This project is not a task without risk. The lions are shy, and to get close enough to drug them can be dangerous. Then he must have enough time to draw blood and hair samples, before they wake the lion up. The time is also an issue; the national parks are big, and it might take as little as a few hours to as long as a couple of days to find these big predators. But this doesn’t matter for Pablo Sanchez Virosta.
“This is my dream project, that I planned with my wife,” Sanchez Virosta said. “She was working in the same field as me, and we had written a project on toxicology in lions with a colleague in Spain. But she sadly passed away in 2022 and we didn’t get to bring this project to life.”
From birds to lions
Sanchez Virosta is a biologist and has been working with toxicology and birds. After his wife’s death a good NTNU colleague, Veerle Jaspers, contacted him to offer comfort and support.
“She said if you have any project, we can apply for something. For instance, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowships. I thought, Marie Curie, yeah, of course,” he said.
He had met Jaspers when they were part of a European COST Action, on raptor monitoring. And they were both working in raptor or bird toxicology.
“And she was the one who pushed me to think of this as a real opportunity,” he said.
A childhood dream
“I’ve always worked with birds before, but I thought, this is the moment that I go with everything. So, why not? I told Veerle, and I thought she would say, “Pablo, we are not lion people, we are bird people”. But she said, okay, let’s do that”.
His fascination and love for lions comes from documentaries in his childhood.
“I watched them all the time and was sad because we didn’t have any in Spain,” he said.
Ecotoxology studies
Sanchez Virosta has a PhD from Finland, and has worked in Spain, mostly on metal toxicology on birds.
“In eco-toxicology or in wildlife toxicology, we study the ecosystems from the top to the bottom, because toxicants tend to accumulate higher up the food chain. So, we usually work with predators, and with carnivores,” he said.
He allows that it’s quite a big leap from birds to lions. And in these types of grant applications, the focus is on challenges, as the grants only support excellence.
“I have been working with tiny birds and many different birds. With eagle owls, little owls, vultures, blackbirds, pigeons. Always birds. But lions, they are such a creature. They are impressive. There is nothing like a lion,” he said.
Lions as models for research
Lions are mammals, which can be very interesting from a human point of view. They are high in the food chain, and the results from Sanchez Virosta’s research will be quite applicable to humans. Lions are very good model organisms for research in toxicology. Additionally, their populations are declining worldwide, but especially in East Africa. And there has been little research on toxicological problems.
The project was focused on Uganda and Queen Elizabeth National Park. Sanchez Virosta also met Eivin Røskaft, an NTNU professor emeritus who has worked in Tanzania for his entire academic career. Røskaft helped by sharing his African connections. In the end the grant covered work in Tanzania (in Serengeti National Park) and in Uganda (in Queen Elizabeth National Park).
Much appreciated help
Eugen Sørmo, who is the EU Adviser at the Faculty of Natural Sciences at NTNU was also helpful with Sanchez Virosta’s application.
“Because of my life-situation I was very slow, and just five or six days before deadline I sent the application to Eugen for a read. He should have had a month. But he gave me very good feedback, and input. I rewrote a big part with his help and advice,” Sanchez Virosta said.
Nevertheless, he wasn’t sure he would get the grant.
“I think if you write the perfect project proposal for a grant like this, you may have a 30%, 40% chance of getting one. And from there, it’s like winning the lottery,” he said.
Much to his amazement, Sanchez Virosta won this particular lottery in February 2023.
“This was perhaps the most prestigious grant award in the world for people at my stage, as a postdoc. It was my dream project come true,” he said.
And then the work starts
Wining the grant allowed Sanchez Virosta to travel to East Africa and do research. But this was not a walk in the (national) park. It takes work to secure permits and permission to enter the park, and to sedate lions and draw blood from them.
Uganda officials think they may have toxicological problems, but they have never checked. There has been mining on the border of the park, although the mines have been closed for some years. Now, there is a possibility that they may reopen again soon.
“It’s important to take samples before that happens to have a reference for later,” Sanchez Virosta said. “I think that if our data can show that there has been metal pollution in the past from mine emissions, they can at least take measures in the future.”
Queen Elizabeth National Park in Kenya is believed to have 39 lions in the entire park. The park is very big, so, finding them is not easy.
“I spent about a month there and during that time, we could only find eight lions. If the metal levels are higher than they should be, park officials will at least know that there is a problem. You can’t react if you don’t know there is a problem,” he said.
Tanzania is different because there Serengeti National Park has a higher density of lions, with about 3,000 lions. Although the park is much bigger than Uganda’s park, it was easier to for Sanchez Virosta to find the animals. Sanchez Virosta and his crew captured 29 lions in 14 fieldwork days in Serengeti. Not surprisingly, he found this more rewarding.
Two of everything
Since he’s working in two countries, Sanchez Virosta needs two of everything, from work permits, to drugs, to teams of veterinarians.
“And I need to pay for permits to export samples, and for their shipment. It also takes a lot of time, roughly 9 months to get the samples from Africa to Norway. Now I finally can do my research,” he said.
The time and expenses are things Sanchez Virosta hadn’t planned for. His grant money is fast disappearing. And the results will be given back to the national parks and governments that owns the parks to be used and hopefully they can do something to protect the lions from being prisoned.
“It has been a long and expensive journey, but fun and very exciting, too. At the same time, this is the great plus of my project. It has given me the experience of working in unfamiliar environments, with cultural differences and challenges that I have never faced before. Overall, this continues to be a dream project for me. The lions are charismatic, emblematic. And I have had the chance to work with them and for them, which is something very important to me, ” he said.