( audience applause )
Shivani: I’m a fourth generation Kenyan
and I live in a tent
in one of the most beautiful landscapes in the world,
Samburu in Northern Kenya.
It is here that I protect one of Kenya’s
most iconic species; the lion.
In under a century we have lost
over 90% of our planet’s lions.
The situation in Kenya is just as serious.
We are down to less than 1,000 lions in our country.
What’s happening?
Why are we losing so many lions?
In Northern Kenya, where I live and work,
lions are running out of space.
As human numbers increase
and more livestock comes along,
there’s more pressure that’s being put on lions.
Unfortunately, when this happens, lions go out,
they come into close contact with the local people
and they cause conflict.
Livestock such as camels, donkeys, cows,
they’re much easier to kill than a wild animal,
like an impala or a gazelle.
This happens often in our area.
Lions target livestock
but this causes a lot of anger and resentment
amongst the local people
whose livelihoods depend on this livestock.
They often will go out and retaliate
and they will shoot, spear or poison lions.
Together with my team in Samburu
an incredibly dedicated, passionate and enthusiastic
group of elders, warriors and women.
We run the Ewaso Lions Project.
Our mission is to promote the co-existence
between lions and people
that share this landscape.
We do this through a number of community
and awareness education programs.
One of our main ones
is a program called Warrior Watch.
Warriors are young men aged between 15 to 30.
The warrior in the middle in this picture
his name is Jeneria.
He’s a very special young man who’s my assistant.
He came to me many years ago and he said,
“You know Shivani, my age mates,
my fellow warriors,
why are they not involved in conservation?
We could do a great job,
if we just involved all of them.”
I said, “Let’s bring them on board.
Let’s see, if they want to be involved in conservation.”
He brought over five warriors from his community
and he asked them.
He said, “Do you guys want to be involved
in conservation?
Do you want to learn about
why it’s important to conserve these animals?”
They said, “Yes, of course.
We are the eyes and the ears in the bush.
We see wildlife everyday.
Absolutely involve us.”
Thanks to the Big Cats Initiative
we started with five warriors
and now we’ve grown to over 15 warriors
working in this region.
They have various roles.
One of them is to patrol their areas.
They all live in their villages,
they go out during the day,
they see what’s in the area, they scan it.
If there’s predators in the area,
they communicate that message back to the herders
who are out there with their livestock.
We’ve taught them how to use GPS’s,
so as they’re herding their livestock
they can tell us what they’re seeing.
What amazing wildlife animals they see during the day.
Both sightings of predators and also tracks.
You can see in this picture Precy,
one of our warriors.
He’s got his finery, he’s got his knife, his bracelets
and right next to his knife
is a little GPS unit with a pen.
This is all our warriors.
They go out dressed like this everyday.
This is their normal way of life.
We asked the warriors,
“In exchange for all this fantastic wildlife information
that you give to us,
what would you like in return?”
And they said education.
“We’ve never had that opportunity
to go to school.
We don’t know how to read and write.”
We started a Sunday school with the warriors
five years ago.
Now I’m very excited to say
that all of our warriors can read and write,
both in English and our national language Kiswahili.
( applause )
We evaluated this program a couple of years ago
to really understand how it was working in the community
and we were so excited with the results.
They were very positive.
They showed that the local people’s attitudes
towards predators have greatly improved
as a result of the warriors working with them.
The warriors also felt much more socially empowered
as a result of this project.
The women came to us and they said,
“You’re working with warriors,
you’re working with elders and children.
Where are we?
We want to be involved in this project as well
and where is our school?
We want to learn how to read and write as well.”
We started a Saturday school
with the women just last year
through a new program we have launched
called Mama Simba, which means “mother of lions.”
I’m very excited to say that just in a few months,
much shorter time than the warriors learned,
( audience laughing ) the women…
( applause )
The women learned how to read very quickly.
They’re very excited about it.
They monitor all the predators
that come to their villages at night
and they write down little notes about who’s come
and how many times they’ve come in a week.
We did conservation training with the women.
We taught them the importance of lions and predators
and why conservation is so essential in this area.
We showed them the different tracks
because it’s all the predators that come to visit them
at their villages in the evenings.
The women said to us we know the tracks,
we know the difference between hyena
and lion and leopard tracks
but we’ve never actually seen these animals.
We’ve never had a close-up encounter with a lion.
We hear them at night, we see their tracks
but we’ve never seen them.
We said we’re gonna change this.
We’re gonna take you all on safari
so you can get to see
what tourists from all over the world get to see.
Here we are.
( audience laughing ) We took all the women on safari
into the beautiful Samburu National Reserve.
And of course, the number one animal
the women wanted to see were lions.
We were a little worried
because by 11:00 that morning
we had seen nothing, actually,
and the women kept saying to us,
“Where are the lions?
Do they really exist?
We know they exist because we hear them
but you keep talking about them.
Where are they?”
We worked really hard and we were very lucky.
We managed to find two of our beautiful lionesses,
Nanai and Nabulu, feeding on a baboon.
The women were very excited watching this.
At the time, Jeneria, my assistant,
he was in another car.
He had a lady next to him who had a little baby.
The baby was getting a little bit agitated
so he said to me he’s gonna drive off
and leave us with the lions,
and he would let us know later where he is.
About 10 minutes later he radioed me
and he said, “Shivani, come quickly.
Bring the women.
Something amazing is happening.”
I said, “What?
What’s more exciting
than watching these lions eating a baboon.”
He said, “Just come, trust me.”
I told the women, “Hang on.
We’re gonna go drive to where Jeneria is.”
And off we went, and we found him
and right next to him
was an elephant giving birth.
