He was nine when he had to take care of his family’s cattle, but his herd was regularly attacked by lions. At night, when the cattle, on the border of Nairobi National Park, had been driven together in the boma, the corral, everything seemed safe. Until the lions jumped over the fence and killed the animals. The Masai boy Richard Turere disliked lions, actually he hated them.
A few years later Richard Turere tells his story at the TED Talk lecture in Long Beach California. He had to do something and tried several things. Fire scares lions away, he thought, but the light helped the lions to see the cattle inside the fence even better. They got accustomed to a scarecrow quickly, which only helped for a day. One evening, when he walked around the boma with a flashlight there where no lions to be seen, this brought him to an idea. With an old car battery, a switch from a discarded motorcycle and a few LED lights from broken torches he made a flashing light system. He attached the lights to the outside of the corral and made them blink: it looked like a shepherd with a flashlight was walking past the fence at night. That night the lions stayed away and everyone could sleep peacefully. Turere’s flashing light system proved to work so well that it is now used in large parts of Kenya to protect the cattle beads.
Nairobi National Park borders Kenya’s capital city to the north and is separated from the city by a fence. Directly behind it live zebras, rhinos, lions and many more wild animals. The south side of the park is bordered by a narrow river. There is no fence here, crossing the shallow and narrow stream the wildlife can freely walk in and out of the park. Along the edge of the park live small Masai communities who let their cows, sheep and goats graze on the plains during the day.
On this border things can go wrong. The farmers will sometimes take revenge on lions when they attack their cattle. The Masai are formidable warriors who do not fear to stab the predators with their spears to death.
The numbers of wild lions in Africa have declined alarmingly in recent decades, a century ago there were more than 200,000, now there are approximately 32,000. At the turn of the century in Kenya there were about 2700, there are only 2000 left. In twenty years they may have completely been extinct in Kenya. In a large number of African countries in West, Central and North Africa, the lion has already died out. The survival of the species is at stake due to a decline in habitat and fragmentation of that area, trade in bushmeat and conflicts with the local population.
‘A cow is a precious possession, it takes years of work, and if a lion takes that away, I can see that there are feelings of revenge,’ says Professor Hans De Iongh at the Centre for Environmental Sciences (CML) at Leiden University in the Netherlands. Together with the Kenyan PhD student Francis Lesilau, working at Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) and PhD student Kevin Groen (CML), he does research on lions in four different national parks in Kenia.
‘This how we want to contribute to the protection of the species. By the end of the 1990s, the lion in Amboseli National Park was completely extinct, killed by the Masai. Slowly they returned from the surrounding areas.’
‘In 2007, we started fitting lions with transmitters together with Leiden University, the Leo Foundation, an organisation that wants to protect large carnivores in Africa and KWS in Nairobi National Park. In recent years we have equipped at least twelve of them with a transmitter. With these satellite transmitters we could see that lions regularly went out of the park at night where they came into conflict with the local people.’
At the same time the program Living with Lions started, which trains mainly Masai warriors, the so-called Moran, to become lion guards. These Moran, an age group of 16 to 21 years, live in the bush and protect the area from outsiders. The Masai are brave, they do not eat bushmeat, they do not hunt and are therefore the ideal conservationists. The Masai have changed from ‘enemies of the lion’ to ‘protectors of the lions’. Nowadays they also rent out parts of their land as nature reserves, they work in lodges, as drivers, and as guides. As a result, income from tourism flows to the Masai. In this way they have an alternative source of income from nature conservation instead of cattle farming. De Iongh: ‘KWS also has educational programmes: students go into the parks to get to know the wilderness. The children learn how valuable this wilderness is and this creates support for management: the youth is the future.’
Unlike other African countries, the law prohibits hunting, bushmeat trade and the killing of game; the Kenyan government pursues a zero tolerance policy in the matter.
