Lion Guardians

Category: Meet the Lion Guardians | Date: Sep 03 2009 | By: lionguardians

Meet Lopono, the lastest Maasai warrior to change his ways from lion killing to lion conservation! Lopono is joining the Lion Guardians team on Eselenkei Group Ranch and will work to monitor the lions here and reduce conflict between his local community and predators.

Lopono is a very friendly and likeable character, who makes everyone feel comfortable in his presence, whether he knows you or not. He comes from a poor background, and is extremely hard working and enthusiastic. The eagerness with which he undertakes his duties strongly impressed our team during the volunteering period.

We hope we will be able to use his diplomatic skills to calm angry community members who may have lost livestock to predators and are bent on revenge attacks. His knowledge of the lion migratory corridor through the group ranch will also come in handy during the course of his work monitoring the location of lions.

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

3 responses so far

Category: Lions killed | Date: Aug 19 2008 | By: lionguardians

Today I am bringing you some really good news! I am sure that all of you are familiar with the last lion killing that happened in June outside our ranch. We were all very angry and saddened that murrans on our neighboring ranch would kill a lion in order to sell its claws. This is all that remained of the lion when we got to it.

The good news is that the culprits were arrested and taken to court. We have just heard that last week they appeared before a chief magistrate and pleaded guilty to involvement in the lion killing and being in possession of 11 lion claws that they were intending to sell.

We are told that the two murrans were each sentenced to either 36 months in jail or to pay a fine worth 100,000 Kenyan shillings each. This is really great news for us; it shows that justice is coming for the lions and the people who are wiping out the little population that is left in Maasailand today will not get away with it.

The story appeared in a Kenya Swahili newspaper called Taifa Leo. We hope that this means the word will be spread far and wide that lion killing will not go unpunished, and that other murrans will learn from this tragic lesson.

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

18 responses so far