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With our partners Ewaso Lions and University of California, we have just collared our first young male potential disperser! Wow…wait, what? I hear you cry. Young male lions, when they reach adulthood, leave their maternal pride to find territories of their own. This is known as ‘dispersal’ and is a dangerous time for them; they may spend years of nomadic wandering before they finally establish a territory. During this time, they are often forced out into sub-optimal areas by the territorial males. These dispersing males and females are the way in which new genes are spread through the landscapes and so their fate is important. We are trying to collar these lions with high tech GPS and accelerometer collars just before they decide to leave their maternal pride. We will then be able to track them as they make this perilous journey, and learn more about the challenges they face. Livingstone is the name given to our first ambassador. He is 2.5 years old and has two brothers and a sister. They are part of the Plains Pride, and his mum, Victoria, has been a collared study lion for most of her life, as her mum and grandmother before her were too. We already know a lot about this pride but we do not yet know anything about the lives of those that leave it. Livingstone was named by the livestock managers on the ranch where he was collared. We let livestock owners name the lions in their area because it is hard to have a relationship with a nameless and elusive animal. But Livingstone will be far from that, maps of his movements and his antics will be sent out to all the livestock owners and stakeholders in the area, and he will soon be one of the best-known lions in the region. #lions #collaringlions #plainspride #laikipia

Large carnivores are difficult for people to live with. Let’s face it, most of them are large enough to consider any one of us, our pets, or our livestock as dinner. Many people have their lives and livelihoods threatened by carnivores on a daily basis. As a rule, posing a threat to human beings is not a good recipe for long-term survival on this planet. And so we (those of us that don’t want to be the largest carnivore around) need to tackle two overarching challenges: 1) we need to make sure people that share the landscape with large carnivores are willing to continue to do so, and 2) we need to make it practically and financially feasible for them to do it. This is what our small and dedicated team at Lion Landscapes aim to support but we cannot do it alone. We are lucky enough to have a large number of brilliant partners, from rural livestock owners to nerdy technicians. It takes a village to raise a child, and it will take a planet to save a species. That includes you, there are lots of ways you can help too, watch this space and we will tell you how. I have a confession to make, lions are my first large carnivore love and we are a little lion centric here at Lion Landscapes. The name of the organisation might give this away but in our defence, lions are a great flagship species for all the large carnivores; the fact they are so big and live in groups makes them arguably the hardest of all the large carnivores for people to share the landscape with. If people can share their space with wild lions, then they can live with any carnivore species. Lions are also disappearing at a rate that means if we don’t do something now, and something big, we will lose them. #lionlandscapes #AlayneCotterill #lions