KENYA: Ritual hunting has put lion numbers in serious decline, writes Rob Crilly in Mbirikani, southern Kenya
Kenya's most famous lion prides face extinction if Masai warriors do not abandon their traditional slaughter of the animals, according to conservationists in the east African country.
More than 100 lions have been speared to death in a chunk of southern Kenya known as Masailand by warriors proving their status or protecting their cattle from lions in the past five years.
"It appears as if the Masailand lions are in such serious decline that the entire population may disappear within very few years," concludes the study by the Kilimanjaro Lion Conservation Project, which includes scientists from the University of California.
"Although the lion population seems to be in rapid decline, the number of killings has been increasing annually. It would appear that people are putting greater effort into lion killing."
The study covers an area in southern Kenya around Amboseli and Tsavo national parks, which both attract thousands of tourists each year.
But the affected area also includes the Masai Mara, where the BBC films its popular Big Cat Diary series, and the Serengeti, over the border in Tanzania.
The figures suggest that Kenya's total population of lions is now little more than 2,000.
Seamus Maclennan, one of the report authors, said southern Kenya was one of the last remaining strongholds of the big cats. "It is home to a substantial portion of Kenya's lions and that is because of the game that is here," he said.
"That is because of the way the Masai have used the land. It has been used in a way that allowed them to co-exist with big carnivores but that is slowly changing." For centuries, Masai communities used ritual lion hunts as a way of blooding their warriors.
A handful would be killed each year by young Masai eager to show that they were man enough to stalk and spear the fearsome predators.
Successful hunters would return with lion paws atop their spears and with manes wrapped around their shoulders to find that they could have their pick of that year's brides.
But now a growing human population is spreading out into areas that were once wilderness, said Maclennan, making the killings unsustainable.
The research team has been monitoring eight lions on the Mbirikani Group Ranch.
Three have been killed by Masai since the study began. "This ranch only supports one male and a few females," said Maclennan at the end of a frustrating weekend trying unsuccessfully to spot his radio-collared subjects. "That's just a fraction of what it should be able to support."
The killings are illegal but few Masai have been arrested and fewer still prosecuted. Too often evidence simply goes missing in Kenya's inefficient and corrupt judicial study, concludes the report.
But Daniel Ole Osoi, a senior Masai leader, rejected the study's assertions, saying that ritual killings of lions were a thing of the past.
"We have realised that lions are part of our heritage and they also bring in tourists and money," he said, adding that lions were killed only if they have become a threat to human life or if they have been stealing livestock.
Others tell a different story.
"People kill a lion and then say it was a problem when it was not," said Pastor Naruaengop as he squatted in the shade of an acacia tree in the middle of the Mbirikani Group Ranch.
"It's part of our culture to kill a lion. It makes everyone know that you are a brave man and it means that the women become very interested in you."