Lion Guardians

Category: Community work, Lion Guardian reports, Lion Guardians work | Date: Jun 30 2009 | By: lionguardians

The Lion Guardians team recently conducted three workshops for our thirteen new Guardians who are hoping for employment. We trained and tested them on their tracking skills and reading and writing abilities, as well as carrying out some human-wildlife conflict role-play scenarios with them. The Maasai warriors were eager to learn as well as demonstrate their immense pool of skills.

One of the murrans particularly impressed us with his tracking skills; he could tell the difference between a spotted and a striped hyena simply by looking at their tracks. Even though several warriors could not write well they could all sign their own names and quickly picked up how to use the GPS.

They also demonstrated skills in preventing lion killing by other warriors in role-play scenarios. In fact, the youngest of the potential Guardians showed immense diplomatic skills that defied his age by effortlessly calming an agitated murran whose cow was killed by hyenas.

As well as these workshops, another task was given to the potential Guardians - fencing of a nearby boma. The results of their day-long efforts were a newly fenced boma up to predator proof standard, leaving no gaps or holes for predators to invade.

From the thirteen warriors, ten impressed us the most and they will now start a one month volunteer period. During this period, they will be tracking lions, help the community in fencing bomas, looking for lost livestock in the bush, and preventing other Maasai warriors from killing lions.

Soon the best candidates will emerge and be selected for employment. We will keep you updated on their progress at this exciting time!

Tags: Kenya, lion, lion conservation, Lion Guardians, lions, Maasai, masai

3 responses so far

Category: Community work, life in camp | Date: Jun 26 2009 | By: lionguardians

We would like to tell you about the area that our new research and Lion Guardians camp is based. The local Maasai Group Ranch is called Eselenkei, which is communal land owned by the Maasai, mainly used for grazing livestock. This map shows you the ranches around Amboseli National Park, which is near to the border with Tanzania in the south of Kenya.

Some 15,000 acres of this land have been leased by Porini Ecotourism, a non-profit company, to create the Selenkay Conservancy, an extremely successful wildlife reserve, which not only protects the flora and fauna in this important wildlife dispersal area around Amboseli National Park, but also helps the local communities by creating employment, as well as many other benefits including helping to build schools, sponsor local children through tertiary education, creating boreholes to provide fresh water, and enabling controllable grazing within the conservancy during times of great need, like the recent drought the local people have been facing here.

Gamewatchers Safaris owns and runs a tented safari camp for tourists called Porini Camp on the conservancy, which generates income and employment opportunities for the local community, and pays a fee to Porini Ecotourism to cover the running costs of the conservancy.

In partnership with the local Maasai communities, Porini Ecotourism and Gamewatchers Safaris use the available community resources to improve and provide alternative source of livelihood in an area with no previously obvious tourist attraction where the local community depended only on livestock rearing for a living. We would like to extend our thanks to Porini, and to the local Maasai community for welcoming us into the area.

We are very glad to be working in an area where the local communities are excited and willing to help with further conservation measures here, and we have some more great news about lions in the area! Keep reading for updates on our local lions and how the Lion Guardians project is getting young warriors involved in helping conserve the lions in their areas, and reduce human-wildlife conflict.

Tags: Amboseli, Kenya, lion, lion conservation, Lion Guardians, lions, Maasai, masai, porini, selenkay conservancy

2 responses so far

Category: Lion Guardian reports, Lion Guardians work | Date: Jun 15 2009 | By: lionguardians

We are sorry the blog has been quiet for a while. We’ve been having some problems with our internet but I hope you will be pleased that we are now back and reporting on the work of the Lion Guardians here in Maasailand!

Kamuna, one of the promising volunteer Lion Guardians in our new area Eselenkei Group Ranch, arrived at our new camp late one evening last week reporting some exciting news. He had found fresh lion tracks and was eager to show us where they were. We were all really excited about this news, and soon he had re-located the tracks and found where the lions were resting - one large male and two adult females.

One of the females was distinct because she didn’t have a tip to her tail; we have been hearing stories of this ‘tipless’ lioness for months now. She has been seen around these areas for the past few years so we know she is a resident lioness. It was the perfect opportunity for a collar to be put on.

As with the Lion Guardian project tradition, whoever finds a lion for collaring acquires the honoured responsibility of giving the lion a Maasai name. Kamuna now had this honour and decided to call her Nosieki, which is the name of the area where the lions were found, and also the name of a bush with beautiful red berries. 

The wonderful news is that Nosieki is pregnant! This means there will be new cubs arriving soon to the group ranch. The new Lion Guardians have also discovered that the female with Nosieki has three small cubs herself. So we are now monitoring this wonderful little family composed of a large beautiful male, three young cubs with their mother, and our pregnant Nosieki!

Nosieki is the first lion to be collared on Eselenkei Group Ranch after many months of searching. Without Kamuna’s assistance, it would have been very difficult to locate these lions - a perfect example of how the Lion Guardians project works!

We’ll report back soon with more news from our new and growing project on Eselenkei. And thank you all for your continued support of our work! We could not do this without your help!

Tags: collaring, Kenya, lion, lion collar, lion conservation, Lion Guardians, lions, Maasai, masai

9 responses so far

Category: Community work, Lion Guardians work | Date: Jun 01 2009 | By: lionguardians

After months of waiting, we have finally been able to conduct interviews for three positions as Lion Guardians on Eselenkei Group Ranch. With the drought really affecting the area, the Maasai murrans (warriors) have been travelling huge distances throughout southern Kenya in search of better pastures for their famished cattle herds. Now after a little rain, the murrans are returning to their home area, allowing us to finally hold some interviews! Here are some of the prospective Lion Guardians awaiting their interviews!

We are very excited by this initial step into the new area of Eselenkei. In each of the three areas we had up to 10 eager murrans keen to show us their tracking skills.

Over three consecutive days we interviewed a total of 27 murrans, of which we have selected half to go forward to the next stage - one step closer to becoming a Lion Guardian!

We have been extremely impressed by the eagerness of the murrans we have met. It is exceptionally difficult for young men in Maasailand to find work, particularly as many of them have never attended school and are mostly illiterate, so the opportunities the Lion Guardians program provides makes a huge to their lives.

Hopefully the potential new Lion Guardians will continue to impress us over the next few stages of selection until eventually we have three brilliant Lion Guardians working to protect their once immortal enemy, now turned provider of work - the lion.

Tags: community, eselenkei, interview, job, Kenya, lion, lion conservation, Lion Guardians, lions, Maasai, masai

2 responses so far