Kilimanjaro Lion Conservation Project

Automated pattern recognition has been something of a grail for wildlife researchers wanting to sample large populations of animals. The first I heard of this was in connection with some cheetah work in Tanzania. It was rumoured to be fairly expensive, but I thought it intriguing [every cheetah has a unique spot pattern, like a fingerprint]. Sometime in the past few months I had coffee with a slightly wild but brilliant acquaintance of mine who studies zebras. We got to talking about how efficient it would be to simply record zebra stripe patterns and then apply some kind of wickedly-complex mark-recapture stats to come to come up with estimates of population density. The only tools required: a camera, some fancy software and a formidably mathematically-inclined brain. No collars or unique ID marks necessary. By the time I had finished my coffee (they make ‘em large and strong here in Kenya) I had established that he had a prototype going, but it requires careful manual entry of the images, and the user needs to show the software where to look for the parameters. In other words, its still fiddly.

This is why I was excited to learn that some folks working at the place of Mandela’s incarceration, Robben Island, have got it right. They describe pretty much an automated system for penguin image capture and mark-recognition. Click here to read all about it.

(photo from PJ Barham / BBC)

You might ask how this applies to lion conservation. Well, I haven’t thought of an answer to this yet. But its an important development, which I think could be almost as significant as the advent of the GPS collar in wildlife monitoring. Of course, lions are uniquely identifiable (I’ve written about this before on this blog) but automated pattern recognition might be more applicable to surveying what lions eat, than lions themselves.

Technorati : conservation, cool science, lion research, lions, pattern recognition, penguins

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Some of the best lion research to date has come out of Tanzania, often in association with Dr Craig Packer. The most recent findings to be published are (I think) no exception. Scientists from the universities of Illinois, California (Davis) and Minnesota looked at the impact on lions of canine distemper virus outbreaks in Serengeti and Ngorogoro in 1994 and 2001. They found a fascinating relationship between climatic conditions, prey and blood parasites.

The story by the way is very engaging, and has a catchy title. Click here to see the press release.

An international research team, including University of Minnesota researcher Craig Packer, has found the first clear example of how climate extremes, such as the increased frequency of droughts and floods expected with global warming, can create conditions in which diseases that are tolerated individually may converge and cause mass die-offs of livestock or wildlife

Colleen’s comment on my previous post refers to this study. I think generally climate change is important to african wildlife conservation. Perhaps one of the reasons why it doesn’t receive much attention on these blogs is because 1)there are other threats to wildlife that could be more significant and 2)climate change is someting that we as field conservationists can’t do very much about. Like you Colleen, I will be interested to see what people have to say about these findings.

Technorati : lion research, lions, pathology

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If you have a moment, do have a look at William’s post (the Mara triangle blog) on the recent BBC story that covered the poisoning of several lions. It makes for some thought-provoking material. I’ve posted a few comments there. What do you think?

Technorati : BBC, kenya, lions, media

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I’ve been quiet for some time (blog-wise) as I have been hosting two journalists in camp who have been travelling around east africa to learn more about the challenges facing lion conservation. Later this year I’ll post links to podcasts of the radio-show. It’ll be good exposure for lion conservation generally, and will probably mention the work that Living with Lions is doing quite prominently.

Its been a busy few days, so I have no fieldwork to report on. As we hurtle towards the weekend, let us please be mindful of the story of Christian the lion, the tragic death of 42 of Cambodia’s best fighting midgetsin an encounter with a lion, and, last but definitely not least: you can get anythin’ you want at Alice’s restaurant, ‘cept Alice, that is (aka tiger cubs for sale at Walmart story). As always, speak your mind in the comment section please. This is the internet after all. All’s fair in blog and blackberry. There are a few threads in the comments from previous posts that I would like to pick up on, but I’ll get to that soon.

Technorati : lions, radio journalism, tigers

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Another day, another obtuse blog-title. Apparently its Tennyson. Its for my one-armed friend in little Nigeria.

