Lion Guardians

Category: Meet the Lion Guardians | Date: Nov 19 2009 | By: lionguardians

As we reported last week, we have now started up the Lion Guardians program on Olgulului Group Ranch too! Now we thought we should introduce you to some of the new guys who have started working there.. and our first new Guardian to be introduced is called Sumulei Ole Munke.

Sumulei represents the “Risa” zone and impressed our team of selectors during the interview and subsequent voluntary period with his many skills and real commitment to hard work. Though quiet and a good listener, his intermittent beaming smiles illuminate those around him on any subject of discussion. His impressive personality, wealth of experience and his general wildlife knowledge clearly put him above the rest. His tracking skills are second to none in this area, which is a busy wildlife migratory corridor.

Already, Sumulei has familiarized himself with the lions that are either resident or frequent his zone from time to time. Having participated in successful lion hunting parties in the past, Sumulei otherwise known by his age-mates as ‘Meingati’ is a valuable addition to the Lion Guardians team.  In fact, he has the luck of finding lions every time he goes out tracking! We think he will be a great competitor in the Lion Guardian Games too! Welcome Samulei!

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

One response so far

Category: Lion Guardian reports, Lion Guardians work | Date: Nov 13 2009 | By: lionguardians

We are very pleased to announce that the Lion Guardians project has now officially expanded into Olgulului Group Ranch! The Group Ranch which surrounds the world famous Amboseli National Park is a huge area of communal land which also borders Eselenkei Group Ranch to the North, and Mbirikani to the East, where we already have Lion Guardians monitoring and protecting the lions.

The Lion Guardians team has been welcomed onto the ranch by the leaders of this expansive Group Ranch that holds almost half the wildlife population in the Greater Amboseli ecosystem. Together with both leaders and community members, we divided the Group Ranch into 8 zones. We conducted interviews within the zones and the turn-out was absolutely amazing! Despite the ongoing ravaging drought a total of 72 Maasai warriors (or morans) were interviewed for jobs as Lion Guardians.

Ordinarily, shortlisted candidates would go into a one month voluntary period before the final selection is made, but owing to the drought, which has been so destructive for the local communities, and the hard economic times they are facing, the Lion Guardians team decided to reduce the voluntary period to 2 weeks.

A total of 10 warriors who really impressed us during this period were finally selected as Lion Guardians on Olgulului Group Ranch. In a meeting attended by community members and all the Group Ranch officials, the Lion Guardians project was officially launched with leaders promising to give total support to the Lion Guardians team, and even inviting us to expand further south of the Group Ranch.

We are all extremely happy to be working in this new area, though our work is really cut out for us now, with 10 more Guardians working for the project! It also means we need your donations more than ever, with equipment to buy and wages to pay for 10 more Guardians, not to mention the extra administration behind running a project which has now more than doubled in size! Please wish us Good Luck!

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

4 responses so far

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Sep 23 2009 | By: lionguardians

After successfully starting up the Lion Guardians program on Eselenkei Group Ranch, we are now expanding to yet another ranch in the Amboseli-Tsavo Ecosystem! The new ranch, Olgulului is on the border with Amboseli National Park, and experiences a lot of conflict with wildlife. We can’t wait to start work there! Here is one of our collared lions Nempakai, who is currently residing in Amboseli.

The interview process for possible Lion Guardians on Olgulului is now complete. The Group Ranch was divided into 8 zones, and each was represented by 9 traditional morans, eager to conserve carnivores and lions in particular, as well as serve their community. In fact, the ravaging drought did not inhibit their attendance. A total of 72 morans attended the interviews!

During the interviews, the selection panel looked at many different criteria, including poverty levels, physical fitness, leadership qualities and tracking skills, as well as general wildlife knowledge and lion killing history. A total of 16 morans were short-listed and will now start a 1 month volunteering period. During this voluntary process, the Guardians will help reinforce bomas to predator-proof levels, assist their communities in finding lost livestock, as well as tracking and monitoring lions.

What exciting news for the project!

