Lion Guardians

Today, we were tracking lions, and came across this scene. The people in the ranch are very tolerant of wildlife. I think this kind of co-existence with wildlife has been inherited from time immemorial. The Kenya Wildlife Service estimates that 75% of Kenyan wildlife live outside protected areas. We live and work on a piece of land known as a group ranch. This land is communally-owned by several hundred Maasai families. Group ranches such as ours provide the dispersal areas for both the herbivore and carnivore populations that grace the Amboseli National Park and Tsavo National Park.

The Maasai culture of depending only on livestock, hence neither cultivating nor hunting is probably the main reason why wildlife persists in these areas.