Category: Lion Guardian reports | Date: Dec 29 2007 | By: admin

Lion Guardian Report

(September-December 2007)

Written by: Antony Kasanga and Leela Hazzah

General Summary

This year has been a successful one; owing to the fact that as a participatory program the community continues to help the Guardians track and report new lions. Community involvement is central to the success of this program. The Lion Guardian (LG) program has been running for one year now. Since LG started, there have been no lions killed on Mbirikani Group Ranch; the longest respite since the late 1990 s. Lions continue to be killed on adjacent ranches. In November and the earlier part of December, there have been a minimum of seven lions killed on two adjacent group ranches.

During the past four months, four new lions have been collared bringing us to a total of nine lions (both inside and outside of Mbirikani). Each lion continues to be monitored by the Lion Guardians. Also, through the Guardian s community work they are helping bring hundreds of lost livestock back to the bomas that would otherwise be killed by carnivores.

In early November the Assistant Director had at an opportunity to visit New York City for seven days to participate in an art auction for lion conservation. This will be discussed further in the report. Lastly, the Lion Guardian Director is back in Kenya and will be here for the next few months.

Lion Monitoring

Lion monitoring is what the Guardians devote half their time to (the other half goes to community service see below). There have been a total of eight lions collared since the LG program started. Each Guardian who helps Seamus Maclennan (the Living with Lion Biologist) collar the lion is given the opportunity to the name the lion. The names of the collared lions are as follows: Sangale (referred to a clever person because he out smarted the traps three times before getting caught), Nemasi (hill where she was collared), Nempakai (area where she was collared dam ), Lentim (means very thick-bush because the LG s believe he likes to live in thick-bush), Ndelie ( cooking pot because his paws are as big as a cooking pot), Nosero ( young girl of the bush ), Nywele (a lion with a lot of hair), Kasayio (a route which is used to connect the northern part of the ranch with the densely bushed southern part).

As we know, lions like to move from one area to the next; especially, males who search to find a viable territory and females to mate with. An example of this is Ndelie, who has since moved Tsavo-West N.P. (to the southwest of Mbirikani). Nosero and Nywele reside mostly on the border of Mbirikani and Kuku Group Ranches, although more often in Kuku. The Guardians are not solely restricted to one group ranch, because lions do not recognize boundaries, so the Guardians follow them.

Radio-telemetry has been extremely useful at preempting livestock attacks. Some examples are as follows. One of our Lion Guardians (Koikai) had been camping with herders at temporary bomas during the drought season. He was able to prevent Nemasi from breaking into a boma by tracking her position at night—she was approaching the boma and he was able to scare her away before she broke in. Another example is when Koikai informed herders about the position of Sangale resting near a very large herd of cows. The herders subsequently moved their herd to a safer location. He has gained trust with the livestock owners by preventing attacks that could have cost them their favorite cows.

Lion Guardians track and monitor lions and other carnivores three times a week. Figure 1, illustrates different methods of observations that were recorded for lions. Over half of the lion data recorded is in the form of tracks, followed by both visual sightings of the lions and tracks–meaning that they visually saw the lion and also its tracks.

Figure 1: Various methods of lion observation collected between August and early

December 2007

Figure 2 below shows the locations (in red) of all the lion observations made by the Lion Guardians between August and December 2007. The circles are scaled according to how many individuals were recorded at that point. The yellow circles show all the locations of all the lions on Mbirikani between 2004 and 2006, as recorded by the researchers. The lighter shading in the background represents the core range of lions on Mbirikani, and where one is most likely to find them. Two important features that these data illustrate are that 1)the larger prides are found around Ol Donyo Wuas (in the north-eastern part of the ranch) and 2)the Lion Guardians observations match quite closely with data gathered in the past using radio-telemetry, both in accuracy and distribution.

Community Assistance

Competition for pasture, water shortage, and young herders are contributing to the rampant loss of livestock along the Chyulu Hills. The short rains have come to an end and the closest water points are 30 kilometers away for some Maasai. During this time, Lion Guardians have had to focus much of their time on community work specifically, finding lost/weak livestock.

