Kilimanjaro Lion Conservation Project

Category: General, Lion-watching | Date: Jul 08 2008 | By: Seamus

Today I’d like to draw your attention to some of the finer points of our Amazing Lion-Locating website(note the hyperbole - its to get you to click on the link and see for yourself). This post is a response to a comment received in the last few days from Wim:

I’m surprised that his territory seems so small. Does it change with the seasons and are its limits by choice or in response to something? Furthermore, what happened on June 30th (at least I think it’s June 30th, I’m colour blind?)

This site is really just a snapshot of Ndelie the lions use of territory over a few days. Furthermore, each marker represents a resting point (either midday or 15:00) for that date. The clumping of the points in this way is I think because lions in most of the study area do not randomly choose their resting areas. Or to be more specific: I think their choice of resting habitat is partly determined by how humans use the landscape that they share. The grouping of markers that you see is a patch of very dense and inaccessible thicket, out of the way of people and livestock. To illustrate this, click on “show boma markers” and then click on “play”. Mike has very kindly modified the animation path, so as to include ALL of Ndelie’s hourly fixes. Thus you can see his forays into the more open areas at night.

As for the outlier on the 29th of June, and the trouble distinguishing colours: roll the mouse over the point and it will tell you the exact date and time that the point represents… I think that that the trip up to the north was cut short by an encounter either with some bomas, or with the resident dominant male lion for that area, Lentim.

In time I hope I will have time to put some more photo points up, to help viewers understand. Not just yet though.

For those of you who’re having a bit of a Bill Murray momentdo please click on the screenshot below to take a gander at some accessible and incredible science.

Technorati : GPS, GPS collars, lion conservation, science

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