The Lion Guardians expansion continues!

We are very pleased to announce that the Lion Guardians project has now officially expanded into Olgulului Group Ranch! The Group Ranch which surrounds the world famous Amboseli National Park is a huge area of communal land which also borders Eselenkei Group Ranch to the North, and Mbirikani to the East, where we already have Lion Guardians monitoring and protecting the lions.

The Lion Guardians team has been welcomed onto the ranch by the leaders of this expansive Group Ranch that holds almost half the wildlife population in the Greater Amboseli ecosystem. Together with both leaders and community members, we divided the Group Ranch into 8 zones. We conducted interviews within the zones and the turn-out was absolutely amazing! Despite the ongoing ravaging drought a total of 72 Maasai warriors (or morans) were interviewed for jobs as Lion Guardians.

Ordinarily, shortlisted candidates would go into a one month voluntary period before the final selection is made, but owing to the drought, which has been so destructive for the local communities, and the hard economic times they are facing, the Lion Guardians team decided to reduce the voluntary period to 2 weeks.

A total of 10 warriors who really impressed us during this period were finally selected as Lion Guardians on Olgulului Group Ranch. In a meeting attended by community members and all the Group Ranch officials, the Lion Guardians project was officially launched with leaders promising to give total support to the Lion Guardians team, and even inviting us to expand further south of the Group Ranch.

We are all extremely happy to be working in this new area, though our work is really cut out for us now, with 10 more Guardians working for the project! It also means we need your donations more than ever, with equipment to buy and wages to pay for 10 more Guardians, not to mention the extra administration behind running a project which has now more than doubled in size! Please wish us Good Luck!