Hyenas living in an intensive commercial cattle ranching area of Namibia have a reputation as scavengers among local farmers, who suspect the carnivores of killing their livestock.

But now research is being carried out by the N/a'an ku sê Foundation into the movements and behaviours of local hyenas, which could help the animals and farmers to live together side by side.

A healthy free-roaming two year old male brown hyena, known as N075, is being tracked with a high tech GPS collar to find out what he gets up to. This potentially could also allow researchers to study and understand an entire clan.

N075’s recorded movements are shared with farmers daily, along with those of other large carnivores also being tracked by GPS collars. Thanks to this accurate information - and the cooperation from local people to refrain from trapping or killing the hyena - many farmers are fine-tuning their livestock management and seeing a reduction of losses to predators.

Last year Colchester Zoo’s Action for the Wild charity donated nearly £5,000 to the N/a'an ku sê Foundation. Some of the funds were used to buy N075’s radio collar, along with three others, for their Carnivore Conservation Research Project.

Researchers are excited to find out more about the ecology of these amazing and misunderstood creatures, thanks to the collars - and the instant information the equipment provides will help local farmers and carnivores like N075 to co-exist.

Find out more about Colchester Zoo’s Action for the Wild charity here.