Lion Guardians

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

We have come a long way in our work to guard the lions of Maasailand. We almost always have had good news to deliver to our readers. Today, however, we have sad news that we are trying to grapple with. We don’t know exactly how to break this but after deliberating for some time, we decided that you need to know exactly what has happened.

Two of our lions are no more. They died after feeding on a poisoned livestock carcass. Soon after our New Year celebrations, we were called to the scene of tragedy. It was Lion Guardian Ritei who called our camp with the sad news. Melubo and Ritei were together but Melubo was too upset to make the call. Actually, when Melubo first got the news, he refused to believe it. He hired a motorbike (with his salary he just received a couple of days before) and cut across the bush to see it for himself, so that he could believe it. They teamed up with Amboseli-Tsavo Game Scouts, a privately run law enforcement group in the ecosystem and set to work.

Nearby they found the second carcass of Sangale, our most coveted male! Both of the carcasses were found within our group ranch although very close to the southern border. Interestingly, the poisoned cow carcass that that lions ate was found on the adjacent group ranch-indicating that perhaps the culprit is not from Mbirikani ranch where the Lion Guardians work. This caused lots of controversy as to who was responsible. Investigations are still underway and as details come in, we shall update you. It seems a cow carcass was used to poison the lions. During a dissection of the lions we found two ears, amazingly intact. The female sliced them off the cow head and swallowed them whole. In Maasailand, ear notching usually identifies livestock down to sub-clan level and only few members of any sub-clan live within a particular region. We’re confident that we should be able to find who did this, and with the help of the game scouts, ensure that the culprit faces severe consequences. All the Guardians are devastated, but are continuing with their work.

Here are a few images of Sangale while he was still alive.

Technorati : dead lions, lion conservation, lion guardians

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