Category: Cattle Compensation, Hyenas, Lions, Maasai Community, Snares | Date: Jun 05 2008 | By: Kimojino

Ranger Wilson Naitoi is here at Serena Station this morning, and informs us that the resident leopard near Kipas Village (Enkereri), has been creating a lot of problems. On the 3rd June, the leopard attacked a mother goat at Olkurruk, and you can see in the picture below the injury sustained to the neck. The bones were broken, and the wind pipe was also torn so that she could only breathe through her neck. Eventually she died by herself, once she was dead the Maasai found that she had twins inside.

Goat with puncture wound in neck.

On the same day the leopard killed two more goats at Kipas Village. It was in the daytime when the boys were grazing the goats. The leopard first killed one and then another, after which the boys tried to scare him away but he did not want to go. The boys wanted to keep the goats as evidence so that we could take the photographs, but the leopard himself wanted to fight the boys for one of the goats. The boys kept up their shouting and screaming and so the other boys from the village came and helped chase the leopard away.

Two goats dead at Kipas Village

It would have been very easy for this group of boys to kill the leopard, but thankfully they did not. They are however extremely agitated as the cases of goats killed is increasing. One of these goats killed at Kipas village had a young kid of only 1 week old. There is no chance that this young one will survive.

We are still as of yet unable to recommence the cattle compensation scheme as we have very little money ourselves. We hope that tourism will return in these coming weeks, but in the time being we still have to do what we can to fund raise to continue with our basic park operations, such as the anti-poaching and de-snaring patrols.

On Tuesday I reported that we had found a hyaena with a snare around his neck, well I am sad to say that yesterday we found that the hyaena had died. We know that now the poachers are still buying their time for when the migration returns in full force, and so we must be ready and have the resources to prevent the incredible damage that they are able to cause.

Hyaena dead from snare.

One final interesting thing that I would like to share with you all is the video of the two male lions fighting yesterday near Egyptian Goose. I first saw a mating pair of lions just a short distance away from the road, and drove up to take a closer look. When I arrived the female left the male, and it looked like she wanted to hunt. A short time later the male also arose but left in the opposite direction, roaring as he walked.

I continued on my journey to Serena Station, and just a couple of minutes away I saw another mating pair of lions next to the road. When I stopped the car to take a photo I could hear the lone male now making his way towards where we all were. I waited for about twenty minutes and then he arrived. Click here to watch what happened next.

Male Lions Fighting

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And finally, please also see if you are able to make a donation today. We hope that these are the last few weeks that we have to ask for money as the tourists should hopefully soon arrive. But right now, today, I have just visited the lodge nextdoor and they had only one tourist arrival.

So you can see we still need to raise all that we can, and we are incredibly thankful for all your support so far. It is only by your support we have managed to make it through these difficult months.

Thank you so much to everyone, from everybody here at the Mara Conservancy