LIVINGSTONE, Zambia – The lions know David Youldon well, the male one staring at him through the fence, then pushing his furry head against the chain link for a scratch.
Youldon oversees ALERT, African Lion and Environmental Research Trust, in Mosi-Oa-Tunya National Park, a conservation program that relies on partnerships from academia to business.
In the past, a Ph.D. student from the University of Montana conducted research at ALERT. This year, assistant professors from the College of Forestry and Conservation visited Youldon to strengthen UM's connection to Zambia.
"So you're going to bring us a lot of students," Youldon said.
It's both a statement and a question to UM assistant professors Jennifer Thomsen and Brian Chaffin. This year, the teachers visited colleagues in Zambia before attending a water governance conference there, and several peers expressed an interest in more collaboration.
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"I was just really blown away by the fact that people were just so excited to meet with us, so excited about not only what has been done and is currently going on between the University of Montana and our contacts in Zambia, but where we can go from here," Thomsen said.
Nearly 20 years ago, UM professor Wayne Freimund established relationships with people working in the same field in Africa, and some students from Zambia ended up studying at the College of Forestry and Conservation.
Last year, Freimund took the first class of UM students to Livingstone. They came from a wide cross-section of majors: conservation, business, geology and others.
There, the group encountered complex issues ranging from human-wildlife conflict to education to transportation infrastructure and public health.
"There's no easy issues, and there's no simple challenges there," Freimund said. "It's a wonderful place to study."
The parallels between Zambia and Montana are uncanny. Both are landlocked geographies with large rivers and copper mines – and economies making a transition away from extraction and toward tourism and recreation.
As Thomsen sees it, exposure to conservationists overseas will teach the students that protecting nature takes place in myriad ways, even ones counterintuitive to many in the West.
"Conservation requires unique and innovative strategies, and thinking outside the box," Thomsen said. "Conserving for conservation's sake is not going to cut it anymore."
For instance, the illegal killing of Cecil the lion outside a national park in Zimbabwe a year ago prompted outrage in the United States, but one lesson from Africa is that trophy hunting isn't always bad, she said. In fact, it can bring money to people who would otherwise have an incentive to poach.
"We see trophy hunting tourism as a way to conserve," said Thomsen, who would like to pursue research on trophy hunting in collaboration with scientists in Africa. "We see that it has a direct link to (financial) benefits in the communities."
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A relationship with Youldon's ALERT program is another that could push students outside their comfort zones.
ALERT has been controversial in part because it used to offer tourists the chance to walk with lions. While it has stopped that feature at least temporarily, the director isn't opposed to starting again if there's demand.
Thomsen sees value in exposing UM students to even contentious ways of saving animals and land, and Youldon said the strategies the program uses come directly from the people it aims to help.
"We are using, as far as possible, local solutions to local challenges," he said.
ALERT soon plans to release a third generation of lions into the wild, one of several conservation measures underway. The first generation of cats lived with human contact; their offspring lived on a range with minimal human contact; and the third generation had no contact with people at all.
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Oluronke Oke, a planning officer for the Department of National Parks and Wildlife, is another professional in Zambia standing ready to gain and share insights with the University of Montana.
Oke is based in Livingstone, adjacent to Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park. In the park, armed guards protect white rhinos around the clock and Oke sees the rhinos as a priority even beyond her own salary.
She wants to learn from a fundraising partner, a group that might have experience establishing a program such as Friends of the Rhinos. Oke has a lot to teach, too, about understanding animals as well as human stakeholders.
She's had people waving sticks in her office because they were mad at elephants, and she lets the outraged constituents cool off and hears them out. Sometimes, the elephant accused of killing a person has its side of the story, too, she said.
"They don't report the person was drinking and was riding a bike and rode into the elephant," Oke said. "And sometimes it has a wire snare around its neck or its leg. It wants to defend itself."
The issues Oke faces inside and outside Mosi-oa-Tunya are similar to ones park managers encounter in Yellowstone National Park and Glacier National Park, Thomsen said, and she wants to bring more people from Zambia to Montana for an exchange program.
This summer, UM wasn't able to bring a class of students to Zambia, and Thomsen suspects the cost to study abroad is a barrier. Airfare alone can run $1,800, or more, and she hopes to find financial support for a student group in 2017.
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Last year, Freimund took students to the village of Makuni, near Livingstone, and Thomsen returned there this year.
There, Yanina Muchindu offers tours of the village to visitors as a source of income for the residents. The tours end at a stand where villagers sell handmade wares, beaded necklaces, carved bowls, and all sorts of trinkets carved into the shapes of hippos and giraffes.
"Agriculture in this area is not very good. The land is sandy. So tourism is the main source of income," Muchindu said.Â
The village is 700 years old, she said. Explorer David Livingstone was the first white man to visit the village. On a walk around the village, the dirt was cleanly swept in front of mud huts, chickens and goats wandered by, and Muchindu pointed out homes, churches, a jail, and even some water tanks.
Some 12 years ago, she said, tourists from Germany helped them buy the water tanks so they had easier access. Before, they used to walk 3 miles to get water.
Along the way, Thomsen asked the guide if UM students might help the villagers by working on a project at Makuni in the future, and Muchindu immediately agreed. They can help build huts, she said.
Muchindu reached out to Thomsen by email soon after the teacher was back in Montana, and the planning is underway on both continents.
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Sandy Simpson, a human-wildlife conflict manager, is also interested in collaboration, and he too met with Thomsen and Chaffin while they were in Livingstone.
Simpson has used a holographic tape sold at a Bozeman company, Nite Guard, to repel elephants, and he is interested in working with a scientist or student from UM who can determine how the simple flickering tape keeps elephants at bay. In doing so, it protects both animals and villagers.
"I need someone from the University of Montana," Simpson said.
Thomsen believes the interest will be high among UM students and researchers, but UM will need to be creative to help support the relationships. The trips are expensive, but the potential for learning about wildlife biology, tourism, and social science in different contexts is great.
"These are directly aligned with what our program talks about and the foundational components of the education (at UM)," Thomsen said.
There, the classroom reaches all the way to Africa, and the learning is global.
