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…
Lion attacks camera!
A few days ago Lion Guardian Pilenanka came across a zebra that had been killed by lions not far from camp. We went down to see the carcass, and found that not very much had been eaten, and realised the lions would probably come back to the kill that night. We decided this was the…
Reuters visit Lion Guardians!
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…
Lion Guardian finds wild dogs!
One of our new Eselenkei Lion Guardians Melita called us with some very exciting news a few days ago. He reported seeing tracks of wild dogs in his area during his daily monitoring duties! Unfortunately we haven’t got any photos of these dogs yet, but the ones below were photographed in Laikipia. I went out…
Lion Guardians expansion continues!
After successfully starting up the Lion Guardians program on Eselenkei Group Ranch, we are now expanding to yet another ranch in the Amboseli-Tsavo Ecosystem! The new ranch, Olgulului is on the border with Amboseli National Park, and experiences a lot of conflict with wildlife. We can’t wait to start work there! Here is one of…