‘The battle between man and lion still exists, but is less damaging,’ says the Iongh. ‘The traditional initiation rite in which a Masai warrior shows his courage by killing a lion is now forbidden, which makes a huge difference. Because part of the Masai, especially around Amboseli National Park, has switched to nature conservation, the lion population there has greatly improved. It is a success: the population has grown tremendously, there are actually too many of them at the moment’.
‘Because it is forbidden to kill lions, this surplus can become a problem, even problematic ones, which too often come into contact with people or cattle, may not be shot’.
The government moves these ‘problem lions’ to another area, often to Meru National Park at the foot of Mount Kenya. The outcome of this is questionable. The lions often cause new problems again. When the already present prides chase them out of the area, they clash with the population again. The lions are often killed by cattle farmers of the Boran and Somali tribes living around Meru. But that is considered self-defence, which it might be. So despite the ban on killing lions, this is probably a form of ‘population management’.’
The evening falls over Nairobi NP as Nickson Parmisa, chairman of the local Masai committee, leads his sheep and goats into the safe boma. ‘In addition to the fences and thorny bushes, we also installed flashing lights here. I don’t want to wake up in the middle of the night and get angry at the lions. We often see them at night and we use flashlights to chase them away. We still lose cattle, but nowadays more during the day. Down by the river the animals drink. There is the border with the park, on the other side of the water are the lions. When a herder is not careful, they take a sheep or goat. It stays a challenge. That’s why we are happy with the transmitters that some lions carry: this way we know where they are so we can avoid those areas.’
‘We know the lions here,’ continues Parmisa. ‘We know who are the troublemakers. ‘Trouble lions’, they are just like us: they only want to live their lives too. I never speak of ‘human-wildlife conflict’, I speak of ‘human-wildlife interaction’. It is our responsibility as human beings to coexist with the lions. If you intervene in the ecosystem, for example by removing all the lions here, the number of herbivores will grow. The competition between cattle and the wild grazers for the grassland then becomes too fierce.’
‘I understand that there is a fence between the park and the city, but on this side there is no fence. I don’t think you can stop lions with a fence, they always find a way to get through. Warthogs, for example, dig under the fences and the lions make use of that. That’s why we have the flashing lights on the boma’s here, but there’s not enough money to install them for everyone. If there has been an attack by lions, we place them. Last week a boma was attacked, I think it was Monday, they lost three sheep. Tuesday the lions came again, the next day we installed the lights.’
Early in the morning, it is still dark, as the Belgian students Gert-Jan Goeminne, Mateo Bal and the Kenyan student Kennedy Kariuki drive into Meru National Park under the supervision of PhD student Luka Narisha. Together with Hans de Iongh they set out the ‘transects’. These are stretches of land in the park on which the students will carry out counts over the next three months. Elephants, zebras, giraffes, rhinos, lions: the precise quantities of all species will be recorded. A rangefinder and a GPS are used to determine the corresponding locations.
As the Toyota Landcruiser makes a turn, a boy jumps from the road into the bushes, he runs after his sheep and goats and lets, in distress, drop his can with water that now runs empty on the red earth of the road.
It is forbidden to let cattle graze in the park. The sheep and goats are an easy feast for the lions. But still some herders dare to take the risk: there is more water in the park and therefore greener grass, especially now during the dry season. Outside the park, around every shrub a path has been carved in where the cattle are seeking for leftover leaves. If the rangers catch the boy, his parents have to pay a fine of 200,000 shilling, 2000 euros, or serve a prison sentence of six months to a year. But he is lucky, and manages to escape.
White-backed vultures, Rüppells vultures and a Palm vulture betray the presence of a kill. Luka Narisha sets out on foot to investigate and he disappears among the bushes. This is by no means without danger: a lion can be nearby to guard its prey. The carcass of a buffalo has nearly been eaten bare. It could be one or two days old. The students find what they came for: scat or lion poop. Samples are taken from the inside and outside of the scat and put in ampoules of ethanol for later research.
