Today, I am excited to announce a new addition to the Ewaso Lions team. Paul Thomson arrived in camp yesterday and has joined the project full time to help it grow and expand in new ways. Paul is no stranger to Ewaso Lions. He first visited the project in 2008 and has assisted in the collaring of Lguret, monitoring of lions, call-ins, screenings of wildlife films for the communities, scat collection (his favourite!), and even served in Jeremiah’s wedding.
Paul and I first met through the Emerging Wildlife Conservation Leaders, a two-year fellowship program where we received training in leadership and campaigning skills, as well as networking and mentoring opportunities from an advisory board of respected environmental professionals. I blogged about it here. Our experience from this excellent program will certainly enable us to make Ewaso Lions a strong and successful conservation project.
Paul got to know Ewaso Lions further when he came to report on the project for one of our funding organizations, the African Wildlife Foundation. Paul was with AWF for five years, working in both Washington DC and Kenya, where he oversaw the organization’s communications and marketing activities. He started the AWF blogs, so some of you might even be familiar with him.
He definitely loves Samburu, its wildlife and people and is happily settling into life here at camp. He’ll be helping run camp, assisting in our research activities, expanding on our community education projects, and will be doing some blogging – so stay tuned.
Karibu Paul!
Paul and Joseph.