This photo below is of a schoolboy who is herding; this picture provides a visual story of what the Guardians encounter in the field during times of drought.

When I (Antony) met the boy in the company of two Lion Guardians, he was herding cows, shoats (goats and sheep), calves and taking care of a baby lamb that was born two hours prior. Young school boys are inexperienced to care for livestock in times of limited water and pastures because they spend the majority of the year in a classroom instead of herding livestock. In this situation, Lion Guardians help these young herders return their livestock back to their bomas safely. When reaching the boma the Lion Guardians explain to the livestock owners the risk of entrusting young boys to care for large herds.

Last week (December 9^th) late one night it was discovered that 400 shoats were lost. Very early in the morning, two Lion Guardians (Olubi and Lekina) began searching for the lost shoats. Fortunately, they found all of the lost shoats except four that were killed.

In the past four months the Lion Guardians have spent much of their time helping their communities (n=1325 events were recorded) in nine areas on Mbirikani. Below Table 1, illustrates the community activities carried out by Lion Guardians between August and early December. Overall, the figure illustrates that the majority of help is in way of informing herders about carnivore presence followed by educating their community about the importance of carnivores and the role of a Lion Guardian.

Table 1: Community activities between August-early December 2007 (n=1325)

Our Blog

Our blog is a very important part of the LG program; because it provides an opportunity for people around the world to follow the daily happenings of the Guardians on the ranch. The blog was started at the end of September and has increasingly gained popularity. For example, in one month alone (November-December), the blog was viewed 2854 times. Donations have varied as well. During October, the blog earned $215, November $290, and up until the 21 December $170. There are plans to expand the readership and improve the quality of the postings. Our hope is to one day have the entire project funded through the blog. The link to the blog is: http://wildlifedirect.org/lionguardians. Check it out!

Neighboring Group Ranches

In September we had a warrior from Eselenkei group ranch visit us to confirm for himself that this crazy idea of murrans conserving lions is really working and to see whether it would work in his community. Mirishi Kitashu is from Eselenkei group ranch and he has been working around the clock to see that lions in his area are not killed. His wish is to see a Lion Guardian program started in his area and other neighboring group ranches. He is a murran who loves lions, and simply enjoys watching them for hours in the bush near his home.

Among the things he has been doing is talking to his peers to stop killing lions in hope that one day they will see the benefits of conserving them. Mirishi is not the only murran who wants the program in his area. There are many others who visit us at our camp or speak with us about future possibilities when we visit their areas.

Photo of Mirishi Kitashu

Assistant Director s Trip to America (by Antony)

It was unbelievable to me when the director informed me that I might have a chance of visiting the United States in November. It seemed like November would never arrive. Finally, when the time came I was so excited. I got to set foot in the country people termed land of opportunity ! The purpose of going was to help raise money for lion conservation through an art auction. I would like to especially thank Tom Hill (Maasailand Preservation Trust) for providing me this opportunity.

We (me and the chairman of Mbirikani) were well received when we arrived in NY. We formed very strong bonds with some of the people we met. Now some people even think of us as family. We really enjoyed our stay and we miss the people we met. There are two things, however, that I will surely never miss about America. One is the weather. It almost made me want to come back right away. It was so cold that the shukas (traditional Maasai clothes) I wore felt like paper. The second thing I will not miss is the food offered in the restaurants and markets. I am used to ugali and nyama or ugali and milk, these were no where to be found on any American menu! With all this said I still had a wonderful time and thank everyone who made my trip possible.

Here are some the photos that we took at the Bronx Zoo, courtesy of Julie Maher WCS:

A photo of Antony and the Chairman at the Bronx Zoo

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank WCS Big Cats program for helping make Lion Guardians a success, specifically Luke Hunter, Nicole Williams and also Julie Maher for donations of gear. Also, many thanks to all the blog readers for their constant interest and donations. We wish you all a very Happy Holiday season!!

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