Lion Guardians

Category: Lion Guardian reports | Date: Oct 14 2009 | By: lionguardians

In the month of September the Lion Guardians made over 40 reports of lion tracks, sightings or telemetry signals to camp. The 9 Guardians on Mbirikani have been working extremely hard to find out where all our local lions are so they can report this to our lion biologists, and also warn any herders in the area that are lions nearby.

They search for lions by looking for their tracks on foot….

…and by using telemetry receivers and aerials to pick up signals from the lions we have collared. Here is Lion Guardian Kapande tracking for collared lions in his area. He picked up the signals of our local male Kasaiyo and female Nimaoi who is often found close to him.

Please help support the work of the Guardians by making a donation to the project. Your donations pay the Guardians’ wages, help pay for their equipment and keep the project running. Thank you!

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

One response so far

Category: Lion Guardians work | Date: Sep 28 2009 | By: lionguardians

Yesterday the Lion Guardians were visited by Reuters, the world news agency. The crew visited Lion Guardian Mokoi’s boma where they were treated to tea and some songs from the mamas at the boma. Here are the Guardians swapping their news at Mokoi’s boma, while being filmed by Reuters.

The film crew talked to Guardians Mokoi, Olubi, Lenkina and Pilenanka about their jobs, and then went up a nearby hill to track collared lions Selenkay and Narika, who have recently been in the area. These lions usually reside on Eselenkei Group Ranch, but have recently been around the border between the two ranches, Mbirikani and Eselenkei.

After that, the Reuters crew went to a community borehole to see how the Guardians work with the local people, and found out what the community think about the project.

We hope that Reuters will bring the story of the Lion Guardians to the world, and that we will get many more readers of the blog, and more donations too! Now that we are going to hire 8 more Guardians in Olgulului, we are in great need of more funds so that we can pay their wages, and buy all the equipment that the Guardians will need to do their work.

Thank you Reuters for coming to help publicise our work!

Tags: filming, Kenya, lion, lion conservation, Lion Guardians, lions, Maasai, masai, reuters, tracking

2 responses so far

Category: Community work | Date: Apr 13 2009 | By: lionguardians

First of all I would like to say Happy Easter to all our blog readers! I hope you enjoyed your holiday. Here in Kenya we too have been celebrating Easter, and have also been busy with many other things! We have even had a few hard rain showers!

On Saturday it was the day of my leaving party, an amazing day, which I will tell you more about soon. We also have a guest from New York, who we have been looking after. We decided the best way for her to experience the real work of the Lion Guardians was to take her into the field to do some tracking.

We picked up the nearest Guardian, Kapande who was armed with the telemetry gear and headed to the spot where Kasayio and 2 others killed a wildebeest a few days previously. At a distance with the help of our flashlight we picked out the eyes of the trio, but alas! Kasayio was too shy for us and dashed into the nearby lava forest. The other two lions stayed out for a while, and gave us a good view for our guest whose first visit it was to Africa. What an amazing sight for her!

We also took her to meet Lion Guardian Olubi in his boma. Here they are, Olubi’s mother is to the left, and his wife to the right.

Tags: easter, Kenya, lion, lion conservation, Lion Guardians, lions, Maasai, masai, rain, tracking

One response so far

Category: Lion Guardians work | Date: Mar 10 2009 | By: lionguardians

Yesterday we went with Lion Guardian Solonka to look for Nemasi and her cubs, to try to find out whether she still has all three with her, or whether perhaps the dead lion that was found was one of her cubs. We listened for Nemasi’s collar, first from this high point, where we found no signal.

Then we went to the side of the lava forest by the hill where the dead lion was found. Here we picked up her signal and also that of Lentim, the male collared lion she has been seen with recently.

We drove around the lava until her signal became even stronger. We got out of the car and started to look for tracks.

Solonka found some lion tracks, which we followed up the side of the hill.

Then, as we were tracking from the roof of the car we were lucky enough to see Lentim and another lion,  that we think was Nemasi, walking off into the thick lava forest in the distance. We did not see any cubs.

Tonight we will go out again to try and get a closer look. More soon!

