Working with the Samburu community & Google Earth to protect Kenya’s lion habitats
By Devaja Shah, Program Manager, Google Earth Outreach
In northern Kenya, women belonging to the Samburu community are planting trees and clearing invasive species in lion habitats so that the lions can safely hide in thick bushes. The women’s lion habitat recovery efforts are made possible due to Ewaso Lions, a community-led conservation group dedicated to promoting peaceful coexistence between lions and people.
Just 10 years ago, this mutual coexistence with lions was difficult to accomplish in Kenya — and certainly among the Samburu, a semi-nomadic community of pastoralists, known for a strong tradition of warriorhood. In the past, the default strategy for local Samburu warriors was to hunt and kill lions that were feeding on livestock. But the spirit of conservation and stewardship is alive and growing in the community conservancies as well as protected areas nearby like Samburu, Buffalo Springs, and Shaba National Reserves. Ewaso Lions works in these communal lands where people, livestock, and wildlife share the same landscapes.
In these fairly remote regions, Google Earth helps the Ewaso Lions team work with local communities to protect lions and conserve their habitats — which, as part of the organization’s conservation programs, has helped increase the number of lions in the 450,000 hectares of protected and community lands from 11 in 2007 to 50 lions in 2022. Ewaso Lions uses Google Earth to track the locations of lion populations, and inform strategies to keep lions away from humans and their livestock.
Creating “lion ambassadors” to raise awareness on conservation efforts
Dr. Shivani Bhalla started Ewaso Lions in 2007 with a simple goal for the landscape: to understand what was happening to the lion population, especially when lions left the safety of the protected areas. Today, the adjacent community conservancies are where the lives of the Samburu and the lions intersect, as the lions have become resident in community lands and co-exist peacefully with Samburus through Ewaso Lions’ efforts.
Toby Otieno joined Ewaso Lions eight years ago, and is now Operations and Impact Director, overseeing project operations and research. One of the organization’s first programs, which Toby co-manages, was Warrior Watch, which improves relations between warriors and lions.
“The community actually shares the community conservancies with the lions,” Toby explains. The warriors use the space for herding livestock, and hence run into the risk of conflict with the lions. Warrior Watch supports warriors to become ambassadors for lions within their communities. The program builds on warriors’ traditional protection role by increasing their ability to reduce human-carnivore conflict.
Google Earth helps track lion movements
Some lions wear GPS collars, which means that Toby can map the movement of lions every morning and visualize where they are within the landscape, all using Google Earth. Toby and the research team then inform the Warrior Watch warriors of the locations of the collared lions, and then the warriors alert the community to the presence of lions in areas where livestock graze — allowing warriors and the community to move their herds to safety. Also, several warriors track local lions on foot every morning, and report the lion locations to Ewaso researchers via walkie-talkie or instant messaging apps. Toby and his team also map and visualize the lions’ locations reported by warriors on Google Earth.
These maps help warriors and researchers visualize and better understand how lions are moving through the community conservancies in relation to local landmarks. “The beauty of Google Earth Pro is that it allows us to match the landmarks seen in satellite images with our local knowledge of the area, making it easier for warriors to navigate to a specific location,” Toby explains. “The satellite images show us the minutiae like the valleys, hills, and even bushes where the lions may be located.”
“Our team can tell other warriors and community members, ‘Don’t take your livestock to this area because there is a possibility they’ll be attacked,’” says Toby. “This way, we are protecting the lions from retaliatory killing, and we are also protecting the livestock. We’re preventing conflict before it happens.”
The communities have learned a great deal from Ewaso researchers about the value of Kenya’s lions, in a process that researchers have found equally inspiring as well.
“We brought warriors to our research camp because we needed their help in naming the places shown on our maps,” says Toby. “The warriors were so excited to look at the satellite images of the lands they knew so well from the ground. They couldn’t believe that you could actually zoom in on the map on a computer and see where their manyattas [homesteads] are.”
Significant increase in lion population
The success of Warrior Watch is, naturally, measured in terms of the impact on lions. Lion numbers have increased over the past decade — — a sure sign that the conflict between warriors and lions has been greatly reduced, aided by Ewaso Lions and its community-led programs.
Ewaso Lions is also tracking changing attitudes about lions and other large carnivores that share the land with humans. In a 2012 survey, when elders were asked if “lions can be a threat and therefore deserve little protection,” 35% agreed. But in a 2017 follow-up survey, only 7.7% of elders agreed with the sentiment — showing improved attitudes toward lion conservation. In that same survey, 90% of respondents said that they would report a dead or injured lion to Ewaso Lions, showing significant trust in the group itself.
The success of Warrior Watch led to the launch of other Ewaso Lions programs connecting the community to wildlife. The Mama Simba program was developed at the request of Samburu women, who wanted a greater role in lion conservation because they culturally believe that wildlife belong to women. The women organize activities such as cutting down invasive plant species, planting trees to increase lion habitats, and grass to attract food sources for lions.
Google Earth also helps with the Mama Simba activities. “We started plotting all the locations where warriors or our researchers spot invasive plants,” says Toby. “The resulting map tells the Mama Simba women where to direct their efforts to remove them, and also helps our researchers understand how these plants behave when expanding their range.”
The impact of Ewaso Lions goes beyond simply counting and tracking lions. Ewaso Lions also expanded their range of impact as they began working in one community conservancy, and expanded to more community conservancies over time. Today Ewaso Lions helps conserve lions across 450,000 hectares of protected areas and community conservancy lands.
“Things are changing,” says Toby. “People are now more tolerant of lions in areas where they graze, so as a result the lions have a larger area to call home. We even have communities who ‘adopt’ and name certain lions. They’re always anxious to hear how their lions are doing.”
Toby and his team are optimistic that the lions and the Samburu community are going to continue to thrive, together. Thanks to conservation, community, and technology, the future of the lions looks brighter.
