On The Job With Kenya's Team Lioness

Amid diminishing tourism revenues and funding for wildlife conservation efforts during the coronavirus pandemic, the Maasai women hired to fight poachers at Amboseli National Park have had to stay on the job 24/7 for months.

- Gemma Zoe Price

As Maasai ranger Sharon Nankinyi heads back to camp after completing her second 20-km foot patrol of the day through the Kenyan bush, she’s more than ready for bed.

Nankinyi is one of eight women in Team Lioness, a unit within Olgulului Community Wildlife Rangers (OCWR), which patrols the Maasai OlgululuiOlolarashi Group Ranch — a 1,500-sq-km horseshoe of community-owned lands that almost encircle southern Kenya’s Amboseli National Park.

Usually, the ranger unit works for three weeks before getting a week off, completing one or two patrols a day, where they mark the locations and activities of elephants, zebras and other wildlife even as they guard against poachers.

But shortly after the Covid-19 pandemic was declared on 11 March and workers around the world were asked to stay home, the OCWR cancelled all leave and asked the unit to stay at work indefinitely and to cover more ground per day than before. As Kenya prohibited interregional and international travel, and tourism and local markets disappeared, the risk of desperate people hunting wildlife to feed their families was very real.