[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]By Vanessa Serrao

Editor Elaina Kimes

Published February 23, 2017[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]SAMBURU, KENYA – The Samburu tribe of central Kenya has lived with wildlife for centuries, though not always peacefully.

Dependent on livestock for meat, milk, and income, the Samburu have protected their herds from lions with brutal force.

However, as African lion numbers have plummeted—only about 20,000 animals remain in the wild—one warrior is leading the fight to save the big cats.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]In 2010, one Samburu warrior, Jeneria Lekilelei, founded Warrior Watch to encourage Samburu men to conserve lions. Since then, the local lion population has risen from 11 animals to 50 today. Warrior Watch is part of Ewaso Lions, a group fighting to ensure a future for Kenya’s lion population. By promoting co-existence between people and wildlife, Ewaso Lions uses scientific research and community-based outreach programs to formulate strategies for long-term lion conservation.

National Geographic talked to Lekilelei, whose work is funded by National Geographic, to learn how the Samburu are harnessing the same skills used in the past to hunt lions to protect them.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] What inspired you to start Warrior Watch?

When I was a boy, I thought I’d be killing lions when I grew up. My father was a warrior when he was young. In the 1950s, there used to be so many lion prides in this area. I met [National Geographic Explorer] Shivani Bhalla, who showed me the declining lion population, and it inspired me to start Warrior Watch.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]What are the duties of the Warrior Watch?

We brought a class of warriors who used to kill lions and made them the ambassadors of lions. They spread the word to change their attitudes toward conservation. One of their activities is to go out early in the morning, before the livestock are released for grazing, and [use their tracking skills to see] where the lions are. They then bring that message back to the community so that the [people and their animals] can avoid those areas.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]How do you track the lions?

We often look for hyena tracks, since they depend on lions for food. The lions might have killed something and the hyenas will go there. We look in the sky for vultures, who will give you a sign where the lions have been. We search for primates such as baboons, monkeys, and herbivores that are making a lot of noise; if they make a lot of noise you know a predator is most likely there.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]How did you change people’s perception of lions?

My community members, in the beginning, hated it. Lions killed our livestock, people didn’t want them in this area. If we know the lions are in the area, we go back and spread the awareness within the community so that they’re aware, they’re more vigilant, they look over their livestock properly, and they know exactly where the lions are so that they can avoid that area. I explained to them that if we lose a cow, we can’t get it back, and if we kill a lion, we lose two animals.

Today, people are proud to support my work in lion conservation. Even if they’re not involved in our project, people still call me on phone and say, ‘We found the lions tracks here, where do you think those lions are? They have preyed on our livestock today.’ They have stopped killing the lions when they see them.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]What do you now love about lions?

They’re social like humans, they live together, they share everything together. We see these lions from the time they’re born, as little cubs, we see them grow up and we grow attached to them. We give individual lions unique names. When a lioness gives birth, you will see her walking with her cubs, roaring and introducing them to the rest of the pride. The pride comes and licks the cubs so they know each other.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Does it make you proud to see a lion grow up and go off on their own?

I really enjoy seeing them grow to adulthood, I feel that I’ve played a role in saving them. If we hadn’t protected them, they would have been killed, poisoned, speared, or shot. When I haven’t seen them in a long time I get scared, I worry that they could have been killed. I feel so relieved and so happy when I see them come back. Any time I lose a lion, it’s like losing a member of my family. If there are no lions in Samburu, then there is no more life.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Source:  https://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/article/lions-warriors-samburu-kenya[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Samburu Warriors Are Safeguarding Kenya’s Lions

By Kari Mutu

Community-based program engages pastoralists in conservation work to reduce human-wildlife conflicts.

Among the Samburu people, a pastoral tribe of north-central Kenya, warriors have traditionally hunted lions to prove their bravery or to protect their cattle, which form the basis of wealth and social rank in the community. But for nine years now, Jeneria Lekilelei, a Samburu warrior, has been doing the opposite, working to protect lions from being killed by his own people.

Lekilelei, 27, dropped out of high school many years ago for lack of funds. Most of his adolescent years were spent herding the cattle within the Westgate Conservancy, a community-owned group ranch that boarders the semi-arid Samburu National Reserve. In 2008, when he was 19, he joined Ewaso Lions, a conservation group based in the Conservancy, as a field data collector. At the time, he knew nothing about lions and found the idea of protecting the large carnivores shocking.

Founded in 2007 by conservation biologist Shivani Bhalla, Ewaso Lions works to protect Kenya’s wildlife by involving communities in solutions that promote peaceful coexistence between people and wild animals. The organization fills a critical need in the country: According to Ewaso, Africa’s lion population has declined by some 90 percent over the past 75 years, primarily due to loss of habitat and human-animal conflict. In Kenya, there are fewer than 2,000 lions left.

Bhalla quickly realized that understanding lion movements throughout the park, and beyond, was essential to the conservation work. “We’d see lions, then they’d disappear. Clearly, they were going outside the park,” Bhalla says. “I realized we need[ed] to be living outside and understanding whether lions and people can actually live together.” In need of more information in order to create solutions for protecting lions, she shifted her focus from the park to surrounding community lands and recruited three young Samburu men to assist her, including Lekilelei.

