While I stayed in Samburu on three occasions I befriended a lovely young Kenyan lady who was researching the Samburu lions. I have kept in touch with her to keep up with what was happening in that area.

Shivani Bhalla took the fall off to travel to London to work on her doctorate degree. I've just heard from her and she just returned to Nairobi this week. On January 2nd she'll be back in Samburu continuing with her lion study.

You can go to www.ewasolions.org to see her new website, and when she gets back to the Samburu region you can keep up to date with her lion studies there.

I wrote to her last night suggesting she connect up to PayPal, WorldPay, Verisign or a secure payment site so that people can donate directly in that manner and she will be looking into it.

Shivani worked closely with Iain Douglas-Hamilton and also has a great interest in the elephants in the area. She also works very closely with the Samburu community instructing them as how to better live with the wildlife they live with. She also works closely with the young people in an educational capacity.

Kenya needs many more people of Shivan's calibre. I know she will do well and will contibute to the betterment of wildlife in the Samburu area.

I took a look at Shivani's site and was concerned to see that she has also posted on poisoning of predators. This is a particularly worrying issue which I have been reading a bit about. Many specialists claim that it is the no.1 threat facing predators and scavengers across Africa. If anyone knows of other incidences like the one described by Shivani, please do let me know. We are following and compiling incidences at the moment to see how we might be able to launch a campaign against this through wildlifedirect.org

Dipesh:

Why don't you email Shivani directly. She is at home on holiday now in Nairobi before returning to Samburu January 2nd. She can be reached at shivani@ewasolions.org. I'm sure she would be glad to get back to you just knowing that you care. She might also put you in touch with other articles or people who could share more information with you. She is an exceptionally nice young lady who deeply cares about Kenya's wildlife and her people.

Thanks Jan,

Did just that last night and hoping to hear from her!

Original von Jan
Dipesh:

Why don't you email Shivani directly. She is at home on holiday now in Nairobi before returning to Samburu January 2nd. She can be reached at shivani@ewasolions.org. I'm sure she would be glad to get back to you just knowing that you care. She might also put you in touch with other articles or people who could share more information with you. She is an exceptionally nice young lady who deeply cares about Kenya's wildlife and her people.

It is not that easy to set up an account with Paypal etc as there are tax issues.
I am looking into this as we want to change Bushdrums in the long run to an organisation where we will hopefully have a pool of money and try help the odd small NGO.
Maybe she can contact Chris and Bev in South Africa; they are both working with lions and have the same common grounds?
I read the book that Bev & Chris wrote; they sent me this book some months ago which was very interesting as well as the articles on canned lions.

Chris and Bev are also members of Bushdrums, so you can send them a PM (private message), if you like. Bev has the username Mori. I would expect them to have records of such incidents.