Living with Carnivores!

Follow this link to hear Professor David MacDonald of WildCRU talk about "Living with Carnivores" and the Long Shields project on a BBC radio pod cast

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b036v092

Brent

Is there a more culturally important animal than a lion?

This is a question I like to ask people and one that I ponder all the time.
Is the LION the most culturally important animal on earth?

Think about it for a while or go through your home and count how many lions images you can find.
I did it the other day just fixing myself a sandwich and I found at least 5 in the cupboard alone. They were on sauce bottles, coats of arms, boxes of matches and......my personal favourite.......Lion Lager!

When we came down from the trees we met LION and our relationship has been unbroken ever since.
On cave walls in France we see them, guarding ancient gates at the Imperial palace, football and cricket teams are named after them, the lion of Judah, the sphinx, Peugot vehicles, etc etc etc

Where we live the lion was said to bring rain and if you heard one calling from a particular area that meant a bumper harvest, our local chief told me recently that it was taboo to kill a lion when he was a child.

It is my intention to count as many lion symbols, statues and images as I see during the London marathon and I will publish the results on this blog afterwards. Try it yourself today...you will be amazed!

A much younger me after much "Lion tracking" in London!

I have even heard of a drive to get the lion listed as a World Heritage species because it means so much in our history, our present and our future.

Brent

Useful tips!

Some useful tips if you are training in wildlife areas!

• When running past fresh elephant dung (covered in flies) - breath through your teeth!!
• When prey animals ahead of you on the road are "alarming", don't assume its you they are worried about!
• If you are running in a group, try look healthier than the rest and avoid the back of the pack!
• That banana that you hid behind the tree for your half-way snack may not be there when you come past!
• Zebra striped running shorts are a no no!

Donations welcome!

Ok people here we go!
It's just 51 or so days left until the big day so I have added a link at the top right of the page to make donating as easy as possible. Just follow the link to Oxford's Giving account and follow the directions. Please email me at brent.conflictcats@gmail.com with details of your donation so it can be alocated to the Long Shields and thank you very much in advance. I will run my heart out for both lions and the men and women out there protecting them so give generously!
Yours

Brent Stapelkamp

He just couldn't help himself!!

Indicator indicator, or as we civilians call him....the Greater honey guide, is a bird "we" have known for millenia. That is a royal "we" obviously but our species has come to us him and visa versa. A symbiotic relationship! In Africa this family of birds will lead men to bee-hives literally bush by bush and wait while he raids the hive. Nothing is free of course and so the story goes..you have to leave him his share of the spoils or else next time he will lead you into a lion or cobra!

I had my first encounter like this the other day when I was running. I was doing just a 7 km run the other afternoon when, over a David Grey track playing in my ears, I heard an alarm call from what I took to be a squirrel. I kept running with just a quick glance in that direction and saw nothing.
 I ran to my halfway point, turned around and headed back.

As I reached the same spot where I had heard the call, I heard it again but this time coming from the other side of the road. I couldn't imagine that a squirrel would have crossed the road so I looked up into the tree and saw the Greater honey guide. It dawned on me that he was calling me. With a loud chirping that sounds a little like a box of matches being shaken from side to side he now flew high above me and into a tree ahead. I kept up my pace up and as I passed his tree he flew out again and landed in the next one ahead. This continued for about a kilometre and a half before he thought better than to lead a man dressed only in little black running shorts and clearly not after honey!


On this continent, as the birthplace of mankind, I love to explore the idea of these ancient relationships. Man and Lion have known each other since "day one"and this relationship between man and bird is equally intriguing albeit a little less conflicting.


follow this link to hear a greater honey guide calling: http://www.xeno-canto.org/77495



Brent

 

Shupi - the lion

Cast your eye down the page and you will see a post I did a few weeks ago where I ran into a lion. The photograph I posted is of him sitting in the bushes by the roadside.
That lion is now called "Shupi" which means "trouble". About a week after our adrenaline filled encounter we started getting reports of livestock missing in the forest and cattle coming home with scratches...that sort of thing. We immediately suspected that it was this young male as adult lions rarely injure livestock without killing it. We guessed it was a young inexperienced lion and he was our prime suspect.
In a more recent post about the call of the road I inset a photo of his tracks in the communal lands, so we have been on his trail for some time.

Shupi's tracks in the mud

Well it all came down to one night at the end of January when we spend 9 hours calling him and finally managed to catch him. We put a collar on him and he is now as much a part of the Long Shields project as I am. Welcome Shupi!

We now, using the almost real time gps data that his collar sends, harass and chase him with vuvuzelas and fire-crackers wherever he is in an area he shouldn't be.....it has worked very well and as far as the marathon goes I am calling it "Cross training!"

A local man joins in the chase with a vuvuzela

                                                            Brent