Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

 My name is Fiona Tande. I am 25, turning 26 this July. I study community development at Daystar University in Kenya.

My passion is absolutely animals, our planet and everything in it! It amazes me just how lucky we are to live on earth and hence why I'm adamant about protecting animals and their habitat.

Being a Kenya-Maasai, I'm particularly hard pressed to fight for lions given the ancient relationship my community has enjoyed with the big cats over millennia. Lions have decreased drastically in the last 50 years, from an impressive 450,000 to a shocking 15,000! I can not, WILL NOT allow this to happen on my watch, and neither should anyone else.THAT is why I'm doing the jump,to show just how far I'm willing to go to stand (or in this case,FALL) for these magnificent animals.

 So please dig deep and donate now.

 

A short story........

 "The Last Lions" by Fiona Tande.

Mashujaa day 2012 started out well as could be expected. It was a beautiful Saturday morning and the plan was to meet up with Wildlife Direct’s Athi-Kapiti Cheetah project coordinator, Michael Mbithi, who had agreed to meet with me to show me what he does in helping control human-wildlife conflict which mostly entailed dealing with big cats. We therefore set off for Konza mid-morning and arrived around midday when we met up with a local farmer who had called Michael for assistance. We drove to his farm and assessed his boma to see the kind of work that would need to be done for him. Michael’s initiative is primarily set on securing cattle sheds (bomas) with lights which act as a deterrent of potential predators from attacking the locals’ livestock. The project has been hugely successful and calmed the farmers off of retaliation. This is of course until that day.

As we were having lunch late that afternoon, Michael received a call from his local cheetah scout who reported that a group of armed Maasai men were going after a cheetah who had allegedly attacked their livestock. Immediately Michael gathered us in the car and sped off to the site he was told they were last spotted. The situation was nerve wrecking as Michael was trying to navigate through the bush as fast as he could to get to the animal before any harm befell it. Upon finally catching up with the Maasais who were chanting war cries in the nearby distance, nothing could have prepared us for the gruesome scene that played out before our very eyes. Pinned under the chassis of a 4X4 pick-up truck was a lion [not cheetah as had been earlier reported]. The Maasais had gone after the animal with their cars and run over it to stop it in its tracks. They were now proceeding to hack at it with machetes and spear it to death when we got there. Never before in my life had I witnessed such an ugly scene. I was literally brought to tears as we tried to plead with the men to stop though to no avail. Instead of the majestic roars I’d grown accustomed to hearing from lions came low whimpers of an animal that was dying in excruciating pain. The men eventually took off and we were left standing over the lion as he took his last breath, right before its eyes went black signaling life had vacated its body. It is a sight that is forever etched in my mind. This budding male with the world at its feet, tomorrow’s future king had his promised glory snuffed out in the blink of an eye. According to prior reports the reason for this heinous act was that the lion had attacked a herder and killed a sheep but as it turned out, nothing of the sort had taken place. It had been a simple case of spotting the lion and then orders were given to kill it on sight.

 

Although wrong, this is not uncommon. There are many cases of unprovoked killings such as those that take place in the Mara where lions are deliberately poisoned using furadan. In an effort to understand the motive behind these killings, I took a step back from the whole issue and tried to look at the bigger picture after analyzing both sides of the story.

Faced with dwindling land and increasing pressure from hunting, lions are approaching the brink of extinction. Humans are front and center primarily responsible for the fight our big cats have to put up. Encroachment is a key issue being faced by our last remaining lions. A single pride of lions requires up to 100 miles of hunting spaces. Currently we stand at a staggering 7 billion human beings and in the next 15 years or less,the human population is estimated to reach a whopping 8 billion people.These figures are alarming to say the least. Couple that with poaching and the fact that lions have virtually no protection under government mandate or through international accords and we have a recipe for complete annihilation of these majestic creatures within our generation. That means that it is quite possible that by the time our children get children of their own, lions will be nothing but stories told to them by those that actually had the privilege of being around in their lifetime, and those aren’t so many either. 

Lions in Kenya are estimated to be around a mere 2000 yet their numbers are still being threatened due to their constant run-ins with humans which has created the worst human-wildlife conflict in recent history. In this year alone, we’re estimated to have lost close to 20 lions to retaliatory killings alone. Most of these numbers however go unreported unless they are hard hitting news like the ‘Kitengela Six’. In addition to the challenges lions face to survive out in the wild, the statistics aren’t very encouraging. The main lion killers are Maasai pastoralists who have lost their livestock to the lions. Coming from the Maasai community myself, I constantly find myself at a crossroads as these are my people and I want to defend their honor but I also have the moral obligation to speak out for these defenceless animals. 

