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Water crisis hits our neighbours

Category: Community work | Date: Oct 23 2008 | By: lionguardians

Earlier this week I travelled to Olgulului, our neighbouring ranch, where we will be starting up Lion Guardians soon. The first thing that people asked was whether we have rain yet on Mbirikani. And the answer was still no. The area was so dry that only dust could be seen from a distance. Donkeys are the only means of water transport in the area. Look how many donkeys we came across! You can see how it is just like a desert there.

donkeys.jpg

The community told me that they think more livestock will get attacked by predators, as they are becoming weak and they cannot run away from carnivores. Everyone is so eager to have Lion Guardians on this ranch. As we reported back in June, lions are still being killed here, so it is urgent that we start the Lion Guardians as soon as we can.

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6 Responses to “Water crisis hits our neighbours”

Pauline, on 23 Oct 2008

Oh dear, this really does look bad. I hope the rain will come soon. Thank you for keeping us up to date despite your obvious hardship.

Timi, on 24 Oct 2008

It was only a few days ago that our local newspaper told about plans to improve the protection of our very endangered wolverine population. Wolverines live mainly in the most northern parts of Finland, and are regularly killed illegally by reindeer herders. Currently, the herders are payed compensation for the losses due to wolverines killing their reindeer. The new proposal is to change the pay scheme to depend not only on the losses, but also on the size of the wolverine population - the more wolverines live in the area, the bigger compensation. This scheme has turned the population of eagles back to rising in the same area. The plan is now just a proposal (by WWF and a string of local interest groups), but I sure wish to see it implemented.

To compare this proposal with the situation in Kenya, I have to add that here, the compensation is payed from the state money, collected by taxation, so it doesn’t in any way depend on the success of tourism or any other local business around the reindeer herding areas. Nor does it depend on voluntary donations. An idea to toss around, anyway.

Baraza » Extraordinary predator images from Africa, on 24 Oct 2008

[…] trouble as revealed in the Masai Mara ecosystem on Predator Aware , and on Lion Guardians where the drought is leading to human conflict with lions leading to retaliation killings of […]

sauwah, on 26 Oct 2008

timi, what a great deal for the compensation plan you said earlier by WWF. as the population of lions or other predators increase, so will the compensation for the loss of livestock. now where to get the revenue or funding. due to the lack of tourists to kenya and the poor global economy, taxation might be one big problem. tourism is number one in the kenya economy.

Hashi-Hanta, on 28 Oct 2008

As for the suggestion, by Timi — what if a fund was established to compensate for lost livestock. Maybe a group of donors could be established. In the beginning everyone could make a donation, so there would be a fund established and then when the fund (or part of it) had to be used, everyone in the group would get an email, and be committed to making another donation, maybe a minimum of $10. If there were one hundred people commited to the group, giving only $10 each would put $1,000 into the fund. Maybe, then, there would not be retaliation against the lions.

lionguardians, on 30 Oct 2008

Thanks for your comments. I am interested to hear that there is a compensation program in Finland funded by state money. Here on Mbirikani we also have a compensation program that pays herdsmen when livestock are killed by predators. It encourages herdsmen to look after their livestock better by reducing the pay out for poor husbandry. And of course, if a lion is killed the program is shut down. The program is run by the Maasailand Preservation Trust, and funded by private donors. But what would happen if this money ran out?

Recently, a similar scheme was started on our neighbouring ranch, which is close to Amboseli National Park, and where we will soon start the Lion Guardians program. It is also here that most of the lions have been killed in recent times, so I hope the combined efforts of the compensation program, and the Lion Guardians working with the communities will prove to be successful here too.

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