Lion Guardians

Category: Donations received | Date: Nov 18 2009 | By: lionguardians

Thank you Sauwah, Brenton and Anna! You have now raised our Lion Guardian Games total to $250! Only $750 more to go! The Lion Guardians are all talking about who will win which event, and which ranch has the better singers, jumpers and stick throwers!

All the Guardians from each ranch are deciding on the top two games they would like to compete in. For example, the other day at the Mbirikani Lion Guardian meeting, one of the Guardians Kapande, stood up and said that they should definitely NOT choose singing because the guys from Eselenkei ranch will embarrass them! Other Guardians from Olgulului said that they shouldn’t choose spear throwing because they are just so good at it that there will be no competition, and thus no point! We can’t wait to see who will win the different competitions!

Thank you for helping us make it happen - and please spread the word!

Tags: awards, competition, games, Kenya, lion, lion conservation, Lion Guardians, lions, Maasai, masai

2 responses so far

Category: Donations received | Date: Nov 17 2009 | By: lionguardians

We are delighted that Owen and Sheri Hogle have donated $100, and started the climb up our Lion Guardian Games thermometer! Thank you so much!

Let’s try and spread the word about the first ever Lion Guardians Games and Awards, and get to the top as soon as we can!

The Games will involve competitions in all the skills of a Maasai warrior - tracking, spear throwing, singing, stick throwing, jumping and even maybe football! There will also be awards given out to Guardians who have performed well in their different lion conservation and monitoring duties over the year. All the Guardians are talking about the Games and who will win which event and award! We can’t wait!

Tags: awards, competition, games, Kenya, lion, lion conservation, Lion Guardians, lions, Maasai, masai

5 responses so far

Category: Donations received | Date: Nov 11 2009 | By: lionguardians

The Lion Guardians would like to thank each and every one of you that has donated on our blog recently. We are sending out our deepest gratitude to:

Aleta W
Amy B
Anne C
Black C
Brenton H
Bruce L
Cindy C
Delineations (Kate A!)
Hashi H
Jacqueline H
Jessica F
John R
Joyce N
Katherine J
Lois C
Michael L
Pirjo I
Richard V
Ruth K
Samantha V
Sarah A
Sauwah T
Scott R
Sharon M
Sharon S
Sheri H
Susan C

What a long list of wonderful people who are all helping to pay the wages of the Lion Guardians, and keep this project running. The Lion Guardians on all 3 ranches are phoning in their lion reports daily, and helping their communities by finding lost livestock (Mokoi found over 40 lost goats recently!) and calming angry herders whose animals have been attacked by predators.

In this way, the Guardians are protecting the remaining lions, like the one in the photo above, in unprotected Maasai land outside national parks here in Southern Kenya.

Please help us by telling your friends about the Lion Guardians project, so they too can help conserve lions. It might take 5 minutes to send the link http://lionguardians.wildlifedirect.org to 10 of your friends, and it takes even less time to make a donation!  

THANK YOU to all of you for reading and supporting our work!

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

2 responses so far

Category: Donations received, ways you can help | Date: Nov 05 2009 | By: lionguardians

If you have bought any Lion Guardians Christmas cards, please note:

You MUST make a written order for the cards by posting a comment on the blog after you have donated. This is the only way that we can get access to your email address, and find out the postal address you would like the cards to be sent to. For security reasons we do not have access to any of the details you use to donate to us.

Delineations, Joyce N, Cindy C and Sarah A (and Ruth K if your donation was for Christmas cards) please add a comment as we need your email address in order to send you the cards!

THANK YOU!

Tags: christmas, christmas cards, Kenya, lion, lion conservation, Lion Guardians, lions, Maasai, masai, season's greetings

8 responses so far

Category: Donations received | Date: Oct 29 2009 | By: lionguardians

Thank you so much for your purchase of Lion Guardians Christmas cards! So that we have your email addresses, and can email you to find out what address to send the cards to, please make a comment on the blog. This is the only way we can get your contact details, as we do not have access to any of the information regarding your online donations!Thank you very much, from the Lion Guardians team!

Tags: christmas cards, donations, Kenya, lion, lion conservation, Lion Guardians, lions, Maasai, masai

2 responses so far

Category: Donations received | Date: Sep 14 2009 | By: lionguardians

The Lion Guardins would like to thank everyone who has supported us recently.

Thank you to: Katherine J, Samantha V, Scott R, Richard V, Black C, Lois C, Hashi H, Anne C, Diane K, Jessica F, Mary P, Pirjo I, Mary H, Shannon C, The F, Angela G, Kerryn W, Mike S, Sauwah T, Jason L, Ana L, Sheri H and Angela D. Here are the Mbirikani Lion Guardians at our last monthly meeting, who would all like to extend their thanks to you.

Your support is invaluable. We use the money donated through this blog to pay the Guardians’ wages, as well as for all the essential items that are used by them on a daily basis, like paper and pens so they can fill in their data forms, phone credit so they can call camp with their lion reports and all the other monthly costs that enable us to run the project effectively. Thank you so much for helping us to keep the Lion Guardians project running.

With the expansion of the project on to the new ranch Eselenkei, we have also been able to use your donations to pay for equipment for the new Guardians - backpacks to carry their equipment in, GPS devices, and receivers and aerials for tracking collared lions. With your donations you are helping the survival of cubs like these two, who are in Nempakai’s pride.

Now plans are underway to start the Lion Guardians program on Olgulului Group Ranch, another neighbouring ranch in the Amboseli-Tsavo ecosystem. With this step we will be expanding the project to an area which borders Amboseli National Park, and therefore has very high human wildlife conflict.