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

4 responses so far

Category: lion research fieldwork | Date: Aug 27 2009 | By: lionguardians

On Monday we received a report from one of the guides from Amboseli Porini Camp, which is near our new project on Eselenkei Group Ranch. (Thank you so much for the report Amboseli Porini!) They told us they had seen a collared lion in Amboseli National Park, so we rushed over to see who it was.

Our suspicion was that it was Nempakai, who used to reside on Mbirikani with a large pride of 9 others, but hasn’t been here for many months now. We picked up her signal almost immediately and after some searching we found her relaxing with another female with three cubs. Here is Nempakai and one of the cubs.

Then just a few metres away we spotted 2 lovely young male sub adults, and another female, making a pride of 8.

And not only that but a few hundred metres away was a large if slightly bedraggled looking male. What a great sight!

We wonder whether Nemapaki and her pride will now stay in the park or venture back over to Mbirikani. Amboseli is extremely dry. Here you can see a dead zebra next to bones from another animal, with another carcass in the distance.

The place is littered with dead wildlife; buffalo, zebra, wildebeest and sadly elephants are dying too.

The drought is seriously harming the wildlife and Maasai livestock in this area and our Guardians are struggling to cope with their communities’ problems. Lion Guardian Koikai told us yesterday that at a boma close to him they had 12 dead cows in one day, and had burnt 26 dead cows the previous week. The Maasai people here are finding it extremely hard at this time.

Tags: Amboseli, drought, elephant, Kenya, lion, lion conservation, Lion Guardians, lions, Maasai, masai

4 responses so far

Category: Lion Guardian reports, Lion Guardians work, lion research fieldwork | Date: Aug 03 2009 | By: lionguardians

As we told you last week, we finally found our collared female lion Selenkay in Amboseli National Park. She had been wandering far and wide, around Amboseli and the surrounding communally owned Maasai land with 2 other females.

On Saturday we received a call from Lion Guardian Mokoi to tell us he had been following the tracks of 2 female lions on Mbirikani Group Ranch, not far from Mbirikani town, so we rushed over to meet him and find out who these lions were. We tracked from the top of a nearby hill, and found that it was Selenkay, who had come over from Amboseli with one other female!

Here is Selenkay’s beautiful friend.

We have asked Mokoi and Olubi, the Lion Guardians that work in the area closest to Selenkay’s latest position to keep a close eye on their movements, and to make sure that all the herders in the area know that they are close, so that they can keep their livestock in a different area.

The other members of the Tara pride are still located on our neighbouring ranch Eselenkei, where the new Lion Guardians are taking great pleasure in keeping track of this fantastic group of lions. Collared female Nosieki has 2 small cubs, and the other pride lioness Nasieku has 3 cubs. Here is Nosieki with one of her small cubs.

And here is one of Nasieku’s cubs, a few months older than Nosieki’s.

The cubs have great fun playing together, and with the male of the pride. The lions in Eselenkei and Mbirikani seem to be doing very well at the moment, probably because of the availability of weak prey, due to the drought. The Guardians are doing a brilliant job of monitoring their movements and reducing any possible conflicts between the local people and the carnivores.

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

6 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 Guardians work | Date: May 21 2009 | By: lionguardians

You may be wondering what is happening with the expansion of the Lion Guardians program to two of our neighbouring ranches Eselenkei and Olgulului. The ongoing drought across these ranches sent Maasai murrans and their cattle to other areas in search of greener pastures, which meant that we couldn’t hold community meetings or interviews for Guardians - the first steps in the Lion Guardians expansion. Here is Olgulului during the drought, which is not yet over. As you can see, there just isn’t any grass, so people had to move elsewhere…

Now, after a little rain (although far less than is needed) patches of grass have pushed their way through the parched and dusty top layer of soil, bringing both colour and murrans back into the area. With their return, preparations for the launch of the project across these ranches have finally begun. The assessment of 27 warriors from the Eselenkei ranch will be conducted over the next three days, from which, three suitable new Lion Guardians will hopefully be found.

