Lion Guardians

Category: lion research fieldwork | Date: Jan 05 2008 | By: admin

Dear readers,

After consultation with other conservationists in Kenya, and the Wildlifedirect team, we felt you should see first-hand what has transpired here. The text in this morning’s post is only part of the story.

This is the female lion that was poisoned. Her skin is peeling and blackened because her carcass had been rotting in the hot sun for two days before we got to the body. Her name was “Birdie” and she was the second lion of this project to be collared (back in 2004). The lower jaw is mangled because someone tried to remove all her teeth after she died. All the claws of both lions were also removed, presumably to try to sell to tourists.

We worked till late in the night to fetch the carcasses and bring them back to base camp. Most of the next day was taken up with dissection of the bodies. In the fore-ground of the photo below you can see 4 of the 5 foetuses that Birdie was carrying when she died.

The foetuses were quite well-developed. Here you can see a tiny paw in the palm of my hand.

This is the male, complete with his radio-collar still on.

The carcasses were in an advanced state of decomposition, but we were able to establish beyond doubt poisoning as the cause of death.

Here is a picture of the two cow ears we extracted from the stomach of the female, complete with owner-identification notches. The cow’s tail was recovered from the stomach of the male.

Here is a photograph of the remains of a black cow, found 422metres away from the carcass of the female lion.

Near the cow carcass were piles of flies that had died after feeding on the poisoned meat.

After the dissections we had to burn the carcasses as they would pose a threat to local wildlife. Its not and easy thing to dissect and incinerate an animal that one has known personally for several years. I sincerely hope that with continued support of the guardians we can prevent this from happening again.

regards

Seamus

Technorati : dead lions, lion guardians