Lion Guardians

Category: life in camp, lion research fieldwork | Date: Nov 17 2007 | By: admin

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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