Two male lions of the ‘Square Tank Pride’ have been sleeping all through the afternoon in the shade of a small tree in Lake Nakuru National Park. The presence of a number of cars parked fifty metres away does not bother them at all. KWS veterinarian Titus Kaitho carefully drives towards them, puts on his anesthetic gun and shoots. Startled they jump up, a bright pink plume sticks out of the thigh of one of the lions. With his mouth he pulls the arrow out his waist but the drug starts to work, slowly he falls asleep.
With growling engine noise the rangers drive towards the second lion to chase him off a bit. He doesn’t worry too much and falls asleep fifty meters further on.
The veterinarian, the rangers, the Kenyan and Dutch researchers and the students all jump out of the cars that are now positioned in a circle around the stunned animal. Armed rangers stand on guard to keep an eye on the second lion. One of the rangers lifts the massive head of the sleeping animal so Francis Lesilau can put on the collar. They work in silence, Hans de Iongh and Monica Chege of KWS tighten the nuts and bolts of the transmitter.
‘Every collaring is different’, says the Iongh, ‘you never know how it goes beforehand’.
Dusk falls when the veterinarian gives the antidote to the anaesthetic. The lion is in no hurry to wake up, he lifts his head a few times but then plumps down again to continue sleeping. It is dark when the lion finally gets up. He immediately runs to my camera with remote control that is standing on a tripod right in front of his nose and starts gnawing at it. Ben, a Masai driver, who sees it happen, starts his car and tries to chase him away from the camera, but the lion doesn’t intend to give up his loot and puts it on a run with the camera and tripod in his mouth. Now three Landcruisers race through the ink black bush after the lion in an attempt to get the camera back. Now and then a flash of the running beast can be seen in the light of the headlights. Only after a wild chase he is surrounded and sprints off without the camera. Quickly a ranger jumps out of the car and grabs the camera out of the bushes grinning broadly.
‘I had three today, one of a cub which was a bit small. One was so fresh, we’ve seen it being laid a few hours earlier. Disgusting, as if you were trying to grab custard with a crispy layer on top.’ On the phone of Iris and Dionne a message comes in. By WhatsApp the students in the four different parks share their experiences with each other.
During the first weeks Kevin Groen will guide the two Dutch biology students Iris Noordermeer and Dionne Jacobs in their research in Amboseli National Park. Under his leadership nine students will gather data in four national parks for three months. He shares the results with researchers from Kenya Wildlife Service, Monica Chege, Luka Narisha and Francis Lesilau who are also affiliated with Leiden University in the Netherlands.
They arrive just as an adult male lion makes a wildebeest breathe his last breath. At a distance other wildebeests, zebras and thomsongazelles are watching. It is scorching hot on the plain and the lion tries, with all its strength, to drag its prey to the shade of a bush. But it is too heavy: after a few attempts he gives up and starts his meal in the sweltering heat.
‘It is an investigative study’, says Kevin Groen. ‘Besides mapping the lion population, it also involves the numbers and species of prey animals per unit area, the density, in each park. Research of the lions’ manure shows their diet and preferences. By default we do this through hair analysis but I also want to do this with DNA analysis. You then know exactly what a lion has eaten, including the small animals that you overlook during counts in the field and also slip through during hair analysis. When you know that lions prefer certain prey animals, you can adapt your management to this. If you don’t want lions to snack outside the park, you need to make sure there are plenty of prey animals in the park to keep the lions happy.’
That evening three lions lie along the edge of a forest. When all the cars with tourists have left, the researchers decide to do a calling station, with an amplifier the sound of a prey animal is being played. When the sound of a wildebeest in distress is heard deafeningly over the plain, the lions raise their heads. And then, just next to the three, another one sticks its head out of the grass, and another one and another, there are getting more and more. The big pride stands up calmly and starts walking this way. There are thirteen of them, females, young adults and a number of youngsters who still have obvious spots in their coats. It is now dark and the researchers go home with good hope to collect scat here the next day. In the evening Iris and Dionne pipette ethanol into ampoules to collect the scat samples in. A few hours of sleep, at five o’clock the alarm clock rings to go back into the park.
