When Barry Horn and Jan Devine first visited Big Life Foundation’s area of operation in 2018, they felt a call to action.

Having traveled extensively across Kenya, Barry and Jan have had the opportunity to experience the magic of Africa’s wildlife as well as the complexities of its conservation challenges. They were inspired to make an impact through their company, Quagga Accessories LLC – aptly named after a plains zebra that lived until the 19^th century before excessive hunting resulted in its extinction.

Determined to helping ensure Kenya’s wildlife – elephants, lions, rhinos, and more – avoid the fate of the Quagga, a partnership between Quagga’s Green Label and Big Life Foundation was born.

Quagga Green is a line of women’s accessories (hats, scarfs, bags, and more), made from sustainable materials, such as recycled polyester, lenzing modal, and organic cotton. Quagga Green accessories can be found at Whole Foods Markets across the United States, with 1% of every purchase in 2019 donated to Big Life Foundation.

Big Life Foundation is proud to be partnering with a company that is not only helping to protect wildlife and wild lands, but is committed to empowering shoppers to do the same.

Birthdays mean nothing to elephants, but they mean a huge amount to those of us who are dedicated to protecting the species. Each year of life is another year of success, and this year marks a big milestone for one big elephant.

Tim, one of Amboseli’s largest and best-known elephants, is turning 50.

It’s remarkable that Tim has gotten to this age, given that each day he faces just about every threat possible to his species. Sadly, this has been the case from early on. Within his first few years of life he lost three of his relatives to suspected poaching incidents, followed by his mother Trista, who was speared to death by poachers when he was only 8. He would continue to lose more family members as time passed, including his sister Tallulah, speared in 2003.

Tim has since come to represent all of the different values, positive and negative, that humans place on an elephant’s life. To poachers he is a target, to farmers he is a costly nuisance, to tourists he is a marvel, and to conservationists he is a symbol of hope that our efforts are working.

And he has certainly had some of his own bumps on the way to 50. In the last five years, he has been speared twice by angry farmers during his night-time raids into farmlands. Most recently, in November of last year, Big Life worked with Kenya Wildlife Service and Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in a monumental life-saving effort to rescue Tim after he got stuck in a mud-pit deep in farmlands.

We have no doubt that Tim will continue to keep us busy in future, but for now we are very happy to hear that he has come into musth, a hormonal state that requires a healthy body condition and is usually associated with mating. Given that he hasn’t come into musth for the past two years, this is a good sign that he has recovered from all of his recent ordeals.

It also means that he will be spending his time looking for females rather than keeping Big Life’s rangers busy in the farms at night, and with any luck will be passing on those incredible genes to the tuskers of the future!

We thank all of the partners with whom we work with to protect Tim, and especially the Amboseli Trust for Elephants, who have been documenting his life since he was 2 years old.

Thanks also to all of our supporters who make our work possible. In honor of Tim’s 50^th year of life, we ask that you consider making a donation to Big Life Foundation. Your support enables us to protect Tim when he leaves Amboseli National Park and moves onto community-owned land. What better gift than one that helps to ensure we can celebrate Tim’s birthday for years to come?

If you would like to support us, please click here. 

Photo: Ryan Wilkie

By Tom Hill
Co-Founder,  Big Life Foundation

In late October of 2008, eight Maasai elders walked down the driveway to my cottage in the Amboseli-Tsavo-Kilimanjaro ecosystem, unannounced, and made me a proposition.

They said they wanted to “give something back” to the conservation organization that Richard Bonham and I had begun more than ten years prior, the Maasailand Preservation Trust (MPT became Big Life Foundation in 2010). 

“Your Predator Compensation Fund has changed our attitudes toward living with lions,” one elder said, “And we want to do something in return that you could never do.  We want to take lion hunting and lion killing out of our warrior culture, once and for all and make it a taboo. We can do it because we are the menye layiok (cultural fathers and teachers of the next generation of warriors).  But we need your help.”

Another elder then asked, “Don’t boys around the world compete for girlfriends and recognition through sports?”

When I answered yes, the elder replied, “Then why couldn’t our boys do the same?”

And thus, the idea of the Maasai Olympics was born.

                                                            * * * * *

Ten years on, it is a joy to reflect on the results of the Maasai Olympics. The Finals were recently held on December 15^th and was our fourth biennial event. The Maasai Olympis really runs for an entire year leading up to the finals and is comprised of a series of track and field events, combined with a broad-based schedule of educational sessions held to promote the conservation of wildlife and habitat and to help preserve the Maasai way of life.

