Narok resting in the heat of the day. Photograph by Ami Vitale “If we cannot measure it, we cannot manage it, for how can we conserve what we do not know” ~Dr. John Waithaka—KWS Board Chairman at the official launch of Kenya’s National Lion Survey About the survey Lions are one of the most iconic species on earth. Yet lions are in trouble: they have lost 90% of their historic range and their numbers are thought to be declining rapidly with half of all wild lions estimated to

Love Laikipia Visits Lion Landscapes at Loisaba Conservancy A few weeks back I received an invitation by Antonia Leckie, the Project Manager for Laikipia Lion Landscapes, to visit the project to document their work and meet the lion rangers. This was an opportunity I wouldn’t miss out because we are all about conservation, awareness, and advocacy and all matters regarding the greater Laikipia region. Getting to meet actual people on the front line was bucket-list worthy.

During a particularly exciting week, Lion landscapes were involved in the final stages of field testing of the new Land Rover Defender aka 'Hero' on the Borana-Lewa landscape. Thomas Mojong, our Lion Rangers leader and I were part of the team that took the new Defender to find and collar a male lion - aptly named Defender - as part of our Tusk funded Collaring for Coexistence program. Two new satellite GPS collars were kindly donated by Land Rover. Real-time data from these c

Lion Rangers Learning how to use SMART In January 2019 Lion Landscapes started using a mobile phone application to collect data and report incidences in the field. The APP is called SMART. We use SMART (Spatial Monitoring And Reporting Tool) with the Cybertracker plugin which allows data to be collected with an easy-to-use interface. This set-up enables Lion Landscapes to measure, evaluate and improve the effectiveness of current conservation activities. The application has a

Something you might not expect from dedicating your life to lion conservation is how little you actually get to see a lion. Lions have adjusted to survive in the un protected, human-dominated landscapes we work in by becoming even more elusive. We are ‘watching’ but mostly the fascinating GPS maps that download from their collars each morning, showing us the intimate details of where they have been and what they have likely been doing. We also see the signs they leave behind