Does repeated darting of lions affect their habitat selection and tourist-viewing opportunities?

Increasing numbers of animals are captured every year for the deployment of bio-loggers to collect data for scientific research. This usually requires immobilisation and handling by researchers, sometimes repeatedly on the same individuals, and has the potential to change the spatial behaviour of captured animals, such as avoiding humans and human infrastructure. This is especially relevant for species like lions ( Panthera leo ), which are among the most studied carnivores and at the same time globally one of the most sought-after species for wildlife-viewing tourism. Here, we used habitat-selection functions to examine habitat selection of lions after being chemically immobilised, some of them repeatedly, by darting from a car. Our study focused on the central part of the Etosha National Park, Namibia, a protected area with a large, but spatially and temporally regulated tourist presence. We found that captured lions did not avoid tourist camps, roads or waterholes, despite high numbers of tourists at these sites. Lions also did not change their habitat selection in relation to tourist infrastructure dependent on how many times they were darted (once vs twice) nor with time since darting. Our study indicated that in a protected area with strictly controlled tourist movements (restriction to tourist roads and daytime periods), tourism has a minimal impact on the movement of lions. Furthermore, repeated darting and chemical immobilisation did not seem to reduce lion-viewing possibilities for tourists during our study. These findings are crucial for shaping more effective policy, research and visitor management strategies. Implementing similar measures in other protected areas such as a zero-tolerance policy for off-road driving and restricting tourist activity to daytime hours (i.e. when carnivores are less active) can help minimize the effects of tourism on wildlife.