‘The research can reveal many interesting insights’, says Groen. ‘If, for example, you put a fence around a park, like in Lake Nakuru NP and partly Nairobi NP, a landscape of fear can evolve. Because the park is enclosed and has shrunk in size grazers are more likely to come into contact with a lion or other predator, making them more alert and less likely to graze. This can affect the vegetation in such a park. When grassland is less grazed, more bushes are created, which certain animals do not like. This ultimately affects the numbers of species that live there’.
Large herds of elephants walk at a calm pace over the dusty plains towards the cooling swamp. Two cheetahs go on a hunt and that attracts a lot of attention; the drivers in the park have radio contact and if something like this happens, the rumour goes fast and within a few minutes there are rows of cars. The researchers encounter a kill: a lioness has killed a wildebeest and her young. The two cubs of the lioness are stuffing themselves with the cadaver, they make a bit of a mess of it. At a few meters distance two jackals and about ten hyenas are hanging around. When they get a snatch, you hear the crackling of the bones they shatter between their jaws. Loudly trumpeting and with a lot of gesture a few elephants chase another couple of lions away a little further on.
The male, which tried to drag the wildebeest yesterday, is now lying in the shade of the bush, the carcass is not visible from here, but the lion is not alone: a female lies next to him with two newborn cubs. Getting out the car to collect scat is not an option here so the team decides to drive on to the site where they saw the big pride yesterday. Is is now safe there: these lions have been spotted further on in the park. Excited the samples are collected in the ampoules and plastic grip bags, the first ones in Amboseli NP, that should be posted on the WhatsApp! On the way back a faint musty scent starts filling the car.
‘What also is effective in other countries is a kind of insurance’, Groen notes, ‘compensation is paid when cattle gets killed by a lion. Such a system does exist here in Kenya but doesn’t work as well as it should. In the Himalayas, for example, snow leopards regularly grab a goat or a sheep, and in retaliation they are killed. They now have a good system in which the affected farmer receives good compensation, which means that the snow leopards are hunted much less. So that does help. Of course it is a financial thing as always, with wildlife and nature.’
Text and photography by Taco van der Eb
A few years later Richard Turere tells his story at the TED Talk lecture in Long Beach California. He had to do something and tried several things. Fire scares lions away, he thought, but the light helped the lions to see the cattle inside the fence even better. They got accustomed to a scarecrow quickly, which only helped for a day. One evening, when he walked around the boma with a flashlight there where no lions to be seen, this brought him to an idea. With an old car battery, a switch from a discarded motorcycle and a few LED lights from broken torches he made a flashing light system. He attached the lights to the outside of the corral and made them blink: it looked like a shepherd with a flashlight was walking past the fence at night. That night the lions stayed away and everyone could sleep peacefully. Turere’s flashing light system proved to work so well that it is now used in large parts of Kenya to protect the cattle beads.
Nairobi National Park borders Kenya’s capital city to the north and is separated from the city by a fence. Directly behind it live zebras, rhinos, lions and many more wild animals. The south side of the park is bordered by a narrow river. There is no fence here, crossing the shallow and narrow stream the wildlife can freely walk in and out of the park. Along the edge of the park live small Masai communities who let their cows, sheep and goats graze on the plains during the day.
On this border things can go wrong. The farmers will sometimes take revenge on lions when they attack their cattle. The Masai are formidable warriors who do not fear to stab the predators with their spears to death.
The numbers of wild lions in Africa have declined alarmingly in recent decades, a century ago there were more than 200,000, now there are approximately 32,000. At the turn of the century in Kenya there were about 2700, there are only 2000 left. In twenty years they may have completely been extinct in Kenya. In a large number of African countries in West, Central and North Africa, the lion has already died out. The survival of the species is at stake due to a decline in habitat and fragmentation of that area, trade in bushmeat and conflicts with the local population.