It was an absolutely amazing experience.
I have lived in Samburu for 12 years
and I’d never seen this.
What’s even more incredible,
is there’s a relationship between Samburu women
and elephants.
As we watched this birth,
the Samburu women in our cars
were talking to the elephants.
They were talking to them in Samburu.
They were saying tomononi ai ,
which means–
It’s an endearing way of talking to someone.
They said, “We know you’re in trouble,
we know you and lions,
you’re all facing a lot of problems.
Now we know
and we’re going to work hard to change that.”
It was an incredible experience but word spread
that we had shown a lot of women
an elephant giving birth
and we got messages from the community saying,
“Take us on Safari.
( audience laughing ) We want to see elephants give birth.”
Took a lot of convincing to tell them,
every time you go on safari in Samburu,
you don’t actually see an elephant give birth.
Every year we hold Lion Kids Camps.
Unfortunately, children in rural Kenya
don’t have positive experiences with wildlife.
Most of their experiences are very negative.
They get to see a cheetah killing a goat,
they get to see the remains of a camel
after a lion’s preyed on it.
They have never really experienced wildlife
the way I was lucky to experience
when I was a child.
My parents took me on safari.
I will never forget my first cheetah sighting,
my first lion sighting.
My first cheetah sighting happened to be in Samburu
when I was just eight years old.
That has stayed in my mind
and that is why I do what I do.
We have really invested in these children.
We believe they are
the future conservationists in this region.
They are the future wardens, tour guides, rangers
and just wildlife leaders.
Our Kids Camp changes this.
We bring wildlife to the children closeup.
We give them a much more positive experience.
Most of these children
had actually never seen a lion
so we show them lions.
We bring them right next to these lions
so they can get to see
what people from all over the world get to see.
These two little kids–
This picture was taken just a couple of weeks ago
at our second annual Kids Camp.
These little kids, Saiwana and Ltonos
they were sitting next to me and they were saying,
“We really can’t wait to see our first lion,”
and we did.
We were actually very lucky.
We saw 10 lions that day.
At the back in the picture
you’ll see a little brown blob
and that’s actually a big male lion.
These little kids saw him
and their faces say it all.
This is the first ever lion they’ve seen
and they kept whispering to me, “Simba, simba,”
and this is what gives us hope.
Loirish is a lion we monitored in 2008.
He was the father of many cubs
in both Samburu and Buffalo Springs Reserves.
He had control over two prides.
Unfortunately, Loirish got into a lot of trouble last year.
He was leaving the safety of the parks
and going out and killing a lot of livestock.
He killed more than 10 camels just in three months.
We were very worried about this.
We said we have to put a collar on him now
and so we can really monitor his movements.
Every time he leaves we will be able to see
that he’s out there approaching livestock,
we could warn the herders.
This is Letoiye, one of our warriors,
and Loirish was his lion.
He was looking after Loirish.
Unfortunately we were not given much time.
Loirish was killed last year in September.
His head was cut off, his legs were cut off
and his head was burned
so they would remove the signs of the collar.
Letoiye, who is in this picture,
he for weeks was in camp
saying to himself and talking to all of us saying,
“My warriors killed my lion.
How could that have happened?
I will make sure this doesn’t happen again.”
This was devastating for our project
but everyone was even more determined
to make sure that our lions
don’t have the same fate that Loirish had.
On a more hopeful note,
Naramat who is a female
that we hadn’t seen for many years,
for about three years.
We were driving through Samburu last year.
We heard the guinea fowl squawking.
We knew there was a predator in the area
and we saw this female.
Jeneria and I, we know the lions very well.
It takes us a couple of seconds to identify them
but in this case we were stunned.
We’re like, “Who is this lion?”
We pulled out our ID books, our iPads
which has all the sketches of the lions,
their ears, their whisker spots,
and finally we identified her.
We said, “Wow this is Naramat.”
She left three years ago.
Where has she been?
This is where she’s been.
She had been outside the parks.
She was surviving with the local people
and what’s even more exciting,
she came back with a little male cub.
A little one year old male cub who we named Lentim.
This shows that lions do survive outside
with the local people.
I get asked this question a lot.
“Is there a future for lions in Northern Kenya?”
Absolutely there’s a future.
Our work has shown that.
We had 11 lions a decade ago
and now we’re monitoring over 50 lions in our area.
It’s because of the local people’s involvement.
With them invested in conservation,
there’s definitely a hope.
We have an event which we have every year.
It’s the Running for Lions half marathon
and now the local people are running
in the name of lions.
Every year the number of participants increase.
I think they hear that the prizes are very exciting.
It’s prizes of goats.
( audience laughing ) So the number of people keep coming
and women too.
For the last three years we’ve had
more than 20 women come to run for lions.
This is our camp, our field base camp
in the Westgate Conservancy in Samburu.
It’s an open area, it’s very remote.
We have no running water, no power,
no internet, no phones.
We have wildlife walking through.
We have one little animal that’s not very wild.
He’s a little dog.
Keeps us very well entertained in camp.
It’s in this camp seven years ago
that we set up base.
For many years we actually never heard lions in our camp
but now over the past year,
we can hear lions in our camp,
and this is incredible.
This is because they feel safer.
The people are much more willing to live with lions,
they’re tolerant of them
and now lions feel that.
They feel safer and we can hear them at night.
Today, I ask you.
I ask you to support these initiatives
that are ongoing in Africa,
and to spread the word about the lion crisis.
We then have hope that we will continue
to hear lions throughout the African wilderness
for generations to come.
In Samburu we say ashe oleng.
Thank you very much.
( audience clapping )
( outro music )
”
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