Lion Guardians

Category: Lions killed | Date: Nov 12 2009 | By: lionguardians

We were all shocked and saddened to read that a child recently died in Kenya from eating Furadan. We, along with Wildlife Direct and many many others have been trying to raise awareness about the poisonous affects of Furadan for a long time now.

Visit the Baraza blog to watch their video about the poisoning of lions in Kenya, and our Living with Lions poisoning crisis website page, which has more information.

Tags: furadan, Kenya, lion, lion conservation, Lion Guardians, lions, Maasai, masai, poison, poisoning

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Category: Uncategorized | Date: Mar 27 2009 | By: lionguardians

We are very excited that the CBS program 60 minutes featuring the Lion Guardians will be shown on TV in the US this Sunday March 29th at 7pm Eastern Time. It will also be available to watch on the internet at http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/60minutes/main3415.shtml soon after. The program is all about wildlife poisoning, and Bob Simon and his team came to the Chyulu Hills to find out about lion poisoning in our area and how we work to stop wildlife being killed.

Wildlife poisoning is an extremely urgent issue - it is very easy and cheap to buy the agricultural pesticide carbofuran (Furadan) and sadly it can easily kill any animal you would like it to. Many people in Maasailand are using it to kill carnivores, and we have even heard reports that it has been used by a man to kill his father.

Across Kenya there are more and more cases of wildlife, especially carnivores, being killed with poison. It is also destroying vulture populations, as they feast on poisoned carcasses too.

We are very glad that CBS 60 minutes visited Kenya to highlight this important issue, and we hope that the program will make people sit up and listen. Our hope is that no one will be able to buy this substance anymore, and it will be replaced in shops with a pesticide that cannot be used to kill wildlife.

Have a look at our web page on lion poisoning on the Living with Lions website: http://www.livingwithlions.org/lion-poisoning.html, and please tell all your friends to watch 60 minutes. Thank you!

Tags: 60 minutes, Bob Simon, cbs, furadan, Kenya, lion, lion conservation, Lion Guardians, lion poisoning, lions, Maasai, masai, poison

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Category: Lion Guardian reports | Date: Nov 20 2008 | By: lionguardians

We are sad to report that an attempted poisoning has been committed, and two of our collared lions, who usually reside on the neighbouring ranch Kuku were the intended victims. These two lionesses have been killing a lot of cows recently, and attacked and killed 3 cows, all owned by the same old man. These were the only cows he owned. It seems that somebody put poison down in the carcasses of the cows, hoping that the lions would return to their kills and feed on the poison.

Luckily for the lions, and thanks to the brave work of the verification officer and game scouts from the Maasailand Preservation Trust who had been called to the scene to verify the kill, the poisoned carcasses were removed and burnt before the lions came back to them, and their lives were saved. Here is one of our local lions.

Although we are very pleased that the lions were saved, it is sad news that anyone would put poison down to kill lions, especially here on our ranch, where we are all working so hard to save them. Let us all be happy that no harm came to them.

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

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Category: Community work, Lion Guardian reports | Date: Jul 04 2008 | By: lionguardians

We have received a worrying report from Lion Guardian Koikai. He says that feral dogs are killing young goats in his area and that so far the dogs have managed to kill more than seven animals in less than two weeks.

The community has asked Koikai to try and solve this problem for them, before they take the law into their own hands and kill the dogs themselves using poison. This would be very bad news for wild carnivores in the area that might eat the poison too.

We have been hearing this threat more and more from the local community lately. It seems that poisoning is the easiest way to get rid of any animal that is causing problems for livestock. We hope the community will be patient and will allow the Lion Guardians to solve the problem by other means before they resort to this hazardous way of destroying the dogs.

Tags: dogs, Kenya, killing, lion, lion conservation, Lion Guardians, Livestock, Maasai, masai, poison

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