Lion Guardians

Yesterday as you saw, we had our usual end of the month meeting. This time round the attendance was a hundred percent. All the Guardians made it to the meeting despite difficult conditions. At this time it is raining in many parts of the Group Ranch.

They reported good news from their zones. Although tracking is not easy when rain washes away tracks everyday, they keep on doing their best so as not to lose the opportunity to track. When wildlife is concentrated as they are during this time of year, the lions sometimes come closer together. We can find several of them occupying a small area. As a result, this is the best time to track, monitor, and possibly even collar more lions.

One of our collared lions, Nempakia, moved into Amboseli National Park, several kilometers away from our group ranch. On a recent trip there, Seamus went out in pursuit of her. He found several other lions in the reserve and he took pictures I am sure many of our supporters will really like to see.

regards

Antony

(note from Seamus: We think that this is the pride male that Nempakai is associating with. He has characteristic scars on his face that make him fairly easy to identify, as well as some clear ear notches. The more astute amongst you southerners might recognise the Leeu-loop)

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Today is our mothly meeting, where all the lion guardians come together to discuss what’s happening, and to resolve any problems that might have arisen. Here are a few photos taken of us while we were busy. The view in the first one is what one sees from the front of the dining area in the camp. We’re all sitting around the fireplace. Melubo (in the beige sweater) is waiting for his shukas to dry. they got wet because it rained while he was hiking to camp.

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As you may recall from a recent post, many people and their livestock have migrated into the area around our base camp, near the foot of the Chyulu Hills, where the grass is green. With this sudden influx of people we have noticed a local increase in the number of livestock being lost. More often than not the animals are lost during the day while being herded, then killed by large carnivores at night. One of the primary responsibilities of the Lion Guardians is to try to help prevent depredation of people’s livestock, as this reduces their inclination to retaliate against lions and hyenas. So last night we dropped several guardians in strategic areas around here to search for lost livestock and to help people bring their herds home to their bomas (corrals). Here are a few pictures of the guardians setting out for their night’s assignment:

This is Lion Guardian Lenkina heading into the hills. He’s the red speck in the centre of the photograph. there is a herd of goats to the left of him.

… and Olubi heading into the whistling-thorn Acacia

Koikai is surveying from the high ground before embarking towards Olo Sira mountain.

And Mukoi was the last to be deployed, as the sun was about to set, and the full moon was rising

The reports we received this morning were very favourable. Lekina found an entire herd of goats and sheep and brought them down from behind the hills in the photograph. He was unclear as to exactly how many. The Maasai word “kumok” doesn’t really translate to a number. Just “many”. I’m guessing the herd was somewhere between 10 and 30 animals. Olubi searched for 3 cows that were lost yesterday. He eventually found that they had been given shelter for the night in a good samaritan’s boma. Mukoi found a cow that had given birth while out grazing yesterday, and took it home to the owner’s boma

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Well, this is Anthony again. I am back on Kenyan soil! My trip was one great and unforgettable experience. While I enjoyed my stay there, I could not help but miss home. I am very happy to be back home in the bush with cow and goat sounds all around! Interestingly, I am also missing the people I met in the

US only a few days since my arrival. Here is a picture of Linda, the person who kindly supplied the photographs for this blog.

During the trip, I met many wonderful people. Alvenia B. accommodated us; David S. and his wife welcomed us into their family; Nina, Joey and their son Riley; Iris and John; Brooke and Tree; Nikki and Jeff; and all the artists were wonderful company. Their music was heavenly. There are so many great people to remember but unfortunately, I can’t go ahead and list all of them on this blog.

Anyway, for today, let me just tell you how the business that took us there went. We were went to an Arts Auction sponsored by the National Arts Club. We were together with a collection of people who are interested in conserving lions on Mbirikani Group Ranch and helping the Maasai people.

We had many people donate artwork in support of lion conservation efforts. The Ol Doinyo Wuas Trust which runs a compensation program in Mbirikani donated several pieces of art work. The Lion Guardians were not left behind. My bead work and a fly whisk went into the market.

I was amazed at the effort people put in what they believe in! While some gave their prized artwork, others sacrificed their much needed cash (Man, life in

New York is so expensive!) to gather funds for lion conservation. The event, which landed on ‘day three’ of my stay in NYC was such a colourful event with so much hustle and bustle. I was clad fully in my murran attire on that day; I even had red ochre applied! Whew, wasn’t I a celebrity on this day! I met so many new people, all of whom I want to thank for their support of conservation of lions.

So, if you were involved, or you actually managed to get to the event, thank you so much for your belief in our work. Mr Hill and Mr Sugar, well done on making this all happen.

Here are some of the artists who donated work for the event.

And here is a photo of me in my traditional clothes that I wore for the occasion.

Its great to be back! Till tomorrow,

Antony

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In deconstructing yesterday’s debacle, the thought crossed my mind that I was an unmitigated idiot… anyone knows you shouldn’t mess around with clay soils in weather like this. The following photos illustrate quite well just how crazy the morning was before we got to the point where I got us stuck. We’re crossing a river that is dry for about 11 months of the year, that had chosen that morning to become a watery, muddy landcruiser trap. Through blind luck or something we did actually get through that. Ernest was quietly taking snapshots from the passenger seat, presumably resigning himself to the tedium that he surely knew was coming.

till tomorrow,

Seamus

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The more faithful or our blogreaders might be wondering why the recent posts have been a bit pedestrian. Well, its raining. When it rains around here, things get muddy. When things get muddy fieldwork gets to be a challenging. And the more timid amongst us stay at home eating pancakes and writing Durrel-esque blogs (thats Gerald Durrel, the naturalist who wrote the bed-time stories I had read to me).

