Kilimanjaro Lion Conservation Project

Category: General | Date: Jul 31 2008 | By: Seamus

I think online wildlife tracking is an interesting way of showing the public what researchers and conservationists are doing. Its a technique that is going to become more common as the kinks get ironed out of the technology. I’ve set up a new category in my sidebar for links to other wildlife tracking sites, so if you come across any more then let me know (they’re under “wildlife tracking from your armchair”). Thanks Francis for the polar bear tracking link. The layout of the site is, well, clunky and devoid of pretty images (important so as to pander to folks like me). The google earth files are good though.

To answer your question Francis, Mike and I opted not to offer KMZ downloads as we wanted to scale the technology to the users of the site (ie. make it appropriate to the level of IT knowledge of people here), and the bandwidth available here. We’re kind of feeling our way around it though, and perhaps if the hit rate grows considerably we’ll enrich the site a bit more. Later this year I’d like to add another collar to the site.

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Category: General | Date: Jul 31 2008 | By: Seamus

I flippantly mentioned that our tracking site for Ndelie is the only one of its kind that does close to real-time tracking, online, available to the public. It seems that this is not true… I urge you to have a look at Desert Lion Conservation and look at their tracking page. The format is slightly different but the layout is very clean and easy to use. I worked with Flip a while ago, and his research is really solid. if you have a chance, browse around the rest of the site. The findings are clearly laid out, and the images are superb.

Much fieldwork to be done tomorrow folks… so watch this space for photos when I get back tomorrow evening.

Technorati : conservaion, lions, onlline tracking, wildlife

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Category: General | Date: Jul 30 2008 | By: Seamus

I’ve been broadsided by a volley of adminstrative and background work… so have had little time of late to feed the beast that is this blog’s readership. Thank you all for your patience. I’m back home now, after an exhausting few days in Nairobi. About the only good thing about the trip was the cuppaccino… from a certain coffee house. Who I think should sponsor a Lion Guardian before they can be mentioned by name on this blog (would any Nairobi coffee-shop owners reading this please stand up?).

Now, I mentioned the proposal by the EPA to ban Furadan tolerances in food in the US, in a post on the 25th. I think its interesting to read FMC’s official statement, that was released on the 25th. Almost none of the rumblings that are being heard here in Kenya (proposing to ban carbofuran) are addressing the following facts:

1. The EPA is proposing a ban on food tolerances for Carbofuran. Part of their argument is the chemical’s detrimental effect on wildlife. Part of their argument hinges around human safety.

2. The FMC corporation does not acknowledge threats to wildlife as a valid argument for de-licencing Carbofuran. Their press release says nothing about wildlife. Not even one mention. Here is a byte from the release, in response to the 60-day comment period that has been decreed.

“This does give us an opportunity to prove this product is safe from a dietary risk standpoint,” said Cummings. “It is our intent to continue to defend our U.S. registration and tolerances.”

So, in some ways Kenya’s argument against Carbofuran (and its detrimental effect on wildlife) is most likely going to be ignored. I find it particularly informative that the company has issued no official (public domain) response to the Kenya Wildlife Service and Widllifedirect’s calls for a ban. I could read all kinds of things into this behaviour, but I think fundamentally FMC does not see wildlife as a good enough reason to pull product off their shelves. Lets see what Kenyan policy-makers have to say about that. Wildlife in the US is nowhere near as economically important as agriculture, while here tourism and willdlife are both important to the kenyan economy.

Technorati : conservaiton, lions, poisoning, wildlife

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Category: foolishness | Date: Jul 26 2008 | By: Seamus

I do lion research and conservation. Two associates of mine, MC and DW provide consultancy on various aspects of the Living with Lions initiative, including (but not limited to) databse design, website construction etc. They have a cat named Samira. Samira loves watching racecars, and tries to catch them, or stop them. Consider this post a bit of unabridged pandering to cat-lovers such as myelf, and some end-of-week foolishness. Enjoy.

(thanks to LWL, Hout Bay for the pics)

Technorati : cats, race-cars

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Category: General | Date: Jul 25 2008 | By: Seamus

… perhaps no more, if you live in the US, and if the EPA proposal goes through. I have just seen a media release from the American Bird Conservancy / Defenders of Wildlife that refers to a recent Environmental Protection Agency proposal to ban Furadan residues. Click here to read the background on the EPA website.

