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…
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…
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…
The one month voluntary period by the new Lion Guardians on Eselenkei Group Ranch is now over. During this period the volunteering Lion Guardians have helped reinforce more than ten community bomas (livestock enclosures) to predator proof levels, found lost livestock herds in the bush and been tracking lions across the length & breadth of the…
At the workshops we held recently with the new potential Guardians, we asked them to each pick the weakest boma (livestock enclosure) in their area – one that had been recently targeted by predators or that they thought needed the most urgent re-building. We wanted them to find bomas that would benefit most from being given…
Lion Guardian Koikai has reported two lions close to Olbili, where he lives and works. When he passed on this information to the office, he said he thought they were a new pride. Our collared male Lentim is at Olosira, a hill close to Olbili, but Koikai think the ones he came across are probably…
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…