Maasailand Preservation Trust

In late 2008 Maasailand Preservation Trust was approached by the eight Maasai elders selected to educate the next generation of warriors – across the entire Amboseli-Tsavo ecosystem – to their role in Maasai culture and how they are expected to behave in the 21st century. This turnover in generations and the education of the new warriors occurs only once every twelve years or so.

“Because of the compensation we have received from PCF in recent years and how that has changed our way of thinking,” their spokesman told an MPT trustee, “we would like to teach this new age-set of warriors to never kill lions . . . to never kill any wildlife.”

What these elders were telling MPT, incredibly, was that – for the first time ever – the communities of Amboseli-Tsavo were prepared to teach their next generation of warriors – 8,000 young men across the ecosystem – that their future way of life was going to be far more about conservation of wildlife and habitat than the killing of lions. MPT’s highly successful project, the Predator Compensation Fund, that provides payment to livestock owners when lions and other predators kill them, has made this opportunity possible.

The “fathers of the warriors”, as they are known, are called Menye Layiok in the Maa language. And that is the name of MPT’s project to — for the first time — assist a Maasai community of approx 70,000 individuals to write a new chapter in their history and stop the killing of lions possibly forever – right in the historic cradle of the lion’s existence.

“To preserve our culture and live successfully in the 21st century,” a highly respected elder said at the first Menye Layiok meeting in June 2009, “there are things we must leave behind. Killing lions is one of those things.”

What the elders have proposed instead is competitions between the various warrior “manyattas” (their warrior village for the period of their warriorhood) to prove bravery and leadership, test warrior skills, yet learn vital skills and knowledge to prepare them better for the uncertainties of the future. Subjects are to include ecology, conservation economics, preservation of habitat, and better livestock husbandry, among other things.

MPT is prepared to travel down this unknown road with these “fathers of the warriors” and these 8,000 young men who are facing a world far more complex than even the previous generation faced. A world in which pressures to make a living and preserve critical resources like land, water, trees, grass, and livestock must be considered in the context of pressures and threats never before imagined.

There is no present sponsor for this project, which will involve education meetings, the creation of educational materials, and the facilitation of competitions on Maasai culture and conservation, as well as the introduction of organized sports as a test of leadership and skill.

A “Maasai Olympics” is being planned in which warriors will test themselves against their peers in spear throwing, running, and jumping, skills of an Olympic nature that also define the Maasai warrior. Prizes will be given and the winning “manyatta” will receive a prize bull for breeding and upgrading the quality of their cattle, a rare treasure.

There is much more to say about this project and its history so far. This is only an introduction.

Are you interested in helping MPT to fund this project? Please let us know now.

And give us your thoughts about how best to make this initiative successful.
Menye Layiok is the chance to remove lion killing from the culture of the Maasai forever – through their own elders’ vision and leadership — and, in its place, provide education and other forms of competition far better suited to the survival of the Maasai culture and their pastoralist way of life in the 21st century.

We do not know where this initiative will lead – as no one has been in this position before, to our knowledge. Please join us on this important “safari” into new cultural territory that is intended to benefit the Maasai people, to preserve their way of life and their land, and to conserve and protect the highly-threatened great mammals of this Earth.

MPT Team

Dear Friends of Maasailand Preservation Trust,

Most of you will have either seen or heard about the terrible drought that much of Kenya has suffered from this year. Well the good news is finally the Chyulu Hills have seen a few inches of rain but the majority of the Amboseli-Tsavo ecosystem has yet to see more than a few drops and the Amboseli Basin is still dry as a bone.

The people of the ecosystem still have to endure this long and painful wait, watching desperate livestock and wildlife succumb. Wildlife has fared badly with elephant, zebra and wildebeest are suffering a huge loss in numbers. However, the cattle herds that are so valuable to the Maasai are the hardest hit. Some estimates go as far as depicting an overall loss of 80%. With the overwhelming majority of the Maasai of Amboseli-Tsavo reliant on their livestock to survive and many have lost all that they owned the social repercussion of are horrifying.

Sadly those worst affected are the Maasai students. We have a steady stream of students from all three tiers of education visiting the Trust office pleading for money for school fees, as their parents have no more cattle to sell. The majority of these students were all set to sit their end of year exams and are no longer allowed to until they clear their outstanding balances. We fear that this will mean, in many cases, that they will fall off the educational ladder.

A contribution of approximately US$ 700 sponsors a high school student for one year. Since inception, over 100 local sponsored students have graduated from primary and secondary schools, colleges and universities. The Trust has done all it can and we are appealing to everybody to help us get these children back into school to avoid loosing the next generation of educated Maasai.

