Counting Samburu's vanishing Lions

The population then numbered 38. This year, the population is only 20, which is worrying, for it represents almost 50 per cent decline in the short span of five years.

“We can only speculate about the decline in population,” she continues. “I suspect that many left the area because when a pride gets too big, young males have to leave to found new prides.

In 2005, there were seven big males in the area and they all left. A few came to West Gate and some went to Kalama (another community conservancy north of Samburu).

“In August, I saw three big male lions in West Gate. It’s the first complete sighting of lions in this conservancy. The community is excited because nobody had complete sightings here. It was always of a lion disappearing in the bush — so one just caught a glimpse of the tail or ear. I suspect that these three could be part of the pride of seven that left the reserve in 2005.”

This Data Collection will help piece together lion movement in the area. With this new sighting, there is keen interest by the community to expand the conservancy. At this point, it covers 8,000 of the 35,000 hectares of community land.

“At first when I saw the three, one looked like a female because it had no mane. But when it stood and started walking, he was unmistakenly a male,” continues Bhalla.

As with the Tsavo lions, being maneless is thought to be a response to the environment.

Supporting a huge mane is fine in the relatively cooler grasslands of Maasai Mara, but it helps to shed the mane where temperatures soar to 40 degrees Celsius. Another theory is that when lions prowl through the dense thickets, it leaves little room for the mane to grow full length.

Bhalla will compare the whisker spots of this population to the 2005 pictures of the cubs in order to be able to make positive identification.

A lion’s whisker spots are as unique as human fingerprints or a zebra’s stripes. Judith Rudnai, who worked on the lion population in Nairobi National Park in the 1970s, was the first to use this technique of identification for lions. Since then, it has become the norm.

“So far, l estimate the lion population in the Samburu/Buffalo Springs ecosystem to number between 15 to 20 lions. In West Gate, which is the non protected area, the estimate is between 10 and 15 and in Shaba, nobody knows,” says Bhalla.

Counting lions in the wild is not an easy job, especially if the terrain is full of thorn scrub and thickets and where the sun bakes the earth dry. For most of the day, lions will stay in the shaded thickets, a necessity since they do not have sweat glands to control their body temperatures. Hence, it’s not uncommon to see lions panting most of the time — it keeps them cool.

Furthermore, there is another challenge in the unprotected areas. “Lions behave differently in these unprotected areaS. They are not habituated to cars and so at the slightest sound, they hide or move away.”

Lions used to vehicles, as in Maasai Mara or Samburu, on the other hand show more confidence, posing for photo shoots and ignoring the vehicles that mill around them.

Accompanied by her lion tracker, Risila Lelengu, a Samburu warrior of the West Gate conservancy, the two leave camp every morning by 5.30.