In the fight against wildlife poaching, there is no weapon as effective as a human being. And Big Life’s female rangers are proving that they can do the job just as well as their male counterparts, as one bushmeat poacher recently discovered the hard way.

Each Big Life ranger has their own intelligence network including families, friends, and neighbors, all of whom are eyes and ears on the look-out for threats to wildlife. And women’s social networks are different than men’s.

In this case, information about a bushmeat poacher reached Big Life’s female ranger unit operating in the Kimana Conservancies. Following the tip, the team tracked the suspect to his farm where they worked with the Kenya Wildlife Service to arrest him. Three snares were recovered, along with meat from a dead Thompson’s Gazelle.

Conservation and anti-poaching work has traditionally been dominated by men but these women, alongside the many others working as rangers in Africa, are showing their own communities (and the world) that protecting wildlife is everyone’s business.

Photo: James Suter / Black Bean Productions

2020 threw a curveball at the entire world, including Big Life’s education programs.

Late last year, Big Life’s conservation education program – which helps develop the next generation of environmental stewards by incorporating conservation education into classroom curriculum – was overhauled and improved to include ranger activities. To help students better understand the critical work rangers do, activities both inside and outside the classroom were developed including a tree planting exercise with rangers, visiting a ranger outpost, and a junior ranger program, among others. Big Life’s conservation education officer, Michael Tipaai, was able to reach 1,406 students and 18 teachers in delivering the first two lessons of the year.

Then the pandemic hit. Schools closed on March 15 and the country came to a standstill for six months while Kenya raced to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Big Life’s offices reopened September 1st, and Michael quickly got to work adapting the education curriculum to engage students in their home villages. In five village visits, 193 students in grades 7 and 8 were reached.

Kenya’s government had previously announced that schools would remain closed until 2021, but shifted their decision in October for grades 4 and 8 only, due to critical preparations needed for national exams next Spring. In order to focus our resources and maximize the benefit of our curriculum, Big Life will focus on grade 8 students currently in school through the end of the year, and will resume the broader program as soon as students are fully back to school in the New Year. 

All of our programs have had to adapt in one way or another this year, and we’re so grateful for the support of our partners through this process including Chester Zoo on curriculum, The Thin Green Line Foundation on the Junior Ranger program, and to LUSH Fresh Handmade Cosmetics for their long-standing support of our conservation education program.

If you conducted a quick survey of your friends to ask what their favorite animal is, at least one of those is probably going to say “cheetah.” Cheetah are popular for good reason. In addition to being aesthetically stunning creatures, they’re Earth’s fastest land animals.

Unsurprisingly, this species faces a number of challenges. Habitat loss is a huge threat to all wildlife species in East Africa but particularly for cheetah who require larger hunting territories than other species. Shrinking habitat also means they come into conflict with people. Particularly in the Amboseli ecosystem, where pastoralism is a key way of life, cheetah are notorious for capturing livestock as easy prey.

In the third quarter of 2020, Big Life compensated local livestock owners US $26,569 for the loss of 51 cows, 666 sheep/goats, and 3 donkeys, and cheetah were responsible for 64 of those kills.

Our Predator Compensation Fund (PCF) works by compensating livestock owners a portion of the value of their livestock lost to predators on the condition that no predators are killed in retaliation. We usually talk about it in context of lion, which are one of the key species the PCF helps to protect. But it’s also working to protect cheetah.

Just last week, one of Big Life’s co-founders and Board Director Tom Hill spotted four new cheetah cubs near his residence in the Chyulu Hills. And anecdotally they’ve been seen with increasing frequency across the ecosystem, including in Kimana Sanctuary.

Cheetah need all the help we can give them to keep them thriving. There are estimated to be only about 1,000 individuals spread across Kenya and Tanzania, and their population numbers are declining. They are listed as “vulnerable” and extinct in 30+ countries within their original geographic range.

Please consider making a donation to Big Life today in honor of International Cheetah Day and help us keep these iconic cats alive.

Photo: Jeremy Goss

In the 3^rd quarter of 2020, Big Life rangers found and destroyed 127 snares. In October, an additional 38.

Unfortunately for three lions, there were a few we didn’t find until it was too late. 

The lions were probably not the intended target. These were snares set to catch ungulates for the bushmeat trade. In this case, the lions were bycatch. That’s the term for it in the marine world – bycatch – when unintended creatures are caught while fishing for a different species.

The lions would have been caught while walking along well-used wildlife paths, possibly lured toward the snare lines by the sound or scent of other animals already caught in the snares. Regardless of whether they were the targeted species or not, lion body parts have value to poachers and traffickers on the black market.

Their carcasses were decomposed by the time Big Life rangers found them, but it was immediately obvious what was missing: their teeth and claws. Those parts are believed to have uses as charms and in traditional medicine both locally in Africa and in Asia.

Big Life’s intelligence department immediately got to work to find those responsible, and it wasn’t long before the trail started to warm up. An undercover informer heard news of lion parts for sale, and working with the Kenya Wildlife Service, a bust was set up. The traffickers suspected nothing until it was too late, and two men were arrested with 20 lion claws and 4 canine teeth from one of the carcasses.

Rangers are still actively trying to track the body parts from the other two lions but it was a success to break the chain in at least one case. We won’t stop chasing, and will make sure that those involved in the illegal wildlife trade are never safe.