Lion Guardians

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Jan 06 2008 | By: admin

Dear Mary,

I’m responding through the blog so as to make the information more publicly available…. In answer to your first question of how many phones are needed: because most often we are using second-hand phones, and because conditions here are quite tough for electronica, we do need to replace phones every year or two. As such we need pretty much one phone for every lion guardian (and there are nine of them). Depending on the kind of support we can get over the next few months (funding-wise) we would like to expand Lion Guardians to a neighbouring ranch as well. When that happens we are going to need another dozen or so phones.

With regard to questions of reception and compatibility: It is true that cellphones from the USA will sometimes not work here due to frequency incompatibility. So please understand that occasionally we might have to sell a second-hand USA phone for spare parts, so as to buy a Kenyan compatible one. However these days most cellphones in use in the states should be dual band cellphones, or better yet, quad-band, and should present no problems with compatibility.

We live in a really remote part of Kenya, many hours drive from the capital city, Nairobi. But amazingly enough we have cellphone reception. Most people in our situation would opt for VHF radio communcation devices, but we realised early in the planning stages of this program that it would be easier to get in-kind donations of cellphones than to find funding for hand-held radios.

Exactly how the phones are used: Every week each lion guardian is sent a small amount of phone credit from our base camp phone. Lion Guardians use this credit to “flash” the base camp phone (a “missed call” in the lingo of other places). We then call the Guardian and receive whatever the report might be, whether its the location of a group of lions, the GPS position of a livestock kill made by lions, or perhaps an urgent situation that has developed in their particular community with regard to large carnivores. The Lion Guardians are each stationed within their own home communities and really have their fingers on the pulse of their communities’ relationship with large carnivores. Mobile phones are vital to maintaining their communication with Antony and everyone else on the team.

This is Lion Guardian Koikai with his 3-year old Nokia.

And here are the Guardians radio-tracking in one of the remote areas of the ranch. Masarie (on the far right) is holding his phone.

One of the benefits of issuing phones instead of radios to the Guardians is that it facilitates communication for entire communities in this remote corner of maasailand.

On a practical note: for privacy reasons I can’t put postal addresses for delivering the phones onto the blog, but will respond directly to anyone who comments.

Technorati : Lion Guardians, cellphones, lions

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