the lions in Africa are in serious
trouble their numbers have plummeted
over the last 20 years and this is more
evident in Kenya where we estimate only
2,000 miles left in the whole country my
project is called a wasa Lions project
which I started in 2007 we work up in
northern Kenya in a place called Samburu
we work with the local communities to
try and increase their tolerance towards
predators and try and reduce the
resentment that they have when they lose
their livestock and we have a program
called warrior watch which is our
ambassador program that we started in
January 2010 warriors are the ones who
are out in the field every day they’re
the eyes and ears they see wildlife on a
daily basis yet they’re not really
involved in wildlife conservation
decision-making so we decided to see if
they would be interested let’s see if we
could change this let’s see if there
might be a way we can involve them in
conservation so we approached them and
we called five Orias to a meeting
initially they were very suspicious and
they said why we didn’t called it what
have we done wrong and we said you’ve
done nothing wrong we want to see you
know we want to talk about animals and
Wildlife and their faces lit up and they
said you know no one’s ever asked us
that before we would like to so we said
ok let’s let’s try this out we would
love your wildlife information sightings
we would really encourage you to become
wildlife ambassadors what would you like
in exchange from us and they said we
would like education we’ve never been
given the opportunity to go to school so
we don’t know how to read and write we
would like you to teach us the basics
now we’ve taught them how to read and
write they have GPS units pocket
binoculars and they’re out in the field
every day collecting information on
wildlife using their gps’s they fill out
data sheets now and they come back to us
every Sunday with these data sheets
filled out on all the wildlife sightings
they’ve had over the week
they have camera traps a whole group of
them now have their own camera traps so
they’re able to put them out in their
home areas and they look at it as a bit
of a competition every Sunday when they
come back they see they say you know I
got a striped eye you know my camera
track what did you get on yours and they
all compete to see who gets the better
images and this very much helps with our
research objectives so we started off
this program in January 2010 with five
warriors and now almost three years
later we have 16 warriors who are really
actively engaged in conservation and
they’ve really become wildlife
ambassadors in this area
trouble their numbers have plummeted
over the last 20 years and this is more
evident in Kenya where we estimate only
2,000 miles left in the whole country my
project is called a wasa Lions project
which I started in 2007 we work up in
northern Kenya in a place called Samburu
we work with the local communities to
try and increase their tolerance towards
predators and try and reduce the
resentment that they have when they lose
their livestock and we have a program
called warrior watch which is our
ambassador program that we started in
January 2010 warriors are the ones who
are out in the field every day they’re
the eyes and ears they see wildlife on a
daily basis yet they’re not really
involved in wildlife conservation
decision-making so we decided to see if
they would be interested let’s see if we
could change this let’s see if there
might be a way we can involve them in
conservation so we approached them and
we called five Orias to a meeting
initially they were very suspicious and
they said why we didn’t called it what
have we done wrong and we said you’ve
done nothing wrong we want to see you
know we want to talk about animals and
Wildlife and their faces lit up and they
said you know no one’s ever asked us
that before we would like to so we said
ok let’s let’s try this out we would
love your wildlife information sightings
we would really encourage you to become
wildlife ambassadors what would you like
in exchange from us and they said we
would like education we’ve never been
given the opportunity to go to school so
we don’t know how to read and write we
would like you to teach us the basics
now we’ve taught them how to read and
write they have GPS units pocket
binoculars and they’re out in the field
every day collecting information on
wildlife using their gps’s they fill out
data sheets now and they come back to us
every Sunday with these data sheets
filled out on all the wildlife sightings
they’ve had over the week
they have camera traps a whole group of
them now have their own camera traps so
they’re able to put them out in their
home areas and they look at it as a bit
of a competition every Sunday when they
come back they see they say you know I
got a striped eye you know my camera
track what did you get on yours and they
all compete to see who gets the better
images and this very much helps with our
research objectives so we started off
this program in January 2010 with five
warriors and now almost three years
later we have 16 warriors who are really
actively engaged in conservation and
they’ve really become wildlife
ambassadors in this area
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