Warrior Watch is Ewaso Lions’ anchor project. Ewaso Lions launched this community-led programme in 2010, engaging Samburu warriors – a group traditionally neglected, overlooked or blamed for wrongdoing – in conservation decision-making. Warrior Watch makes warriors ambassadors for lions within their communities, while raising awareness about conservation and advocating for peaceful co-existence with lions and wildlife.

The programme builds on the warriors’ traditional protection role by increasing their ability to mitigate human-carnivore conflict. The Warriors serve as a network working across multiple communities, informing herders of lion presence so they can avoid certain areas, averting depredation. This network also enables us to monitor threatened species and record conflict incidents over a wide-ranging area. Following lion attacks on livestock, Warriors encourage herders not to take retaliatory action and work with them to prevent future livestock attacks. As we have expanded beyond Samburu, we have engaged coordinators to carry out this work in communities which do not have warriors, such as in Isiolo County.

© Tyrel Bernardini

In following with the local traditional calendar, in 2021 and 2022, we took on new warriors for the first time in 15 years. These new warriors were trained and learned how to effectively respond to conflict and rescue livestock. They have improved their literacy and data collection skills to monitor wildlife, and received mentorship from former warriors (their predecessors in the Warrior Watch programme, now known as the Lion Governors). Considering the expanse they have to cover (4530km2), this training and actual work is done both on foot and in vehicles

Having evaluated Warrior Watch in 2012 and in 2017, the immediate beneficiaries are the warriors, a once neglected indigenous demographic that has been shown to be significantly more socially and politically empowered by doing this work. On a practical level, in 2020, for example, this resulted in saving the community over $20,000 in livestock that would have been preyed on by carnivores. Fundamentally, the lion population benefits as the coexistence enhanced by this programme allows them to be safe on community lands.

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