Conservation is about more than keeping animals safe – it’s also about protecting the people living alongside those animals. Here, Program Manager Luke Mamaai discusses our recent efforts to help keep local community members safe from COVID. Here in the Amboseli ecosystem, COVID is on the rise – we are seeing many cases, and unfortunately,…
With nearly 250 lions roaming our ecosystem, it can be hard to keep up with them all. In this post, Philip Briggs provides an update on a group we’ve keenly followed for years. In 2018, we enjoyed observing a trio of subadults – two sisters and a brother – disperse away from their natal range…
To protect lions and communities, it is critical to respond quickly when human-wildlife conflict erupts as well as to anticipate conflict before it even happens. Previous scientific research has found that lions’ activity patterns, attack rates, and hunting success vary across different phases of the moon, so we decided to dig into our own data…
Last year, our Program Manager Luke Maamai successfully completed his Master’s thesis in Conservation Biology at University of Kent. Below, Luke shares some main findings from his research, which offers new hope for lions in our ecosystem, and guidance for how we can continue to enable coexistence in a changing landscape. In order to understand…
Recently, our Assistant Manager Jackson Kikardi checked in with a local Lion Guardians-supported schoolteacher to see how things were going. Here, like in many parts of the world, local schools have been closed for the last several months to protect communities during the pandemic. During this closure, many Maasai schoolkids remained at home and turned…
Over the course of last year, communities in our operating area experienced more than 220 attacks on their livestock – that’s more than twice as many as we recorded in 2019. This increase is due to lots of factors: growing lion and human populations, an increasingly unpredictable climate, shifting cultural values leading to less responsible…
Mock hunts are an integral part of our conflict mitigation work. We are currently raising funds to triple the size of our conflict response team; to support this work, please visit our campaign page. Many of our best conservation tools come from communities themselves, and “mock hunts” are no exception. In the past, when a…
Our latest research has been published! Here, our Office and Data Manager John Merishi, who is Maasai, shares his perspective on the research and why it is so important. Livestock are central to Maasai culture and life. Pastoralists consider livestock to be their ‘bank account’, since they sell cows and goats to pay bills such…
Today, on World Lion Day, we are honoring a legend among lions. Loonkito is 16 and a half years old – a record for the Amboseli ecosystem and one of the oldest known African lions in the wild. Check out his story below in a new video by our Lion Monitoring Manager Philip Briggs. But…
Coronavirus has swept the planet and impacted nearly every human activity on Earth; conservation in general – and Lion Guardians specifically – is no exception. It is imperative that we continue our work, as communities and lions need our help more than ever, but it is also critical that we ensure the safety of our…