And then some of us get it into our heads to go and do fieldwork, after spending days in the office in camp. To cut a long story short, Ernest and I got stuck today. It took us about 2 hours to get unstuck, and then some tricky driving to get home. Without the winch we would still be there, wading through mud, and doing battle with the hi-lift jack and logs.

Before we got started.

One’s humour and enthusiasm tend to deteriorate as the day wears on, while stuck. Luckily Ernest is fairly amicable about most things and offered constructive suggestions. Like using the machete as a shovel when the chinese shovel that we were using broke in half (yes, in half). I don’t think this blog is a suitable forum for me to express how I feel about the quality of imported chinese tools.

For those of you who follow recipe books (instead of having it cooked for you) this is how we did it:

Take a hi-lift jack, logs, spare tyre, saw, panga (made in South Africa), half a chinese spade, some boards…. and a 3,000lb electric winch. Dig, saw, chop, hammer, jack, sweat, winch and curse. Then drive away.

And the storybook finish: the sun came out. Here we are, 2 hours later, packed and ready to tackle black cotton soil waiting for us on the other side of the koppie ahead

Perhaps tomorrow we will be a little less intrepid. Till then,

S.

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Life in camp is always interesting. We share our living space with a number of species, some friendly and some not so….

Maria is usually the first one to spot this member of the camp… it spends its time in trees near the central dining area of the camp (a papyrus and cedar shelter), and sometimes chases agamas around the kitchen, on the poles of the structure. Its exceptionally fast and refuses to be caught and re-located.

Maria doesn’t really like the snake. She much prefers the genets. We have at least one that usually comes to visit, and pick up scraps of food, or insects that are attracted to the light. Very occasionally there are two. They’re very graceful, delicate creatures, with their tails taking up half of their length. Interestingly, most people see them as cats, but they belong to a subfamily of Viverridae (the mongoose family). Apparently they were commonly kept as rat-catchers in Europe before the introduction of the domestic cat in the middle ages.

Last but not least, there are any number of invertebrates. Including this:

Not seeing it? Look again, on the right side of the picture, mid-way up, near the green plants. Here is a close-up:

The scorpions with the small pincers and relatively large stings (like this one) are more painful than others. We’ve all been stung from time to time and its not pleasant at all.

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Yesterday, we went out tracking. It is still raining in this part of the ranch and we worried that we may not be able to track most of the lions. Surprisingly however, by nine in the morning, we had found all the common collared lions in our group ranch. Furthermore, it was still early enough to attempt a cross over into the neighbouring ranch and track the lions on that side.

We were able to do that and return to camp before rain locked us out. We had found all the lions except one. That’s a record we will have to work hard to break for a while, especially in this season!

For today, we are grounded at camp. It rained very heavily yesterday night and we dare not venture into the bush today. It is actually still raining outside…so we sit and wait for Anthony who is coming back today from his New York safari. We can’t wait to hear his experiences.

Best regards

Ernest

(lion research)

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We’ve just received word from widlifedirect that you have all donated to Lion Guardians recently. Amy - we’ll post some photos of the medical supplies once they are bought. This requires a trip to Nairobi, so it will take a few weeks. Christopher, your donation will probably go towards small solar panels for charging the mobile phones.

Hashi and Peter, your monthly donations will allow us to buy mobile phone credit for 4 of the lion guardians every month. This communication between base camp and the guys in the field is critical, both for their safety and the effectiveness of our work.

Thanks once again to all.

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Antony is still in New York. We received word that he is enjoying it immensely. The event that he attended was (I believe) well received. He is now meeting a few people, and taking in the sights. Blog posting from there has been a little tricky so we’ll ask him to write about his experiences when he gets back.

Back home on the ranch (so to speak) life carries on. As Ernest mentioned in the last post, people are moving into the area around the camp to take advantage of the greener grass and available surface water. This translates to longer days and nights for us (the research crew and the guardians) as we try to keep on top of which lions are where, and pre-empt conflict between the cats and the massive herds of livestock that have moved in.

Last night, after a tedious and exhausting Nairobi trip I went out with :Lion Guardian Olubi and Lepencha to check up on Nemasi and the recently collared young male. After some time we had to abort the operation because of the muddy conditions. There are few things worse than trying to get a landcruiser unstuck in the middle of the night. Olubi is out today (on foot) tracking the new male.

A few snapshots…

The zebras and the wildebeest are well aware of where the best grass is. Many of them have moved onto the plains in the centre of the ranch, from Amboseli NP. convectional storms from Kilimanjaro in the background.

Olubi is filling out a form to record the location of one of the lions last night. Lepencha is looking towards the camera. Lepencha doesn’t actually work on the our program but acts as a kind of advisor - he participated in the initial discussions around the Lion Guardian concept. If we had a board of trustees he would be on it. He has a wealth of knowledge about the community here and Maasai ways of thinking generally.

… and this is what we were up against last night. Not all that easy to see, but the road ahead of the vehicle is completely impassable because of the mud

And a gratuitous sunset picture from a few nights ago close to where we finally located Sangale. Kilimajaro’s top can be seen at bottom left of the picture, and a sliver of moon near the top of the pic.

regards

Seamus

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