This 10 minute documentary describes the work of the Kilimanjaro Lion Conservation Project. FLL were commissioned by the project to create a short film that could be given to potential funders and interested members of the public. One of the project biologists (Seamus Maclennan) was chosen to narrate the film, which gives it the "personal" feel that the creative brief required.

The particular challenges of this assignment were that the finished product had to be compact (less than 15 minutes) and yet convey the complexities of lion conservation and research in east Africa. In addition, all filming (and much of the editing) was done in very remote locations, often without access to electricity.

About KLCP

The Kilimanjaro Lion Conservation Project was established in March 2004 in Maasailand, southern Kenya. Local conservationists believed that lions were being killed at unprecedented (and unsustainable) levels, and that research into the lion-killing was urgently needed. Dr Laurence Frank of the University of California (Berkeley) was asked to head a research team based on a Maasai group ranch near Amboseli National Park. Funding was sourced for the group to begin researching livestock-lion conflict in the area.

The short-term goals of the project are to quantify the depredation of Maasai livestock by large carnivores, and to understand the motivations of people in the area who continue to kill lions. An exciting multi-disciplinary approach is being used, incorporating sociology, economics and biology. In the longer term, the project hopes to find solutions to the current crisis in which Africa is rapidly losing the last of her lions.

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