Please continue with your generous donations, so that we can make a difference to the lions throughout the whole ecosystem. There is no point conserving lions in one ranch if they might be killed when they wander into a neighbouring area!

Than you so much for your help!

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

No responses yet

Category: Donations received | Date: Sep 09 2009 | By: lionguardians

Once again the UK tourist attraction and zoo, Africa Alive have done an amazing job, and collected the huge sum of $4731 for the Lion Guardians! What fantastic news! We are thrilled that they have managed to raise this amount for us, which will help the project considerably, especially as we now expand the program to our neighbouring ranches Eselenkei and Olgulului.

As you may remember, Africa Alive have helped us with a donation in the past and we are extremely grateful that they are still supporting us.

We have now successfully expanded the project to Eselenkei Group Ranch, but we can’t wait to be able to start it up in Olgulului too. This area is still struggling with human wildlife conflict, especially during this severe drought, and though the Maasai Preservation Trust have recently started their predator compensation scheme there, we still need to get the Lion Guardians program up and running.

This donation will go a long way towards some of our start up costs for this expansion, including purchasing new equipment for the Guardians like GPS, mobile phones and telemetry receivers, as well as basics like pens, paper and backpacks.

Thank you Africa Alive, and everyone who donated money towards the project at the fundraising events!

Tags: africa alive, donations, Kenya, lion, lion conservation, Lion Guardians, lions, Maasai, masai

2 responses so far

Category: Donations received, life in camp | Date: Jul 30 2009 | By: lionguardians

In April we were very kindly donated a Wingscapes bird camera trap by Sheri and Owen Hogle from the Wild Bird Center in Utah, which gave us some wonderful photos of birds during the day. But we were even more excited when they told us they were also sending a Bushnell Trail Sentry camera trap which can be used at night! This means we can also see what carnivores are out here, and hopefully try and identify some lions.

To get started we put the camera up 5 minutes walk from our camp, and tied up some bait that we had earlier got to use with lions. We got some amazing results! Here are some of the highlights of our first three nights with the camera trap up.

Spotted hyenas were our most common visitor, with over 200 photos of them over the three nights!

We also had visits from black-backed jackals…

a white-tailed mongoose….

an elephant….

and even a serval cat, which came back two nights in a row!

Our photos on the third night were finally put to an end when an inquisitive animal covered the lens in a rather dirty mess! Unfortunately the camera didn’t pick up the culprit but we are guessing it was a spotted hyena!

This has now been cleaned off, ready for another night of investigations! Now that we have a better understanding of the camera we are going to put it up near to some fresh lion tracks, or hopefully a fresh lion kill, to try to get some photos of lions. We’ll keep you posted with all our results from the camera trap. Thank you once again Sheri and Owen!

Tags: camera, camera trap, donations, Kenya, lion, lion conservation, Lion Guardians, lions, Maasai, masai

3 responses so far

Category: Community work, Donations received | Date: Jul 18 2009 | By: lionguardians

Thank you for your concern about the ongoing drought here and for your donations over the past few months. We would like to thank Cass N, Brian M, Black C, Richard V, Lois C, Anne C, Loki Q, Diane K, Jessica F, Pirjo I, Sheri H, Katherine J, Samantha V, Scott R, Jace A, Sauwah T, Hashi H and Jide A for their support of the Lion Guardians and their help conserving the wild lions of Maasailand and the other wildlife that is struggling to survive here. Here is a photo of some of the members of our new Tara pride, that you are helping with your donations.

The boma (livestock enclosure) fencing by our voluntary potential Lion Guardians on new ranch Eselenkei is going very well. The Guardians have shown total commitment to their community work. A perfect example is Melita, who selected a boma which needed to be re-built very urgently, as the owner was having problems with his livestock being attacked by predators that were able to get through gaps in his boma.

Amazingly Melita completed the work in one day - a very impressive achievement! Members of the community have quickly embraced boma fencing as a way of preventing human wildlife conflicts.

Speaking of our new Lion Guardians on Eselenkei, we have a request for you. Are you, or is anyone you know getting rid of an old laptop? The new Lion Guardians team are starting to collect data now, and need to enter this into a computer so that we can measure how the project is doing.

The computer would need to be able to run Microsoft Office (Word and Excel), but do nothing more complicated than that! Do you think you can help? If so, please add a comment below! Thank you!

Tags: boma, eselenkei, fencing, human wildlife conflict, Kenya, lion, lion conservation, Lion Guardians, lions, Maasai, masai, predator

7 responses so far

Category: Donations received, life in camp | Date: May 08 2009 | By: lionguardians

Thank you to all our donors who have been so generous recently: Anne C, Lois C, Richard V, Black C, Brian M, Scott R, Cass N, Samantha V, Katherine J, Aleta W, Hashi H, Jia L, Kathleen W, Pirjo I, Jeremy W, Susan S, Jessica F and Loki Q. You have all helped the Lion Guardians with their work conserving our wild Maasailand lions in this last month, and we are all very grateful to you.

This monthly meeting where all the Lion Guardians get together to discuss their work, we were also able to give them a camera to use that had been donated by Sheri and Owen Hogle. Here is one of the photos they took of Lion Guardian Mokoi.

And here are some photos we got from the bird camera trap that was also donated to us by Sheri and Owen. Can you ID any of these birds that the camera picked up?

And here is another example of the variety of wildlife that we find at our camp. Can anyone identify this beautiful green snake?

Tags: birds, donations, Kenya, lion, lion conservation, Lion Guardians, lions, Maasai, masai, snake

7 responses so far