Yours faithfully,

Richard Bonham
Chairman
Maasailand Preservation Trust

I’m afraid we have been quiet on the blog of late but that does not mean we have not been busy! Our Mbirikani Community Game Scouts have been continuing their desnaring patrols and claims for the Predator Compensation Fund are increasing steadily as the livestock herds return to the hills to eat what grass there is after the small amount of rain we have had — which is shockingly much more than other parts of the ecosystem!

However, the outlook is not all bleak. We have just recieved fantastic news from Chris Ellyatt, a recent guest at Ol Donyo Wuas lodge. Chris came to visit us in our office one hot day not too long ago expressing his interest in contributing to our Education Support Program. We were very happy to hear this and even more so today when we received a whopping £2,500 donation!

THANK YOU CHRIS!!!

This money will go towards providing much needed materials for the Enkijape Primary School. Chris and his two children visited the school last month where they met teachers and students who highlighted just how little the government had provided them in terms of basic teaching aids such as textbooks, posters and stationary. All at Enkijape are extremely grateful for Chris’ kindness and await the arrival of the much need equipment which is being ordered in Nairobi. Stay posted for pictures when the order arrives but for now here is a picture of Enkijape students and Headmaster Joseph Ntoipo with some books donated earlier this year!

Chris’ generosity is greatly appreciated but we must highlight that more funding is needed. We are fighting to counteract one of the worst social repercussions of the drought, the devastating effect it has had on families’ abilities to pay school fees. This has left hundreds of children suspended from school until their fees can be paid. Every day we have desperate children that walk as far as 45 kilometers to visit our offices and plead for financial assistance. We have a file thick with applications and any further help would be invaluable to continuing their education. We are calling on readers of this blog to donate what they can to help provide this generation with the education they so desperately need!

But for now we would like to publicly pass on a thousand thank yous to Chris and his family! Your generosity means so much to all of us and will help the students of the Mbirikani Group Ranch get the education they deserve! We hope you can visit us again one day and see for yourself the difference this will make.

Asante sana!

The MPT Team

After the positive response we got from our introduction to our Predator Compensation Fund we thought we would provide you with some more facts and photos of PCF in action!

Below are some photographs and selected information from the bi-monthly payout for the Ogulului Predator Compensation Fund that took place on the 4th of November this year. Ogulului Group Ranch surrounds the world famous Amboseli National Park and is an essential dispersal area for the wildlife of the Amboseli-Tsavo ecosystem.

The Maasailand Preservation Trust was brought in to implement PCF on OGR after the success of the Mbirikani Predator Compensation Fund. Coupled with the fact that in the two years prior to the start of PCF lions were recorded being killed at a rate of nearly two a month. Since the fund was put into effect a year and a half ago only one lion has been killed within the Group Ranch.

The Ogulului Predator Compensation Fund is one of two PCF projects run by MPT and the protection it provides is essential in conserving the Amboseli-Tsavo ecosystem.

The payout for the September – October period paid compensation to just under 400 Maasai herdsmen who had lost livestock to predators within the confines of OGR. 749 head of livestock were depredated in this period with the overwhelming majority being sheep or goats (701). This figure can be explained by the drought, as cattle herds were taken to greener pasture and therefore unable to be hunted by predators.

One point of interest is that although KES 750,000 (approx. USD 10,000) was paid out for this period only KES 22,000 (approx. USD 300) was spent on compensating livestock killed by lions. Not only does this show how badly lions have historically been persecuted but also how PCF provides protection for other predators — including leopards, cheetahs, hyenas, jackals, caracals, servals & more! If any of these predators are found poisoned, speared or unlawfully killed within the Group Ranch then the local community will not receive payment for this period unless the culprit is brought to justice.

In response to our previous blog on PCF we were asked how we deal with people who try to abuse the system. A key part of the system is penalties – one of which is the KES 7,500 (approx. USD100) fine imposed for false claims. This occurs when a claimant deliberately tries to deceive PCF staff. If by the end of the next two-month period the claimant has not paid this fine then it will be deducted from his/her future claims or if we so choose, it will be deducted from the claims of the members of his zone. We find this acts as an effective deterrent for misuse of the system.

We have only provided you a brief and partial description of the rules and regulations that comprise the compensation program here in Maasailand. Another key feature of PCF is the 50% deduction implemented when livestock is killed by hyenas — hyenas almost exclusively kill “lost” livestock, i.e., livestock left unattended in the bush overnight. This penalty encourages better livestock husbandry. More information on the rules and regulations of PCF will follow, if requested, but for now we are happy to report that the payout day went very smoothly and all went home satisfied.

Ache,

The MPT Team

The Predator Compensation Fund

In 2003, in response to an imminent – and virtually certain – threat of local lion extinction, MPT, in close collaboration with the local community, conceived a first-of-its-kind predator compensation programme, the Predator Compensation Fund (PCF).