Lion Guardian Olubi from Mbirikani will do some training with the newly chosen Guardians, passing on the skills and knowledge attained through his role in Mbirikani. Job notices for a Lion Guardian Project Coordinator have also been posted in trading centres, with interviews to be conducted on the 25th May. We’ll keep you updated on the growth of our Lion Guardian team! 

Tags: Amboseli, drought, job, Kenya, lion, lion conservation, Lion Guardians, lions, Maasai, masai

5 responses so far

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Jan 29 2009 | By: lionguardians

A child has been attacked and injured by a lion near Amboseli National Park. The young child was herding goats when he wandered close to a female lioness hiding in long grass with her young cubs. When he came too close she jumped out of the grass and attacked him. It seems she was trying to protect her cubs. He suffered claw wounds on his side around his ribs and was rushed to the closest hospital for treatment. He has now been discharged, and we hear he is doing fine.

When we heard the news we were worried for the boy, but also for the lioness, as warriors were talking of getting together to go out and kill her. We are very thankful that Soila of the Amboseli Trust for Elephants and lion researchers in the area were able to mitigate the conflict, and the lioness was saved. Here is a photo of another lioness, who was protecting her cubs.

It is very rare for lions to attack people, except in defense when being attacked by people, and this is a strange case. In Tanzania it is quite common in certain areas for lions to attack people and there have been a number of cases reported where villagers have been attacked and killed by lions, but here in Kenya we are lucky that this is a very rare occurrence. You may have heard about the legendary man-eating lions of Tsavo, but this was a very odd case and it is not common to hear of such behahaviour here.

Tags: Amboseli, attack, elephant, Kenya, lion, lion conservation, Lion Guardians, lions, Maasai, maneaters, masai, research, Tsavo

8 responses so far

Category: life in camp | Date: Dec 17 2008 | By: lionguardians

We are in the process of establishing a new camp on Eselenkei group ranch, where we are going to start the Lion Guardians program. I have just been to visit Eselenkei, to see the place that we will be locating our camp, and we were very lucky to be able to stay at nearby Porini. Porini is a tented camp for tourists located north of Amboseli National Park. It is one of those amazing natural places that you would want to visit on vacation. It is located in a protected area of bush full of wildlife. Birds like the White bellied Go Away bird entertain you as you have your breakfast, and the views are beautiful.

We were treated like VIPs by the staff at Porini. I will never forget the hospitality of the guys I met, and I wish that I could have met them earlier. If I had, my life would have been more fun filled! I am very much looking forward to expanding the Lion Guardians to this new area.

Unfortunately I did not have my camera with me, but to see some photos of this beautiful place you can go to the Porini camp website.

Tags: Amboseli, camp, Kenya, lion, lion conservation, Lion Guardians, Maasai, masai, porini

One response so far

Category: Lions killed, lion killings | Date: Jun 18 2008 | By: lionguardians

We have some sad news to report. A lion has been killed by murrans at Olgulului, the ranch bordering Amboseli National Park, and the neighbouring ranch to Mbirikani, home of the Lion Guardians.

The reason for the killing was first unclear. Some rumors reported that the lion had killed two goats and that the murrans went after it in revenge. But after further investigations it became clear that they speared this lion for trade. Two of the murrans are beach boys at the Kenyan coast and it seems they killed the lion so that they could take the claws to go and sell. Here is the paw of the lion, that was left after the claws were removed.

This is awful news for us, as the population of lions in this area is already so low, and it is a tragedy to lose another lion. It was a female lion, probably about four years old, but not one known by the Lion Guardians.

One of the factors that has led to the decline in the number of lions in this area is the low level of employment, especially for murrans - the warrior age class. We are hoping that we can raise enough funds to start up the Lion Guardians program on Olgulului too. This would give at least some of the murrans employment and an interest in conserving lions, which they will then pass on to their communities. Your donations are vitally important at this critical time, so we can try to save the few remaining lions in this area.

Tags: Amboseli, Kenya, lion, lion conservation, Lion Guardians, Maasai, masai, murrans, speared

15 responses so far