Conservation News - Simba Scout Training

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.  

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.

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.

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!

Health Program Update - Community Health Workers

One main outreach of the Health Program is its use of the a network of Community Health Workers (CHWs) to reach all members of the local Maasai community.  These are villagers and citizens who volunteer their time to help the community and are each responsible for a portion of the households in their area, making sure these households have access to the latest updates from the health clinic and follow up regularly with any recommended treatment.  The key to successful outreach by the CHWs is training; this is especially crucial for our planned community-wide survey.

In late July and early August a volunteer from Boston came and stayed with the MWCT, working with us to develop a visual training system for Community Health Workers and beginning the training modules with the CHWs in Iltilal.  Our goal is to train all CHWs on the Group Ranch; the Iltilal CHWs have already completed this process.

The Iltilal Community Health Workers gather for a training session.

The next step in surveying the local community and beginning this outreach is determining which CHWs are responsible for specific parts of the village and making sure no households are missed.  This was the work of this past week, when we met with the CHWs, sat down with maps and Google Earth, and started the work of mapping the village of Iltilal.  It turned out to be an incredibly successful day - we identified nearly all the bomas and households in the village, and the CHWs really enjoyed the mapping process.

This also gave us by far the most accurate Iltilal population estimate since the 2009 census, which we knew was no longer accurate following the extended drought since that time.   The final rough count was 304 households, which equates to roughly 2400 residents.  Furthermore, we were able to identify gaps in coverage by CHWs, and see where we needed to train more to better accommodate the needs of Iltilal.  This process is ongoing, but we've very happy with the recent results!