Wildlife filmmakers Beverly and Dereck Joubert spoke at TEDWomen 2010 about their commitment to saving Africa’s big cats from extinction. The biggest factor that threatens these majestic animals: trophy hunters.

Dereck and Beverly Joubert have been living in the bush in Botswana, making wildlife and conservation films together, for more than 30 years. Their films have shaped an intimate and profound narrative about the interconnected relationship among people, animals and the land, adding layers of understanding based on years of close and constant observation of animal behavior. (Their latest film, The Soul of the Elephant, was just nominated for an Emmy.)

This summer, TEDWomen host Pat Mitchell visited the Jouberts in one of the Great Plains safari camps and preserves they founded: Great Plains Conservation, launched a few years ago in Botswana and Kenya. Mitchell sends this timely report — Wednesday, August 10, it turns out, is World Lion Day.

Out on a game drive at Great Plains Conservation in Botswana: From left, filmmaker Dereck Joubert, TEDWomen host Pat Mitchell, Mitchell’s husband Scott Seydel, and filmmaker Beverly Joubert.

On this visit, we talked about how much has happened since their 2010 TEDWomen talk about their Big Cats Initiative. I well remember how they stunned the TEDWomen audience, describing the shocking decline in big cat populations in Africa. They told us that the number of lions had gone from about 450,000 when they were growing up to less than 45,000 in 2010 – a literal decimation – with similar declines in cheetah and leopard populations. Sadly, they told me now, the number has declined even further since then, and is approaching 20,000.

The Jouberts told me they still receive hundreds of messages a week about their TED Talk. This talk, along with their films about the lions of Duba Plains and the leopards they’ve tracked over many years, have raised public awareness about the threats to the big cats: habitat encroachment; community pressure, where conflicts arise between animals and people; and, of course, the biggest single factor, hunting. The Jouberts helped lead the fight to ban hunting in Botswana, and as a result the animal population, including big cats, is increasing here.

But in many other countries in Africa – where big cats are an important attraction in the safari experiences that bring more than $27 billion a year into local economies – at least five lions are lost per day. Working with the National Geographic Society on the Big Cats Initiative, the Jouberts are committed to changing that.

Meanwhile, they told me, they have a new cat film in production for Nat Geo Wild — not about big cats this time, but the smaller ones, the ones we call “domesticated.” The film will explore behavioral links between the cats we pet and love in our homes and the cats we admire from a safe distance.

TEDWomen host Pat Mitchell shares this epic selfie with a lion spotted at Great Plains.

At this year’s TEDWomen conference in October, I’ll be sharing updates, ideas and perspectives from the front lines of conservation, in Africa and in many other places. These battles to sustain our natural environments are being fought by champions like the Jouberts, who are seeking a better balance between us and the world we inhabit.

Main theater passes are still available for TEDWomen 2016, to be held in San Francisco October 26-28. Find out more about TEDWomen 2016: It’s About Time >>

Richard Turere tells how he invented a lion-deterring device. Photo: James Duncan Davidson

Richard Turere, 13, grew up hating lions. In Nairobi National Park, where he lives, lions roam freely and often targeted his family’s livestock at night. And yet Turere also hated the only solution his community had come up with to stop lion attacks on cows — killing the majestic creatures.

Richard Turere: My invention that made peace with lions “I had to find a way of solving this problem,” says Turere in today’s talk, filmed at TED2013.

First, Turere tried using fire and scarecrows, but both failed to scare off lions for the long-haul. So electronics-tinkerer Turere had another idea.

“I discovered that lions are afraid of a moving light,” he says. “So I got an old car battery and an indicator box, a small device found in a motorcycle that tells motorists when they want to turn right or left. It blinks.”

He combined these items with a light switch, a torch from a broken flashlight and solar powering. Together, they made a blinking device that flashes in unpredictable patterns, emulating a person walking with a flashlight. The device works wonders for keeping lions away.

“I set this up in my home two years ago and since then we have never experienced any problem with the lions,” says Turere, adding that he has now made devices for seven families in his community and taught friends to build them too.

Turere boarded his very first airplane to come to TED2013. And on stage he shared with Chris Anderson the next device he’d like to build to keep lions away — his version of an electric fence. Young Turere may be on to something. In an article in today’s The New York Times, the director of the Lion Research Center at the University of Minnesota says that, after 35 years of research, he sees fences as the most promising way to save the dwindling lion population, keeping them away from both livestock and people.

Turere’s device has helped him make peace with lions. Here, watch three more TED Talks that give unexpected looks at these oversized cats.

John Kasaona: How poachers became caretakers John Kasaona: How poachers became caretakers In this talk from TED2010, conservationist John Kasaona shares a wild idea his community had for conserving their local lion population: pay poachers, who know the bush and animal behavior incredibly well, to look out for the beautiful cats. And this approach is working. In 1995, there were 20 lions in Northwest Namibia. Today, there are more than 130.

Beverly + Dereck Joubert: Life lessons from big cats Beverly + Dereck Joubert: Life lessons from big cats “Our lives have basically been like a super-long episode of ‘CSI,’” says documentary filmmaker Dereck Joubert, who has spent 28 years following leopards and lions along with his partner, Beverly Joubert. And while, yes, these cats are killers — they also have incredible personalities. In this talk from TEDWomen, the pair shares amazing footage that humanizes lions.

Anders Ynnerman: Visualizing the medical data explosion Anders Ynnerman: Visualizing the medical data explosion What do lions have to do with medical data visualization? In this talk from TEDxGöteborg, Anders Ynnerman shares how scientists parse the reams of data that medical scans produce for each patient. In it, he reveals how and why they took CAT scans of a lion from a local zoo.  “I think this is a great application for the future of this technology because there’s very little known about the animal anatomy,” he explains.

Richard Turere was just 12 when he came up with his lion-scaring device. Watch 8 more TED Talks from impressive kids, from a preteen app developer to an elementary school class that wrote a scientific research paper in crayon »