The Maasai Wilderness Conservation Trust's Simba Scouts are a special group of eight Maasai warriors paid to patrol Kuku Group Ranch. As they traverse the Ranch they record animal sightings and locations, especially lion sightings, and they report this data at the end of every month. This data is extremely useful to the Trust's Conservation program, allowing our staff to develop better population estimates, wildlife movement patterns, and much more.
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| The Simba Scouts study MWCT's new wildlife monitoring protocol during our recent training in Iltilal. |
When the Simba Scouts were initially employed by MWCT, they were
illiterate because they never had an opportunity to attend school. In fact, without MWCT they would likely have never been able to find a
paying job. In the early stages of the program the Trust provided our Simba Scouts with
basic training in writing their names and
simple numbers, so that they knew the basics and could aid in
data collection.
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| A Simba Scout demonstrates how to properly identify and count various animals found on Kuku Group Ranch. |
A while ago we gave our Simba Scouts
further training, building upon their initial data collection skills. Seeking to further
standardize the Simba Scout's data collection, MWCT worked with the
Zoological Society of London to develop a new
wildlife monitoring protocol. We proceeded to teach the Simba Scouts this new protocol, as well as giving them training on how to properly use
GPS systems on their walks to provide more
accurate location data and allow us to make more
effective management decisions.
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| Our Simba Scouts are now better equipped and prepared to go into the field and return with valuable information. |
Finally, we provided the Simba Scouts with user-friendly
wildlife data recording sheets, showing pictures of each animal so they are able to collection information on animal
population and distribution using the most scientific and relevant methods. Teaching the Simba Scouts GPS operation and systematic data collection was quite the
challenge, but the training went very well and was a
huge success - we are proud of our newly
empowered employees!