This post is to draw my reader’s attention to the fact that we have our donation-reporting sidebar up and running again. I’ve been harassing the techs at wildlifedirect mercilessly for the last two months and they have finally pulled through. Thanks David and Masumi!

So… Katherine, Theresa, Suzanne and Carmine: thanks for the contributions. I’ll wait until the donations have amounted to a sizeable chunk before I draw the Benjamins from wildlifedirect and deploy them.

Again, one of the adult females in Nempakai’s pride. If you look closely under her nose on the left side you will see a scar. This is very distinctive, and can be used to identify this lion in future.

News from the field: I went out to check on Nemasi last night. She still has all three of her cubs. It was dark and they were moving too much for me to take good photos. I am happy to report they are about twice the size they were the last time I saw them (which is when I took the photo for the header of this blog).

Technorati : conservation, donations, lions, poetry, unique identification of lions

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The cryptic title of this post is a reference to comments on my last post that generated some discussion.

First of all, I noticed two pingbacks to this post. They look like auto-generated links, but nevertheless their presence is significant: obviously something in this discussion of conservation, tourism, lions and media triggers some response from “the internet”. Interestingly most of my regular readers also felt they had something to say.

It should be mentioned that KD has donated 50 dollars. This is great news, and hopefully a portent of things to come. Thanks KD. So far you are the most significant donor to this blog [and now we go to a short advertisement break] - Folks, if you find what we write and discuss here interesting, or if you would like lions to be conserved in maasailand, or if you liked some of the photos on this blog, or if you just love animals / africa / James heriot / Gerald Durrel / dangerous furry animals / Darwin / Dawkins / Steve Irwin / God’s creation / teachings of the Dalai Lama I hope you will be inspired to support an indigenous african (aka me) doing conservation in the field, outside governmentally protected areas. Its important work. [infommercial over now]

Wim, your input has a habit of cutting to the chase. This was no exception. Wim makes the important distinction between journalism and media coverage with an agenda or purpose (be that overt as in advertisements, or subtle, as with infommercials). In private email conversation with one of the readers of this blog who is a film freelancer, this person pointed towards the same distinction that Wim makes: media is not a fundrasing tool in itself, or at least, good journalism shouldn’t be. My correspondent said this in an a recent email:

“I think everyone has to be fairly realistic about the power of the press. It is there as a witness — so nothing is untold…”

And further to the subject of blogging generally for conservation research, a comment from a fellow scientist:

“…this whole media thing is such a waste of time.”

To a certain extent I agree with both of my correspondents. But, (to badly paraphrase some politician whose name I don’t know), the world is made up of shades of grey, not black and white. With the suggestions from Wim, insight from correspondent 1 and healthy cynicism from D, W and L I think I will continue to use media to futher my objectives. I’m not sure that there is all that much “sound, balanced and truthful” (from Bertie’s comment) reporting on wildlife conservation, but I can give it a try here on this blog..

I like one of Wim’s responses to all this, so I’m pasting his / her comment here to close off with:

When I’m the absolutely final ever tourist to visit Kenya,
my own endangered species,
Last of the Tourist Mohicans,
Gawping, bleary-eyed and nonplussed at the sedated Hyrax and single juvenile Vervet peeling a satsuma
which will then comprise the total wildlife population “success” of the Maasai Mara.
I just know
I’ll look up to see,
tapping their feet and tutting with impatience,
three not terribly competent conservationists,
resenting my presence.

(One of the adult females from Nempakai’s pride)

Whatever cats you may have at home, whatever your morning paper is, have a good day. Signing off from southern maasailand…

Technorati : conservation, lions, media, obscure culturally specific metaphors, ostriches, wagging the dog

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Paula has kindly provided us with links to the BBC story on wildlife poisoning. You can click here and here for TV and radio respectively.