There are all kinds of angles to this proposal. I’m cognisant that some agricultural chemicals are useful to society if used properly, and can help to ensure that enough food is produced for people, and that people can make a living. And furthermore that there is generally a gamut of traces of poison in pretty much any produce we eat (carbofuran being only one of them).

I’m quite curious to see how this will affect the import of foodstuffs from Kenya to the US, should the policy be effected. I’m also keen to see if there will be a measurable impact of wildlife persecution in the US. And of course I wonder to myself whether this ruling will influence some policy makers in Kenya.

Technorati : carbofuran, lions, poisoning, wildlife

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Category: General, Lion-watching | Date: Jul 24 2008 | By: Seamus

A few hours ago I went out to check on Nemasi and the cubs. Here’s some video footage. I had to drop the frame rate so as to get the file small enough to upload, so my voice sounds a bit odd.

And here is some more footage. Nothing spectacular, just nice to watch. If I had a better microphone (eg. “fluffy” the furry one) I could have got some nice feeding sounds.

They moved off the carcass, and I had a chance to have a look. Any ideas as to what this is? I cut the sound to the clip because I made a fool of myself trying to explain things...

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Category: General | Date: Jul 23 2008 | By: Seamus

Forgive the north american slant to today’s post. I correspond with people on that side of the pond quite a bit. Today, just a few things to think about, perhaps even comment on:

There’s an island called Santa Catalina off the Californian coast where some genius decided to leave a few bison there in 1924. You can see the film of how they brought the big hairy fellas back home.

I was chatting to someone last night about parallels between conflict here between livestock farmers and large carnivores and around Yellowstone (with wolves). Following this thread, I came across some description of the value of wolves in yellowstone (mentioned here), and a description of the state of the US of A’s national parks (here). The latter article seems a sad testament to the tendency for people to misunderstand what a national park’s primary role is (ie. why on earth should a national park even have to compete with disneyland anyway?). Ironically some of the early wilderness / environmentalism philosophers (eg. Thoreau) developed the national park idea, based on places like Yellowstone. Ah well.

And to round off, while we’re on the subject of protected areas, have a look at the article here that describes the relationship between people and protected areas… how in fact protected areas attract more people, rather than displacing them in developing nations. There are a few other fascinating angles to this article.

As follows a cut’n paste of Thoreau. Still thinking national parks are pointless or should be made into theme parks? This man is watching you….

Technorati : american wildlife, conservation, national parks, wildlife revenues

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Category: Lion-watching | Date: Jul 21 2008 | By: Seamus

The data from our GPS collared lion has been transmitted successfully over the last few days. Ndelie it seems is behaving himself, and not going too close to bomas, or killing more donkeys. The site seems to be attracting some attention. I see there’s s writeup on Kabissa. In case you’re new to this blog (and sidebar-illiterate) click the lion’s nose below to go to our online, almost real-time tracking site for Ndelie the lion.

Technorati : conservation, gps collars, lions, research

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Category: General | Date: Jul 21 2008 | By: Seamus

On the weekend I was trying to catch a large male lion from a group to the south of here. I accidentally caught a striped hyaena in the trap. I though people might be interested to see what these guys look like, seeing as there seems to be some interest in hyaenas at the moment on this blog. After the reversal for the anaesthetic was administered, this guy went on his way.  This was on Saturday night.

Tannie-T: That sounds pleasant: cuppaccinos on Pearl street by day and lion catching by night. I’ll come there and catch your wayward lion, if you can do something about weather prediction here. The mets here have about as much insight into the state of the world as the writers of horoscopes in cosmo.

DB and W: I’m afraid to say I’m not up to speed with hyaena vocalisation theory. These are very interesting questions though. As for the A before E thing (or the no E thing)… Mr Astaire points out that we should call the whole thing off. Ah well.

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Category: General | Date: Jul 20 2008 | By: Seamus

I’ve been conducting fieldwork recently, trying to catch up on a few things. The past few days have seen me ponder how to spell hyaena / hyena. I suspect this klip in die bos might elicit some intercontinental mud-slinging (”we speak real english, you don’t” and “You guys are so stuck up. Why don’t you make road signs in Spanish like we do?”)

So. To provide some diversion, do have a look at this story on hyaena vocalisations. It looks to me like fairly basic research that is long overdue for these interesting animals.

Technorati : hyaenas, hyenas, sounds

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