©Philip J. Briggs.

Lion Guardians was initiated in January 2007 in Kenyan Maasailand. The impetus to create this project was in response to the slaughtering of over 250 lions in the Amboseli ecosystem since 2000. Retaliatory and traditional spearing by Maasai warriors (murrans) is the greatest threat to the survival of lions in Maasailand today. The Lion Guardian’s program attempts to reduce the pressure on lions by employing their greatest enemy to conserve them rather than kill them.

The Lion Guardians are young Maasai murrans who mitigate human-carnivore conflict and monitor lion movement and populations trend data across three Group Ranches in the Amboseli Ecosystem: Mbirikani (1,229 km²), Eselenkei (748 km²) and Olgulului (1,471 km²). The Lion Guardians mission is to promote and sustain coexistence between people & wildlife through ecological monitoring and local capacity building.

The program now employs 30 murrans to monitor carnivores and mitigate conflict in their communities, across an area totalling over 4000 km2. The Guardians use traditional tracking and state-of-the-art modern telemetry techniques to monitor 14 collared and approximately 30 uncollared lions. They have prevented over 35 lion hunting parties in 2010 alone as well as helping to recover 4450 out of 5001 head of livestock lost in the bush (89% of all those lost), which would have otherwise been killed by predators. They have helped fortify 300 livestock enclosures, so as to prevent carnivores from killing livestock at night. In the first four months of 2010, in the aftermath of a devastating drought, at least 18 lions have been killed in the region where there are NO Guardians, mostly in retaliation for depredation on livestock. Only 40-50 lions remain in the 5700 km2 Amboseli Ecosystem that includes Amboseli National Park. Lion Guardians has proved to be an effective solution to halt lion killings, reduce livestock depredation, and increase local attitudes toward carnivores.