‘A cow is a precious possession, it takes years of work, and if a lion takes that away, I can see that there are feelings of revenge,’ says Professor Hans De Iongh at the Centre for Environmental Sciences (CML) at Leiden University in the Netherlands. Together with the Kenyan PhD student Francis Lesilau, working at Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) and PhD student Kevin Groen (CML), he does research on lions in four different national parks in Kenia.
‘This how we want to contribute to the protection of the species. By the end of the 1990s, the lion in Amboseli National Park was completely extinct, killed by the Masai. Slowly they returned from the surrounding areas.’
‘In 2007, we started fitting lions with transmitters together with Leiden University, the Leo Foundation, an organisation that wants to protect large carnivores in Africa and KWS in Nairobi National Park. In recent years we have equipped at least twelve of them with a transmitter. With these satellite transmitters we could see that lions regularly went out of the park at night where they came into conflict with the local people.’
At the same time the program Living with Lions started, which trains mainly Masai warriors, the so-called Moran, to become lion guards. These Moran, an age group of 16 to 21 years, live in the bush and protect the area from outsiders. The Masai are brave, they do not eat bushmeat, they do not hunt and are therefore the ideal conservationists. The Masai have changed from ‘enemies of the lion’ to ‘protectors of the lions’. Nowadays they also rent out parts of their land as nature reserves, they work in lodges, as drivers, and as guides. As a result, income from tourism flows to the Masai. In this way they have an alternative source of income from nature conservation instead of cattle farming. De Iongh: ‘KWS also has educational programmes: students go into the parks to get to know the wilderness. The children learn how valuable this wilderness is and this creates support for management: the youth is the future.’
Unlike other African countries, the law prohibits hunting, bushmeat trade and the killing of game; the Kenyan government pursues a zero tolerance policy in the matter.
‘The battle between man and lion still exists, but is less damaging,’ says the Iongh. ‘The traditional initiation rite in which a Masai warrior shows his courage by killing a lion is now forbidden, which makes a huge difference. Because part of the Masai, especially around Amboseli National Park, has switched to nature conservation, the lion population there has greatly improved. It is a success: the population has grown tremendously, there are actually too many of them at the moment’.
‘Because it is forbidden to kill lions, this surplus can become a problem, even problematic ones, which too often come into contact with people or cattle, may not be shot’.
The government moves these ‘problem lions’ to another area, often to Meru National Park at the foot of Mount Kenya. The outcome of this is questionable. The lions often cause new problems again. When the already present prides chase them out of the area, they clash with the population again. The lions are often killed by cattle farmers of the Boran and Somali tribes living around Meru. But that is considered self-defence, which it might be. So despite the ban on killing lions, this is probably a form of ‘population management’.’
The evening falls over Nairobi NP as Nickson Parmisa, chairman of the local Masai committee, leads his sheep and goats into the safe boma. ‘In addition to the fences and thorny bushes, we also installed flashing lights here. I don’t want to wake up in the middle of the night and get angry at the lions. We often see them at night and we use flashlights to chase them away. We still lose cattle, but nowadays more during the day. Down by the river the animals drink. There is the border with the park, on the other side of the water are the lions. When a herder is not careful, they take a sheep or goat. It stays a challenge. That’s why we are happy with the transmitters that some lions carry: this way we know where they are so we can avoid those areas.’
‘We know the lions here,’ continues Parmisa. ‘We know who are the troublemakers. ‘Trouble lions’, they are just like us: they only want to live their lives too. I never speak of ‘human-wildlife conflict’, I speak of ‘human-wildlife interaction’. It is our responsibility as human beings to coexist with the lions. If you intervene in the ecosystem, for example by removing all the lions here, the number of herbivores will grow. The competition between cattle and the wild grazers for the grassland then becomes too fierce.’
‘I understand that there is a fence between the park and the city, but on this side there is no fence. I don’t think you can stop lions with a fence, they always find a way to get through. Warthogs, for example, dig under the fences and the lions make use of that. That’s why we have the flashing lights on the boma’s here, but there’s not enough money to install them for everyone. If there has been an attack by lions, we place them. Last week a boma was attacked, I think it was Monday, they lost three sheep. Tuesday the lions came again, the next day we installed the lights.’
