Lion Guardians

Category: Lion Guardians work, Uncategorized | Date: Jul 10 2008 | By: lionguardians

Over the last few days we have been enjoying a visit from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). CBC News’ Africa correspondent David McGuffin had heard about the good conservation work of the Lion Guardians and the help they are providing their community and came to film a short news piece on us.

It is great that the work of the Lion Guardians will be seen by more people - the more that know about what we do, the more donations we will receive (I hope!) and this will ensure that we can continue to run the program in the future.

We visited Lion Guardians Mokoi and Olubi’s bomas, and showed them the kind of help the Guardians give their communities. They interviewed members of the community who were eager to talk about the support they are getting from the Guardians to mitigate conflict and reduce attacks by predators.

We also showed them all the other work the Lion Guardians do - helping herders in the grazing fields, fixing bomas, finding lost livestock in the bush and of course tracking lions.

I hope some of our blog audience from Canada will be able to see this piece on CBC, and those across the world will also be able to see it on their website. We will let you know when the piece will be aired, and when it appears on their site, and then you can tell all your friends to watch it too!

Tags: CBC, film crew, Kenya, lion, lion conservation, Lion Guardians, Maasai, masai, news

3 responses so far

Category: Lion Guardians work, ways you can help | Date: Jun 16 2008 | By: lionguardians

I thought I would tell you a bit more about the news story that has been on the internet and in a lot of the newspapers worldwide recently. The story is about the crisis in lion numbers, especially around Amboseli National Park, near where the Lion Guardians program is located.

It explains that big cats are declining at an alarming rate and may even be extinct in the region within a few years. There may be less than a hundred lions in the area. The main cause of their drastic decline is that the lions have been hunted by the Maasai because of the conflict between the lions and their cattle.

The story talks about the Lion Guardians program and how we employ Maasai murrans, who used to hunt lions themselves, but are now helping to conserve them. The Guardians track collared lions, and warn herders if they are grazing their livestock in an area close to where a lion has been spotted.

They also help herders make their bomas stronger so that predators find it harder to get in, and help them to find lost livestock, as well as educating their communities about how important it is to have carvnivores around. One of their main and most important tasks is to persuade their contemporaries not to hunt lions.

The National Geographic has started a new fund to raise money for big cats, which we hope will help conserve lions in the area. But the Lion Guardians also need your donations to allow us to continue with our important work with the local community.

Tags: conflict, Kenya, lion, lion conservation, Lion Guardians, Maasai, masai, natinal geographic, news, tracking

5 responses so far

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Jun 10 2008 | By: lionguardians

For a week now Senator Barak Obama has been on the front pages of all the Kenyan newspapers. Even the local people in the communities know that he has won the democratic elections last week, and they all want to know more about him.

Everybody here in Maasailand now calls him a murran; he stopped at nothing to attain his ambitions and goals of his belief that he can change the world. In Kenya people have high expectations of him, and I am wondering whether it is because he is linked to Kenya or because they are excited about his new policies and ideas.

Personally I like the idea of change in his campaigns. I have been monitoring his speeches and trying to learn some things for my community.

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

2 responses so far