Why save African lions?
As a top carnivore, lions often function as a keystone species, and, as such, play a key role in structuring and preserving biodiversity. Top predators play a role in regulating prey species which, in turn, help shape habitat and plant communities. Understanding and conserving lions, therefore, is essential to maintaining healthy ecosystems and protecting biodiversity.
The African lion is currently listed as “Vulnerable” and “Locally Endangered” on the IUCN’s Red List of Endangered Species, meaning that they face a “high risk of extinction in the wild” and are a high priority species for wildlife conservation. Remaining individual populations are small, isolated, and decreasing. By working with people living with lions, we hope to help secure their long-term survival.
Help save African lions! Your gift to the Lion Conservation Fund will directly support conservation and research of African lions and help habitat restoration programs as well as conservation education programs and initiatives in local communities in Kenya. Join the Pride today.
In addition, your donation helps local indigenous African communities develop sustainable livelihoods that support conservation goals such as habitat restoration, prevention of wildlife –human conflict, and anti- poaching efforts.
Thank you for your support.
Make a One-Time Donation to LCF
Make a Recurring Donation to LCF
WHY HELP LOCAL PEOPLE?
Many of problems facing wildlife can be linked to poverty. People who are struggling to survive often have few options to support their familes and often resort to engaging in unsustainable practices that harm habitat and wildlife. In addition, those who live with wildlife often experience the most direct and severe impacts of wildlife conflict.
At the Lion Conservation Fund, we work with communities to help alleviate poverty, develop environmentally and wildlife-friendly sustainable livelihoods with minimal impact on traditional cultures, and embrace local communities and individuals as conservation partners. We help people, become stewards of the natural world around them by incorporating traditional knowledge with scientifically proven practices. In return, people in compliance with sustainable conservation practices benefit through our many community programs.
Our programs include:
Make a One-Time Donation to the KARE Program
Make a Recurring Donation to the KARE Program
100% of funds go directly to emergency response. We have no administrative costs as we are a volunteer-based organization. If you wish to support a specific LCF project or program, please note that on your donation form. Please see our What's New section for recent updates on issues and programs for communities and wildlife. We ensure all donations are used for the purpose designated. Thank you!
PLEASE CONSIDER DONATING TO THE SAMBURU EMERGENCY FUND
Anonymous Donor Pledges $10,000 Challenge Grant
for the Samburu Emergency Fund!
An anonymous donor has recently pledged to match all donations to the Samburu Emergency Fund
up to a total of $10,000. Please help us reach this goal!
To speak with someone about giving, email us at info@kenyalions.org
or make your donation on the link above.
Over the past several weeks, Kenyan government forces have launched a series of ongoing assaults on the indigenous Samburu people in the remote northern region of the country, using helicopter gunships and armed ground forces to attack several villages. The government forces confiscated all the communities’ cattle, leaving them with no food source. A widespread famine has now emerged in eastern Samburu. This is due to the loss of thousands of cattle during these violent attacks, compounded by the severe drought and a nationwide maize shortage--a direct result of the illegal sale of the country’s maize supply. A cholera epidemic has also emerged and many survivors of the massacre have untreated, life-threatening injuries from gunshot wounds, shrapnel, burns, dehydration, and other injuries.
We are working to respond quickly to this crisis by providing emergency response provisions such as food, water, medical supplies, and other critical services to people in the most remote locations of northern Kenya, where foreign aid and relief supplies are unavailable. The Samburu, who were once nomadic and moved with rains, have been forced by their government to live on group ranches without alternative resources for surviving the harsh drought conditions. While this region has always been impacted by drought, some experts believe that climate change has increased their frequency, severity, and duration. We have established teams to search for displaced persons who fled the massacre and to deliver supplies, such as dry milk and other provisions.
The Samburu people are in imminent danger of dying by starvation and untreated injuries, and they need immediate assistance.
Thank You,
Tina M. Ramme
President, Lion Conservation Fund and Conservation KARES
