LWL initiated the Lion Guardians program in 2007 in collaboration with the local communities of Mbirikani Group Ranch. The project resulted from Leela Hazzah’s work with local communities, showing that most people perceived small benefit from conservation, contributing to their loss of tolerance for wildlife.

Today, retaliatory and traditional spearing by Maasai warriors (murrans) is the greatest threat to survival of lions in Maasailand. The Lion Guardians program saves lions by employing their traditional enemy - the Maasai warrior - to conserve rather than kill.

While there have been no lions speared where Lion Guardians operate, over 60 lions have been killed on adjacent ranches in the same time period. In response to urgent requests from these communities and conservationists, we have now expanded this successful project to two more Maasai ranches in the Amboseli-Tsavo Ecosystem – Eselenkei and Olgulului. We now have 29 Guardians monitoring and conserving the remaining lions over three Group Ranches.

What do the Lion Guardians do?

1) Monitor lions and other carnivores

2) Aid their communities by:

• informing herders when to avoid areas where lions are present

• improving livestock enclosures (bomas)

• helping herders find lost livestock left out in the bush

• providing education about the importance of carnivores and their conservation

3) Prevent further lion killing by deterring other murrans from carrying out lion hunts.

Lion Guardians across the ecosystem play an essential role in monitoring carnivores. They conduct weekly spoor surveys for density of predators and their prey, monitor lions in their areas using GPS units and telemetry receivers, and assist in lion hair and scat collection for DNA analysis.

Every Guardian has a cell phone which is used to report any sightings of lions or any illegal activity. All lions have been given Maasai names by the Guardians, greatly increasing lion awareness in the broader community by personalizing each lion.

Given that the Guardians come from the communities in which they work, and are older murrans (many have also killed lions in the past) they are very well respected by their communities and can assuage a tense situation when angry warriors seek revenge for their dead cow.

In 2010 alone, Guardians have actively prevented 45 hunting parties from killing lions. Meanwhile at least 23 lions have been killed where Guardians do not yet operate. In the past year, the Lion Guardians have found and safely returned over 4,800 lost livestock, many of which would have been killed by carnivores.

Lion Guardians are a novel, and culturally and economically sustainable approach to conservation. It is one of the first projects in East Africa that combines traditional knowledge with modern scientific techniques. The Guardians have been extraordinarily successful at stopping lion killing, and at the exceptionally difficult task of accurately counting rare and elusive lions in dense bush. Their goal is to increase local capacity through education, training and awareness to secure a sustainable future of carnivores in Maasailand.

We need your donations to continue running the Lion Guardians program:
$50 would buy a solar lantern and charger for a Lion Guardian’s phone
$95 would pay the wages and administration costs of a Lion Guardian for a month
$300 would buy a GPS tracking unit
$1000 would buy a telemetry receiver and aerial for tracking lions

You can donate online through our partners Panthera. You can also visit the Lion Guardians blog to read regular updates from the field.

Thank you, from all the Lion Guardians!