In the 2018 Maasai Olympics Finals, a strong crowd of local Maasai residents turned up to watch all four warrior teams compete for medals, cash prizes, a golden trophy, and a prize breeding bull.

The Mbirikani warrior team won for the third time in four tries over the Rombo, Kuku, and Eselengei warrior teams.  Throughout the six events – the rungu (a warrior club made of wood thrown for accuracy), the javelin (thrown for distance), the 200, 800, and 5,000-meter running events, and the high jump (Maasai warrior-style from a standing position) – the quality of competition was very high. Going into the final event, the high jump, any three of the four warrior teams could easily have won the overall championship and taken home the prize bull and the golden trophy. 

There were also two events for women, the 100-meter and the 1,500-meter race, and the winners received the same medals and cash prizes as the male warriors.

Mbirikani’s warrior team prevailed once again with 15 points to Rombo coming second with 11.  The competition came down to the very last jumps without knowing who would win.

What is so rewarding to see over the past 10 years is how this collaboration between Big Life Foundation and the regional Maasai community has become an accepted part of Maasai culture here, from within a people who have no previous cultural history with sports.

The Maasai women and girls, almost without exception, come to these events dressed magnificently in their traditional clothes and jewelry, as do many of the warriors, which includes ochre face paint, elaborate jewelry, and traditional hair designs.  It is a truly festive Maasai scene.  And when the warriors jump in the final event, the other warriors in attendance chant, like in all traditional Maasai ceremonies, creating a pulse that is definitive.

When the competitions were completed, Patron of the Maasai Olympics, David Rudisha, the two-time Olympic 800-meter gold medalist, world record holder, and easily the greatest Maasai athlete of all time, placed a medal around the neck of each winner on an Olympics-style winner’s stand as the crowd gathered around closely and applauded.  The local Member of Parliament and the Governor of Kajiado County gave out the team prizes and made speeches reinforcing the conservation message and thanking Big Life Foundation for our work here.

We were blessed this year with a great family of sponsors. The National Geographic Society was a major sponsor --for the third consecutive time, in addition to wonderful supporters Dereck and Beverly Joubert and Great Plains Conservation.  The UK’s Chester Zoo gave their Scholarship Award to the best overall conservation manyatta for the fourth consecutive time.  Two great supporters of Big Life, the Baty family of Seattle and the Tate family of Houston were major sponsors for the second consecutive time.  Two new sponsors with world-recognized histories of protecting lions in the wild joined our Big Life family this year:  Born Free Foundation and Disney Conservation Fund. In addition to Zoo Basel, Safari Professionals of the Americas, and Marleen Groen.

I don’t think things could have gone much better. To everyone who helped make it possible, thank you. We look forward already to the games in 2020.                        

Most of us learn hard lessons when we’re younger. One teenage boy recently learned a very important lesson in Kimana. 

It starts like any coming-of-age story: a young teen had been struggling in Nairobi, so his parents sent him to live with family in the country for a bit of perspective and fresh air. It wasn’t the easiest adjustment, and in his boredom, he noticed a small yellow airplane on an airstrip, left briefly unattended. Curiosity got the best of him. New to the area and not knowing better, he spotted a backpack in the rear seat and plucked it right out, amazed at his luck.

His luck very quickly soured, however. Because it turned out that the plane was Big Life Foundation’s Super Cub, and the bag belonged to Big Life’s Head of Security, who had stopped in for a meeting with Kimana Sanctuary’s community rangers on his way to the office.

When the meeting ended, Craig returned to the plane to find his backpack missing. Annoyed by the delay, but amused by the boldness of whoever had taken the pack, Millar didn’t stress. He simply called in Big Life’s tracker dog unit, who were already nearby for a training activity.

Didi, Bonnie, and Clyde immediately picked up the scent and were eager to get to work. They took turns tracking. First Clyde, then Bonnie, then Didi, then back to Clyde. The teenager had covered nearly 7 km by the time the tracker dogs caught up with him at his home, where he promptly and very sheepishly handed over the backpack.

The dogs got some good exercise and practice for more serious crimes, and the young teenager will think twice about petty theft in the future. 

Thank you for considering a donation in support of our tracker dog program.