Early in the morning, it is still dark, as the Belgian students Gert-Jan Goeminne, Mateo Bal and the Kenyan student Kennedy Kariuki drive into Meru National Park under the supervision of PhD student Luka Narisha. Together with Hans de Iongh they set out the ‘transects’. These are stretches of land in the park on which the students will carry out counts over the next three months. Elephants, zebras, giraffes, rhinos, lions: the precise quantities of all species will be recorded. A rangefinder and a GPS are used to determine the corresponding locations.
As the Toyota Landcruiser makes a turn, a boy jumps from the road into the bushes, he runs after his sheep and goats and lets, in distress, drop his can with water that now runs empty on the red earth of the road.
It is forbidden to let cattle graze in the park. The sheep and goats are an easy feast for the lions. But still some herders dare to take the risk: there is more water in the park and therefore greener grass, especially now during the dry season. Outside the park, around every shrub a path has been carved in where the cattle are seeking for leftover leaves. If the rangers catch the boy, his parents have to pay a fine of 200,000 shilling, 2000 euros, or serve a prison sentence of six months to a year. But he is lucky, and manages to escape.
White-backed vultures, Rüppells vultures and a Palm vulture betray the presence of a kill. Luka Narisha sets out on foot to investigate and he disappears among the bushes. This is by no means without danger: a lion can be nearby to guard its prey. The carcass of a buffalo has nearly been eaten bare. It could be one or two days old. The students find what they came for: scat or lion poop. Samples are taken from the inside and outside of the scat and put in ampoules of ethanol for later research.
Two male lions of the ‘Square Tank Pride’ have been sleeping all through the afternoon in the shade of a small tree in Lake Nakuru National Park. The presence of a number of cars parked fifty metres away does not bother them at all. KWS veterinarian Titus Kaitho carefully drives towards them, puts on his anesthetic gun and shoots. Startled they jump up, a bright pink plume sticks out of the thigh of one of the lions. With his mouth he pulls the arrow out his waist but the drug starts to work, slowly he falls asleep.
With growling engine noise the rangers drive towards the second lion to chase him off a bit. He doesn’t worry too much and falls asleep fifty meters further on.
The veterinarian, the rangers, the Kenyan and Dutch researchers and the students all jump out of the cars that are now positioned in a circle around the stunned animal. Armed rangers stand on guard to keep an eye on the second lion. One of the rangers lifts the massive head of the sleeping animal so Francis Lesilau can put on the collar. They work in silence, Hans de Iongh and Monica Chege of KWS tighten the nuts and bolts of the transmitter.
‘Every collaring is different’, says the Iongh, ‘you never know how it goes beforehand’.
Dusk falls when the veterinarian gives the antidote to the anaesthetic. The lion is in no hurry to wake up, he lifts his head a few times but then plumps down again to continue sleeping. It is dark when the lion finally gets up. He immediately runs to my camera with remote control that is standing on a tripod right in front of his nose and starts gnawing at it. Ben, a Masai driver, who sees it happen, starts his car and tries to chase him away from the camera, but the lion doesn’t intend to give up his loot and puts it on a run with the camera and tripod in his mouth. Now three Landcruisers race through the ink black bush after the lion in an attempt to get the camera back. Now and then a flash of the running beast can be seen in the light of the headlights. Only after a wild chase he is surrounded and sprints off without the camera. Quickly a ranger jumps out of the car and grabs the camera out of the bushes grinning broadly.
‘I had three today, one of a cub which was a bit small. One was so fresh, we’ve seen it being laid a few hours earlier. Disgusting, as if you were trying to grab custard with a crispy layer on top.’ On the phone of Iris and Dionne a message comes in. By WhatsApp the students in the four different parks share their experiences with each other.
