise from such work.But the Nagoya protocol applies only to physical samples. Many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are rich in biodiversity and have been pushing since at least 2016 to expand the definition of non-human genetic material to include digital sequence information (DSI). This is the subject of the 11-page text that is due to be discussed at the Cali meeting (see go.nature.com/3nscyd4).The text’s authors — who include researchers representing governments from different world regions, Indigenous people and representatives of UN organizations — agree on several fundamental principles. These include the need for there to be an agreement on DSI data, as there is for physical samples; for the agreement to respect the rights of Indigenous peoples; and for the agreement to be consistent with the principles of open data and not hinder research and innovation. Moreover, anyone benefiting financially from DSI should contribute a fraction of the benefit to a fund to protect biodiversity.
The next 20 years of human genomics must be more equitable and more open
But the document also contains some 200 items in square brackets — meaning that there are around 200 things on which the authors still disagree. Among them are how to define DSI (there is no agreement on whether it covers one or all of DNA, RNA and proteins); whether this information should be deposited in existing or new databases; how to define a sequence’s country of origin, including whether this is even possible; where permission should be obtained from or how benefits should be apportioned if there is no single country of origin; whether payments should be mandatory; and whether all countries or only rich nations should be liable to pay.These are tricky questions, but they are not unanswerable. What is needed to resolve them is dedicated independent research. Such research is thin on the ground (A. H. Scholz et al. Nature Commun. 13, 1086; 2022), and policymakers need to commission it so that they can be better informed about the different options being proposed. A document as incomplete as that due to be discussed at Cali is not one on which good decisions can be made.COP16 delegates will also discuss the lack of progress countries have made in finalizing biodiversity action plans. One reason for this is a lack of finance. Researchers estimate that between US$700 billion and $1 trillion is needed annually. However, in 2022, only around $26 billion went into conserving species and ecosystems, according to a report published last month by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (see go.nature.com/3ub1mqg), a group of wealthy nations. Although some of what is available is in the form of grants, a lot of it comprises loans, which need to be repaid — with interest.
Global lessons from South Africa’s rooibos compensation agreement
Some of the DSI agreement’s proponents see it as at least part of the answer to boosting biodiversity financing in the countries that most need it. But it is likely to disappoint — as experience with the Nagoya protocol, a comparatively simpler device, shows. In the decade since it came into force, there are few recorded examples of corporations paying local communities for the use of their biological resources. Although in 2019, tea manufacturers compensated South Africa’s Khoi and San communities for using their knowledge on rooibos tea without acknowledgement, this agreement took years to realize and only happened because the South African government pushed the companies to pay.Next week’s meeting in Cali is important. For delegates from LMICs, such events are among a vanishingly small number of forums where their voices are equal to those of richer, more powerful nations. And the whole world has an interest in the project’s success.The case of the omicron variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus offers a valuable reminder of why some form of benefit sharing from DSI is necessary (R. Viana et al. Nature 603, 679–686; 2022). Researchers in Botswana and South Africa who discovered it rapidly alerted the world and shared its sequence. This knowledge was used in the manufacture of vaccines — vaccines that could have saved many more lives had they not reached many African countries too late. And this example also raises yet another issue — that the discussion at Cali ought to include other international bodies, most notably the World Health Organization.Most importantly, before an agreement is reached on DSI, much more work needs to go into answering the questions contained in those 200-odd sets of square brackets. What no one needs is a rushed mechanism that risks the knowledge sharing on which research and public health depend. More

The French overseas territory of New Caledonia is one of the world’s most important biodiversity hotspots, with more than 3,000 plant species, three-quarters of them endemic (N. Myers et al. Nature 403, 853–858; 2000), and 2% of the world’s threatened animal, plant and fungal species.
Competing Interests
The authors declare no competing interests. More

A maneless lion from Kenya. Two maneless lions nicknamed the ‘Man-eaters of Tsavo’ preyed on railway workers in Kenya during the nineteenth century.Credit: Cavan Images/Alamy

Hair found wedged in the broken teeth of famous lions killed in the nineteenth century offers a glimpse of their diet — which included humans1.Few wild lions (Panthera leo) are as well-known as the ‘Man-eaters of Tsavo’, two large maneless males that terrorized workers constructing the Kenya–Uganda Railway until they were shot by a railway administrator, lieutenant-colonel John Henry Patterson, in 1898. The exact number of their victims is unknown, but they probably killed at least 31 people near the Tsavo River in Kenya2.The Tsavo lions ended up on display at Chicago’s Field Museum in Illinois, and by 2001, thousands of hairs had been extracted from a cavity in one of their teeth. At the time, the best scientists could do was look at the hairs under a microscope.Ancient-DNA advancesHowever, “ancient DNA has come a long way”, says co-author Ripan S. Malhi, an anthropological geneticist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “You no longer need a follicle cell on a hair” to extract and read the DNA. “You can do it from the hair shaft itself.” Using these techniques, Malhi and his colleagues have identified hair from giraffe, oryx, waterbuck, wildebeest, zebra and human in the sample. Their report was published today in Current Biology.The wildebeests were the biggest surprise. There were no wildebeests near the site of the railway worker’s camp, says co-author Alida de Flamingh, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The closest herds were 90 kilometres away. So “either these lions were roaming across larger areas, or, historically, wildebeest did occur in the Tsavo region”, de Flamingh says.

Hair trapped in the broken tooth (pictured) of one of the Tsavo lions yielded DNA from the great cat’s prey.Credit: Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago

Although the researchers could do further analyses to uncover more information about the human DNA, they included minimal detail about it in their published paper. The next step will be “working with the local community and the local institutions”, Malhi says. “There are potentially descendants, or a descendant community that may or may not want this type of analysis done, or maybe they do — we just don’t know yet.”Graham Kerley, an ecologist and lion specialist at Nelson Mandela University in Gqeberha, South Africa, says that the list of species whose DNA is lingering in the predator’s teeth isn’t particularly surprising. For him, the real takeaway is the importance of preserving biological specimens so that they can be reanalysed as tools improve over time. “Patterson, when he shot these lions, he had no sense of the incredible information that would emerge a hundred odd years later,” Kerley says.That’s exactly the message that the researchers wanted to send, de Flamingh says. “We hope that other folks will try to apply the methodology that we developed here to study prey ecology or histories of other animals — even extending further back to extinct species.” More

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