Finally the Lion Guardians, Maasai communities, wildlife and livestock that live together on Mbirikani, Eselenkei and Olgulului Group Ranches have experienced their first showers of rain. Everyone is very excited and thankful that at last there are a few green shoots appearing from the ground. Though the wildlife and livestock are still very hungry, at…
Expert tracking skills
Steven from the Laikipia Predator Project came down to Mbirikani last week with expert tracker, Morani. Steven and Morani spent a week with the Lion Guardians developing their tracking skills even further for a new part of their work – spoor counting. Although the Lion Guardians are all expert trackers, Steven and Morani helped them…
Lion Guardians reports flood in!
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…
Mary visits camp
We were very happy to be visited by Mary last week, a GIS expert from Canada who came to help the lion researchers learn all about GIS (Geographic Information Systems). They are using GIS to map where our lions move, so we can see their patterns of behaviour and try and work out where they are going,…
Genet in the cutlery drawer
After our problems with elephants making cups of coffee in the kitchen at night, we were pleased that our next uninvited guest was a bit smaller! We would like to introduce you to our latest kitchen visitor – a beautiful genet. This genet (Jenny to her friends) seems to like hanging out in the…
The drought continues
The drought is still continuing here, and the animals and people are struggling badly. Everyone hopes rain will fall soon and bring back some life to the parched land. The water hole near to our neighbouring lodge Ol Donyo Wuas is constantly visited by many elephants, as well as very thin herbivores like these zebras,…
Lion Guardians football
The Mbirikani Lion Guardians had their monthly meeting at the end of September and were invited to play a game of football (soccer!) with the staff of the lodge Ol Donyo Wuas. After a long day of training the guys were all happy to get together on the plains (in fact, on the local air…