Kilimanjaro Lion Conservation Project

If you are wondering what the bizarre title of this post is about, have a look at the discussion section of my last post (on the 29th). I think the outcome of the discussion was that indviduals will tend to contribute towards conservation that they feel a personal connection with, whereas non-governmental organisations have a responsibility to invest in conservation that is somewhat more strategic.

I somehow found the time yesterday to get out and radio-track, through some landcruiser-destroying thorn scrub. Below is a photo of one of our collared lions, Kasaiyo. If it seems as if there were a lot of thorn trees hindering my access to him, then its because there were… this is not an unusual occurence around here. There are another two lions in this photo. I can’t see them either.

Technorati : conservation, lions, more thorn trees, thorn trees

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I thought it might be good to return to a topic that I posted about quite some time ago. Its been almost a month, and we recently received another contribution to discussion around my post titled “food for thought” Fascinating, as its one of the shortest posts I’ve ever done, but its evoked the most responses. Of particular interest was Wham’s comment,

“To see the amazing recovery of a desperately weak and distressed captive lion cub into a healthy, naturally ‘wild’ young adult (within the boundaries of her sanctuary) was little short of a miracle… Each and every animal is important.”

Of course, on a personal level I feel this way. I wouldn’t be doing this work if I didn’t have some empathy for animals. There should be room though in conservation circles though, for some discussion of how to rationally deploy the limited resources we have for conserving species or ecosystems. To explain more clearly, let me outline a scenario: given the choice between spending a certain amount of funding to save the life of an individual animal, and investing that same amount of money on conserving an entire ecosystem, complete with an assemblage of wonderful creatures (including many of the target species), what would you do? Its a very, very hard question to answer and I would be curious to know what the readership of this blog thinks.

Yes, there is a big assumption here: that money directed towards “individual-centric” conservation programs would otherwise be spent on broader conservation methodology.

Here are a few of our cats to look at while you think about this….

Technorati : conservation, klip-in-die-bos, science, species conservation

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We’re in the midst of training the NRT scouts. The two-day course includes basic lion biology, how to identify individual lions, how to age lions, some tracking, tips ‘n tricks for monitoring large carnivores and handling conflict, how to deal with man-eating lions (which are apparently a serious problem in their area at the moment), an introduction to carnivore conservation in southern maasailand, and a few other bits ‘n pieces. Here is a photo from one of our lectures yesterday. Maria in the black dress, partly out of shot. Ernest perched on a buffalo skull on the left, in the blue jacket. I got to hold the clipboard. The rest of the folks are scouts.

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A few people have asked about the striking on young lions. This is a minute long video in which I mentioned the spots on young cubs. I’m not sure what the evolutionary advantage is to young lions having spots. It might be that as they get older their ideal camofluage would be tawny, rather than mottled. Perhaps because they would hunt more in open savanna as they get older, rather than hiding in thick bush, as cubs do.

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Tags: lion cubs, lion video, lion-research, Lions, video

Clear skies. Cool, becoming warm / hot later in the day. We had rain two nights ago (4mm).

Have you hugged your tree today, or climbed one? Go ahead and try it. I climbed one this morning and yesterday, in fact. Carson-esque environmentalism is not dead.

(photo from 20 mins ago, from the door of my office)

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A fair amount of my day-to-day work is actually nothing to do with lions. Today I went with Solonka (the Lion Guardian for this area) and Ernest to a boma nearby. I’ll let Antony explain the finer details of how bomas operate. Briefly, a boma is a cattle enclosure made of tightly packed thorn branches.

The owner is complaining that a hyena has been attacking and killing his small stock regularly, by taking them from his boma. He and a group of elders formed an impromptu lobby group to explain to me all the reasons why I should kill the alleged culprit, or alternatively, why I shouldn’t be surprised when they do. This is a view from inside the boma, looking out. The gap in the middle is covered with the branch in the foreground, and acts as a gate. This is where the hyena is alleged to have gained entry last night. One of the reccommendations of our Laikipia work is that people build gates out of old oil drums, and this boma seemed like a good candidate.

As often happens in these situations, the small crowd that gathered were quite vocal about their feelings regarding wildlife. I generally hear people out. Simply recognising that wildlife is a serious problem often seems to be the first step towards ameliorating conflict here. I think we’ve bought some time for this hyena by going there today, but it seems like a bit of a stalemate at this point. The owners of the boma are not prepared to invest any time or money in improving the boma, are unhappy with the amount of compensation they receive from the compensation scheme, and would like to kill the hyena. Its not really possible to make a judgement call on who is in the right here (conservationists vs livestock owner vs hyena survival), but I’ve briefed some colleagues from the Maasailand Preservation Trust who work in the area to perhaps look more closely at the situation.

Technorati : bomas, hyenas, lion research, maasai, masai

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I haven’t been able to get out into the field today. I spent most of the morning in the office, and this afternoon met with Ian Craig to discuss a plan to bring some scouts from Malako Conservancy down here, to teach them some lion biology and large carnivore conflict mitigation.

Here is a photo from yesterday, when we showed JC around the study area. She represents the Panthera Foundation in the UK, and came to have a look at what the Lion Guardians are doing.

(near the top of the Chyulu Hills)

Technorati : lion research

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I received a note today telling me that “The trouble with lions” has finally been published.

Its written by a Canadian I “met” by email, named Jerry. As unsavoury as this may sound, we corresponded and he landed up devoting some text in the book to a mention of our Lion Guardians (as a potential solution to the trouble with lions). I remember there a few photographs from our project too.

I haven’t read the book, so would be curious to hear from the general public how it reads. I know most of my readers are American, that Americans have good libraries and frown upon things Canadian (aside from their health care). But I do encourage you to visit a library, try to get hold of a copy and tell me what its like. Jerry would no doubt like you to buy the book, so you could do that too… at the UAP site

Technorati : books, lions

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About 5/8 cloud cover. No rain expected. strong notherly winds at maybe 3,000 ft AGL. Its quite cool, perhaps about 14 deg C. Oh, yes and its more or less full moon.

(my office, 10 mins ago, with acacia trees, moon and fast-moving clouds)

Technorati : arbitrary weather report, maasailand, the moon

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Here's a little video bit about where we live (short). There are no lions in this (sleeping or otherwise). I like to think that the skew horizon and the jerky panning give it an arty flavour. Sadly they were completely unintentional and just make me feel a bit queasy. By the way, if anyone out there knows how to spell soh-li-low-kwee, then you deserve a prize.


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Tags: lion-research, video