The Maasai community has been known to co-exist peacefully with animals from time immemorial. Maasai lands are the last remaining places in Kenya where you can find these majestic creatures in their natural form which should speak to our commitment to preserve nature as it should be. Many other communities don’t enjoy the wildlife they used to in the past as most of them have been hunted to oblivion. That in this generation, many Maasai children can still talk of seeing lions and wildlife at in its grandeur is a HUGE deal making it upon my community to hold on to that aspect as dearly as we’ve held on to our culture over time. With that said, land is a treasured commodity and in recent years due to high population growth, property has continued to be sold off especially in these areas where not many were found; Narok, Laikipia, Kapiti, Kajiado, Suswa, the infamous Kitengela just to name a few. This in turn has led to the rise in encroachment with the fencing off of private land which inadvertently interferes with the wildlife corridor. In the end, lions, among other animals, find themselves in human territory. What they’ve known their whole lives is suddenly no more. The only way they know to survive is hunt and they will do that indiscriminately. If a cattle boma happens to be within its usual hunting range, the logic thing for it is to hunt the cattle. These animals don’t know any better, they’re simply adapting, something ANY of us would do in their situation. On the other hand, cattle are the primary source of income for Maasais to date. These are the livelihoods Maasais depend on to take their children to school, feed their families and cater to their basic needs. So when a lion comes in and sweeps through nearly half of their livestock, they’re understandably angry. You would be too if all your life savings were stolen in one go. Only that in the Maasais’ case, this happens over and over again and despite their efforts to report these cases to the relevant authorities, their cries keep falling on deaf ears. Is it maybe because cattle are not significant as lions? Probably. In any case, Maasais take matters into their own hands and sometimes what that means is going after the culprits while in other cases, they tackle the problem before it gets out of hand which speaks to the numerous ‘unprovoked’ lion killings. The Maasais have realized that their grievances aren’t going to garner much ground with those that have been entrusted to keep the peace but neither will they sit back and watch everything they’ve worked hard to build be destroyed in one sitting.

So those are both sides of the coin. What is the common link though? The authorities. KWS not only has a duty towards conserving our precious wildlife but also managing it and what that entails is intervening when wildlife begins to get out of control. Relocation of marauding lions and the establishment of compensation funds for lost livestock are just a couple of ways to deal with human-wildlife conflict. There are many more ways to combat these issues and fortunately, private citizens, like Michael, are trying to do their part in helping curb the situation.

The lion’s share of the task-so to speak-still remains with the relevant authorities who are better suited to manage the growing conflict. They however need to be proactive rather than being reactive. They can’t sit back all the while knowing that lions could attack a cattle shed or in elephants could ravage a plantation only acting when these animals are put down by angry farmers. MANY of these cases can be averted but the government needs to act NOW! Times are changing fast and policies that worked before can hardly get us by today. They need to be revised and new ones implemented to effectively deal with the situation at hand. Only then can we really be of use to the animals that are desperately counting on us for the survival. The government needs to step up to its mandate and act fast before it’s too late.

50 years ago, 450,000 lions roamed Africa. Today, there are around 15,000 left. In the documentary movie The Last Lions directed by husband and wife filmmakers and conservationists Derek and Beverly Joubert for National Geographic Society, the documentists also touch on this issue by following one of these few remaining lions, a lioness named Ma di Tau (mother of lions) in an effort to tell her story in a way that can resonate with people. It is from watching this docu-movie and my own experience with the majestic creatures that I saw it fitting to write this story and give the same haunting title. Ma di Tau is a young lioness that has the uphill task of trying to ensure the survival of her cubs in Botswana, one of the last few settings where lions can live in the wild. It is heartbreaking to watch her struggles and to realize also the part we play in wiping out these big cats.

Years from now, our children will ask one of either two questions; they could ask, “Where were they [us] when the lions were facing extinction? Were they so blind to the declining numbers? Didn’t anyone point them out? And if they did, what level of indifference led them to carry on till the unthinkable happened!!!” or they could say, “How brave of the generations before us to have fought to sustain lions during a time when the act in itself was unpopular! It is thanks to them that the generations long after us will not have to hear of stories about these majestic animals, rather see them with their very eyes.” So on what side of these statements will history find YOU? Be part of the movement, make a difference. Ask YOURselves-if not us, then who; if not now, then when….  

 

"Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened."-Anatole France

Fiona Tande