I have a few people who keep an eye on things pantherine in the media. One of them is Bertie, who, in a comment here raised the same concern that Paula referred to earlier today. Namely that press coverage of the challenges facing Kenya’s wildlife could very well discourage people from visiting Kenya. To follow this argument through, less visitors would mean less revenue is generated by wildlife, and consequently kenyans will be less tolerant of the (massive) losses to their livelihoods that they have to endure, living with wildlife on their land. consequently, it could be argued, there would be greater persecution of wildlife, and less funding for wildlife conservation, which would spiral some wild populations towards near extinction very quickly.

There may be some truth to this assertion. However it seems that there are very few kenyan conservation projects or institutions whose liquidity is entirely tied to tourism. The Mara conservancy should be mentioned as an example of an area that is totally visitor-dependent (and they still need your support by the way). I believe KWS to some extent relies on funding from the central Kenyan government coffers, which in turn depend on tourism. Other than these two examples and some other small operations, the connection between tourism revenue and “on the ground”, “in the dirt” wildlife conservation is not all that direct. Or to put it differently, its not as direct as it should be.

What to do? Well, for start we can pose difficult questions to the larger hotel chains that operate inside kenyan protected areas… what is African Safari Club doing to support the widlife that its healthy profits rely on? What is the Serena hotel group doing to conserve kenya’s wildlife heritage that has made it one of the most successful hotel chains in east africa? These questions are to some extent rhetorical, but go ahead and comment if you have a response.

For the record, I think Kenya is a beautiful place, full of both conservation and tourism potential. Its my home. But conservationsts and Kenyans should expect more from some local tourism companies.

(this was taken on the plains near where I live, a few days ago)

Technorati : conservation, lions, media

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Yesterday a story was published on the BBC website that draws attention to the poisoning of wildlife in Kenya. It used an image from the recent poisonings in the Mara., published by Asuka.

The anti wildlife-poisoning movement in Kenya seems to be gaining some momentum. There have been a few references to it in the international media recently. And the wildlifedirect stop poisoning blog is going well.

In case I have new readers to this blog, you can look at the Lion Guardian site for a description of a lion poisoning incident in southern maasailand in January this year. As much as the post received mixed reviews from local conservationists, I think it helped to draw attention to the poisoning problem in east africa generally. And pesticide control products board of kenya will hopefully not be able to ignore the noise thats being raised from all quarters.

Do have a look at the BBC story. Its quite a good, balanced view. In particular it mentions the FMC corporation as a dominant producer of furudan, one of the most widely used poisons. Here is the FMC website. I have a few questions for them. I was thinking I might write them an email or two, or three, or three thousand.

Technorati : FMC, lions, poisoning

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I snap photographs occasionally of things I see on Kenya’s highways. I had a discussion elsewhere on the web a while back about how obscure and elusive the idea of “visual poetry” is. Sucker that I am I even looked it up. “Vispo” for short, of you’re interested.

Some of the slogans on vehicle in Kenya might classify…If you can tell me what the slogan on the matatu (taxi) below means I would be grateful. Is the owner a farmer perhaps? Or maybe he / she has some sort of deeper metaphorical intentions that led to the pasting of poetry on this vehicle? In case you can’t read it, just below the number plate is says “make it rain”.

And in other breaking news, the UN regional headquarters in East africa has come under severe criticism for their carbon-consumption excesses. There have even been requests from certain militant sections of Kenyan society for the UN to place its carbon-reduction reccomendations for africans in its collective dark, personal and uncomfortable places.

So, if you’re an african in need of rescuing from your own excessive carbon consumption, use a wind-up alarm clock, not a digital one. Probably best to buy several of them. The only ones I have found at Nakumatt are made in China and will, beyond a shadow of a doubt break shortly after purchase (if they work at all).

Technorati : kenya, matatus

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Today is a slow day. I’ve just finished dissecting a hyaena, but will probably be stuck in the office for a while attending to project admin, funding proposals etc. If this post seems a little boring then, well, its because my day is boring.

For a brief diversion, please have a look this ABC story I found this morning. I find myself puzzling over why its in the Science and Technology section.

Technorati : conservation, lions, science

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