In the first year working for Ewaso Lions, Lekilelei quietly recorded general field information about the ecology and different kinds of animals in the area surrounding Samburu and hardly spoke a word to Bhalla. In his second year, he accompanied her on a research trip to the Shaba National Reserve, an even drier and more rugged region of Samburu. For a week, he sat on a vehicle roof under the scorching sun searching for lions. Undeterred by the heat or rough conditions, he was animated by the work, and not long after the trip, Bhalla offered him a job as a lion scout, to track their numbers, movements, and cases of human-wildlife conflict. He seized the opportunity and has never looked back.

To expand Ewaso Lion’s fieldwork program, Lekilelei came up with the idea of recruiting more Samburu warriors. Nobody, after all, knows the landscape better than they do.

In 2010, the organization expanded further by establishing Warrior Watch, a program of twenty-odd Samburu youth engaged as ambassadors for wildlife. The additional warriors were trained on how to identify individual lions, monitor problem animals, collect data, and conduct wildlife surveillance through GPS, camera traps, vehicle patrols, and old-fashioned tracking.

Dressed in their traditional attire and beaded jewellery, the expanded team of warriors conduct bush patrols every day, liaise with herders, carry out anti-poaching work, and spread conservation awareness in what has become an extension of their traditional role as guardians of the community.

Because harm to livestock is a major source of human-wildlife conflicts in the region, Warrior Watch responds quickly to predation events to speak with the affected people, avert retaliatory killings, and help recover missing animals. Responders also support families to improve their animal husbandry practices and minimize the risk of wildlife attacks. In return, the warriors receive stipends, meals, and basic education since many of them did not complete school.

photo by Tyrel Bernardini: Samburu warriors receive lessons in reading and writing, along with stipends and meals, for thier work with Ewaso Lions.

The warriors have developed a special bond with the lions of Samburu. One of their favorites is a 16-year old lioness called Nashipai. Unfortunately, Nashipai has a penchant for attacking domestic animals. “She’s got no teeth. I think that’s why she is going after easier prey,” explains Bhalla. “But … [the warriors have] saved her hundreds of times. Every time someone wants to kill her, they are there.”

Over the years Lekilelei and Bhalla have come to realize that the future of lions depends on changing the attitudes of those who only come into contact with wildlife following attacks on their cows and goats. “My community was killing [lions] for lack of understanding. All they want to do is to reduce a problem to their livestock,” explains Lekilelei, now the field operations and community manager for Ewaso Lions. “Warriors want to hold onto their culture by killing a lion, that’s what is in their minds,” he adds.

Consequently, Lekilelei sees his role as that of educating the community and preserving the Samburu culture in ways that protect wildlife and their habitats. “You tell them that there are only like 10 lions in the whole of Samburu area, that lions are going to be extinct if we can’t conserve,” he explains.

In his new role, he participates in discussions with the local elders who are the decision-makers of the community. The elders often reminisce about the disappearance of rhino in Samburu because of hunting and poaching in the 1970s and 1980s. They would not wish to see lions go the same way. Lekilelei and the Ewaso team also interact with women and children who have historically been left out of the conservation discussion.

Ewaso Lions has expanded since 2007, and is now working in the Kalama, Nakuprat Gotu, and Ol Donyiro Community Conservancies of Samburu as well as Westgate, an area covering over 5,000 square kilometres and home to the third largest population of lions in the country.

The large study area allows the organization to explore the connectivity between different regions in the wider Samburu ecosystem and how lions disperse through existing corridors, information that can help inform conservation work. Lions will habitually migrate to find ideal conditions for food and water. Unfortunately, human development, new roads, and new settlements coming into marginal areas are cutting off traditional migration routes for lions and other wildlife. “The main thing is to make sure the corridors are kept open,” Bhalla says.

photo courtesy of Ewaso Lions: A lion in Samburu National Reserve.

Lion numbers in the region have increased since Ewaso Lions began its work in 2007.

As the organization has grown, Westgate has served as a sort of laboratory for Ewaso Lions to test different conservation program with the local community. Since the start of their work nine years ago, Bhalla estimates that the lion population has grown from 11 individuals to around 50 animals moving in and out of Westgate, and that numbers are stable at present. She is confident that the Westgate lions are safe for now because of successful wildlife management models based on community partnerships.

Just last year they heard lions roaring in Westgate conservancy for the first time, a rare occurrence outside of state parks. “That’s a sign that they feel safe. It’s exciting for us that even a lion can sense that there’s a change out here,” said Bhalla.

Nevertheless, challenges do remain, such as the building of national infrastructure in Samburu County. During years of drought, nomadic people from other areas frequently move into Samburu lands in search of pasture. “They come from far away where conservation hasn’t reached and people still practice killing of lions,” explains Lekilelei.

The future plan for Ewaso Lions is to replicate the Westgate model elsewhere and to engage with other communities living in lion habitats in order to build up tolerance for wildlife.

“I am very proud to see how we have changed the whole face of the community towards conservation,” says Bhalla. “Warriors who were hunters or killers of lions have become conservationists.”

 

The original article posted to the Earth Island Journal can be accessed here: https://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/articles/entry/samburu_warriors_are_safeguarding_kenyas_lions