During the first weeks Kevin Groen will guide the two Dutch biology students Iris Noordermeer and Dionne Jacobs in their research in Amboseli National Park. Under his leadership nine students will gather data in four national parks for three months. He shares the results with researchers from Kenya Wildlife Service, Monica Chege, Luka Narisha and Francis Lesilau who are also affiliated with Leiden University in the Netherlands.
They arrive just as an adult male lion makes a wildebeest breathe his last breath. At a distance other wildebeests, zebras and thomsongazelles are watching. It is scorching hot on the plain and the lion tries, with all its strength, to drag its prey to the shade of a bush. But it is too heavy: after a few attempts he gives up and starts his meal in the sweltering heat.
‘It is an investigative study’, says Kevin Groen. ‘Besides mapping the lion population, it also involves the numbers and species of prey animals per unit area, the density, in each park. Research of the lions’ manure shows their diet and preferences. By default we do this through hair analysis but I also want to do this with DNA analysis. You then know exactly what a lion has eaten, including the small animals that you overlook during counts in the field and also slip through during hair analysis. When you know that lions prefer certain prey animals, you can adapt your management to this. If you don’t want lions to snack outside the park, you need to make sure there are plenty of prey animals in the park to keep the lions happy.’
That evening three lions lie along the edge of a forest. When all the cars with tourists have left, the researchers decide to do a calling station, with an amplifier the sound of a prey animal is being played. When the sound of a wildebeest in distress is heard deafeningly over the plain, the lions raise their heads. And then, just next to the three, another one sticks its head out of the grass, and another one and another, there are getting more and more. The big pride stands up calmly and starts walking this way. There are thirteen of them, females, young adults and a number of youngsters who still have obvious spots in their coats. It is now dark and the researchers go home with good hope to collect scat here the next day. In the evening Iris and Dionne pipette ethanol into ampoules to collect the scat samples in. A few hours of sleep, at five o’clock the alarm clock rings to go back into the park.
‘The research can reveal many interesting insights’, says Groen. ‘If, for example, you put a fence around a park, like in Lake Nakuru NP and partly Nairobi NP, a landscape of fear can evolve. Because the park is enclosed and has shrunk in size grazers are more likely to come into contact with a lion or other predator, making them more alert and less likely to graze. This can affect the vegetation in such a park. When grassland is less grazed, more bushes are created, which certain animals do not like. This ultimately affects the numbers of species that live there’.
Large herds of elephants walk at a calm pace over the dusty plains towards the cooling swamp. Two cheetahs go on a hunt and that attracts a lot of attention; the drivers in the park have radio contact and if something like this happens, the rumour goes fast and within a few minutes there are rows of cars. The researchers encounter a kill: a lioness has killed a wildebeest and her young. The two cubs of the lioness are stuffing themselves with the cadaver, they make a bit of a mess of it. At a few meters distance two jackals and about ten hyenas are hanging around. When they get a snatch, you hear the crackling of the bones they shatter between their jaws. Loudly trumpeting and with a lot of gesture a few elephants chase another couple of lions away a little further on.
The male, which tried to drag the wildebeest yesterday, is now lying in the shade of the bush, the carcass is not visible from here, but the lion is not alone: a female lies next to him with two newborn cubs. Getting out the car to collect scat is not an option here so the team decides to drive on to the site where they saw the big pride yesterday. Is is now safe there: these lions have been spotted further on in the park. Excited the samples are collected in the ampoules and plastic grip bags, the first ones in Amboseli NP, that should be posted on the WhatsApp! On the way back a faint musty scent starts filling the car.
‘What also is effective in other countries is a kind of insurance’, Groen notes, ‘compensation is paid when cattle gets killed by a lion. Such a system does exist here in Kenya but doesn’t work as well as it should. In the Himalayas, for example, snow leopards regularly grab a goat or a sheep, and in retaliation they are killed. They now have a good system in which the affected farmer receives good compensation, which means that the snow leopards are hunted much less. So that does help. Of course it is a financial thing as always, with wildlife and nature.’
Text and photography by Taco van der Eb