Tags: dead lion, Kenya, lion, lion conservation, Lion Guardians, lions, Maasai, masai, tracking, tracks

3 responses so far

Category: Lion Guardians work | Date: Sep 26 2008 | By: lionguardians

After our busy time filming with the BBC, which I will write more about soon, the Lion Guardians are full of activity yet again. They are passing on their expertise to some lion scouts from another ranch called Kuku. These lion scouts have come over to learn how to do the kind of work that we do, so they can help conserve carnivores on their ranch.

This morning Lion Guardians Koikai and Mokoi showed them how to read and write GPS coordinates, so that when they find a lion, a kill or anything of interest they can mark the location. In the afternoon they showed them how to track lions. I hope this will make an impact on the Maasailand lion population and the community in general. It will also be really useful for us, so that when any of our collared lions move beyond the borders of our ranch the Kuku scouts can help us to track them.

Koikai is one of the most experienced and sharpest of the Lion Guardians. That is why we had to pick him to train the lion scouts from Kuku. Mokoi is the oldest Guardian and with his expertise in handling issues with young people I decided to ask him to come too and help Koikai with the training.

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

3 responses so far

Category: Meet the lions, lion research fieldwork | Date: Jul 09 2008 | By: lionguardians

We are very excited about a new website that has just been launched by the Kilimanjaro Lion Conservation Project, which shows exactly where one of our collared lions Ndelie has been in the previous few days.

Ndelie’s collar transmits GPS signals to a satellite, which then sends this information on his location to the site! You can look at the interactive map to see where he has been, and you can also see where our camp is, and a few of the Lion Guardians’ bomas. Please take a look and explore the new site. It’s really exciting! Here is the link:

http://www.abycats.com/maps/catmap.html

This is the lion Ndelie, with Lion Guardian Melubo, when he was collared. His name means cooking pot in Maasai. He is called this because when the Lion Guardians helped to collar him they thought his paws were as large as cooking pots!

Tags: Kenya, lion, lion conservation, Lion Guardians, Maasai, masai, ndelie, tracking, website

15 responses so far

Category: Lion Guardians work | Date: Jun 28 2008 | By: lionguardians

We are still training up the new Lion Guardian Solonka, to make sure he is proficient in all the different skills he needs. Although most Maasai murrans are very used to identifying the tracks of different animals, we need to make sure that new Lion Guardians are able to give us accurate and detailed information about the tracks that they see. It is not all that common for them to actually see the lions, as they are always on foot, so it is really important that any information we get about them from their tracks is accurate.

By looking at tracks they try to find out what the animals were, which direction they were going in, how many there were, when they were there, whether there were any young, and perhaps even the sex and approximate age of animals.

Here are Lion Guardians Lenkina and Koikai talking to new Lion Guardian Solonka about tracking, and asking him to identify some tracks that he finds.

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

One response 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: Lion Guardians work | Date: Jun 15 2008 | By: lionguardians

All Lion Guardians have got their jobs by first volunteering for us for at least a month, sometimes for as long as three months. This shows us that they are committed to conserving lions, and we know that they will work hard to do this.

We have a new volunteer called Solonka working in the Ol Donyo Wuas area. There are lots of skills that the new Lion Guardian needs to learn. We went out with Solonka and Lion Guardians Lenkina and Koikai to train him in some of the necessary Lion Guardian skills.

The first new skill we taught him is how to track a collared lion. Here Koikai and Lenkina show him how to use radio telemetry to locate a lion.

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

One response so far

Category: lion research fieldwork | Date: May 24 2008 | By: lionguardians

A few days ago we went out to track lions with two of the Lion Guardians Olubi and Mokoi. We drove for hours, regularly stopping to try and pick up radio signals from the roof of the car. We were trying to find the large pride of 10 lions (with collared lion Nempakai) that we had seen last week. But despite our best efforts, we couldn’t locate them.

We even went all the way to this high point, Loosikitok, where you can look out over the group ranch, and all the way across to Amboseli National Park, and still couldn’t pick up a signal. This is maybe where the pride has headed back to for the moment.

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

No responses yet