The intention of PCF was to better balance the costs and benefits of living with wildlife and thereby replace conflict and retaliation with tolerance. This novel conservation strategy remains one of the most far reaching projects to come out of MPT. It was the first project of its kind implemented in Maasailand and has proven so successful that it is now operating on two neighbouring group ranches.

Livestock rearing in Maasailand is the most vital activity for the community’s subsistence. Consequently, predators are under constant threat from the livestock owners who view them as a threat to their stock and kill them in retribution for livestock losses. In an eighteen-month period from late 2001 to early 2003, twenty-two lions were documented by game scouts to have been killed on MGR, one-half by spearing and one-half by poisoning. This was a small scale representation of a much larger threat to the African lion population that is currently suffering a well-documented decline in numbers. To put this into context, recent numbers have shown that whereas 20 years ago there were 200,000 lions in Africa, today numbers are known to be falling and are already below 30,000, with recent extrapolation showing only 2,000 of these residing in Kenya. On top of this a recent report has stated that the use of lion parts in Chinese traditional medicine is on the increase.

The Predator Compensation Fund is not designed to simply reduce or stop the killing of lions and other carnivores; it is attempting to replace conflict with tolerance.  Even more importantly, its mission is to replace the perception of conflict with a different perception.

PCF is a “joint venture” between MPT and the Group Ranch Community, with the community paying a proportion (30%) of each claim from their wildlife-based income.

The PCF was formed on a “living” agreement which works around a dynamic system of penalties and incentives.

This works around a dynamic contract that compensates the local community for livestock lost to predators not just in return for a complete cessation of the killing of lions and other predators but on an agreement that penalises other community members when it is violated. This system is constantly under review from a steering committee of local elders and MPT.

PCF’s principal purpose is to prevent or, at worst, greatly diminish the killing of lions and other carnivores and eliminate any justification for a culture of poisoning. However, a secondary purpose of improving livestock husbandry in enforced by a secondary penalty system. Discounts are applied to compensation for depredated livestock when either a boma (tradition Maasai livestock pen) fence is below minimum agreed requirements or when livestock is deemed to have been “lost in the bush” (unattended) before it was killed by a carnivore.

False claimants are fined.

One key aspect of PCF is that it acts as an umbrella, providing protection for other persecuted species such as hyena, cheetah, leopard, wild dog and jackal.

The success achieved by the PCF in its first six years (2003-2008) is arguably unprecedented in African conservation. Since inception, lion killing has virtually stopped on Mbirikani Group Ranch (MGR) within a Maasai community of 10,000 people. The two Predator Compensation Funds run by MPT are continuing to function efficiently and provide protection for the ecologically essential predators of the Amboseli-Tsavo ecosystem. The proof of PCF’s effectiveness is shown in the figures below.

* in the 18 months prior to launch of PCF

** in the 2 years prior to launch of PCF

*** in the 2 years prior to launch of PCF

the above figures show that livestock owners on MGR have killed only four lions in more than six years. During this same period, over 110 lions have been killed on the neighbouring group ranches outside the PCF programme. This same MGR community that now protects lions killed 22 animals in just 18 months prior to the introduction of PCF.

The program continues to capture the hearts and minds of the Maasai community through collaboration and consistent performance of PCF, thus shifting the economics of daily life in a positive direction and fostering a broad-scaled commitment to conservation in the 21^st centaury.

This method is a very cost effective way of protecting predator habitat, costing just 25 US Cents to protect an acre for one year. We are calling on all able people to please donate generously and support this great project.

The MPT Team

We at MPT believe that helping to improve the quality of life of the Maasai people will ensure the sustainability of the ecosystem. Therefore we work both alone and in collaboration with other organizations to put in place a three-pronged community education and healthcare program. This is done by providing healthcare to the community; sponsoring schools and teachers and providing education scholarships to those who would otherwise be unable to afford them; and through a supplementary environmental education program.

An initial partnership, in 2002, between MPT and the Ann and Robert H. Lurie Foundation, helped launch the Mbirikani Group Ranch Mobile Health Project, which focused on providing free quality healthcare to the Maasai people of Mbirikani Group Ranch. Under the direction and financial support of the Lurie Foundation, the project quickly expanded to include a fixed-base medical center and comprehensive outreach programme. The project became an independent registered U.S. public charity known as AID Village Clinics, Inc. Today, the Mbirikani Clinic serves Mbirikani Group Ranch members and surrounding communities comprised of approximately 70,000 people. Inspiration for the project came after Ann Lurie visited Ol Donyo Wuas Lodge and its surrounding communities.

Improving the quality of education in Maasailand is a key focus of our work. MPT