【文稿】环球见闻录 March 25th

Hello and welcome to Postcards, a show helping you reach across borders without actually taking a trip. I'm Shen Ting. Kenyan wildlife authorities are fitting lions with a collar that alerts rangers when the predators venture out of Nairobi National Park. It is hoped that the scheme will stop farmers, especially Maasai herdsmen, tracking and killing lions that roam and kill livestock, which is threatening the existence of 35 to 40 lions in the park on the outskirts of the Kenyan capital. Here's Ning Yan with today's first postcard from Kenya. Reporter: Lions are some of the world's most charismatic big cats. But their status as top predators on Kenya's savannahs brings them into conflict with livestock herders. Killing lions in Kenya is a crime, but Kenyans who lose cattle to big cats frequently retaliate. Lions in Nairobi National Park are at risk since the resort is not completely fenced. The sprawling city has a growing population, and humans and cats are increasingly coming into conflict. But the Kenya Wildlife Service, Safaricom Foundation, the Institute of Environmental Sciences of Leiden University and the Leo Foundation are hoping to change this. They have set up a megaphone and play the sounds of an abandoned buffalo calf to lure the lions near them. The veterinarian prepares his tranquilizer dosage and loads it into his gun, aiming and shooting a dose strong enough to make a grown male lion sleep long enough for the scientists to put the GPS collar on. After a few minutes the dosage takes effect and the lion falls to the ground. The team fit the tracking collars and take various measurements from the sleeping lion. Charles Musyoki is a head scientist for species research and conservation at the Kenya Wildlife Service. "The future can now be only bright for the lions of Nairobi National park as well as the surrounding communities because we are going to arm ourselves with information that is going to serve the dual purpose of achieving conservation of the lions as well as resolving the human and lion conflict." Musyoki says collars will be fitted to six lions from different prides. "We will initially collar two lions and expect to increase the number to about six in the next one and a half to two years. So that will be a big enough sample for us to be able to understand how the lions behave, how the lions utilise the park and the surrounding areas. It will generate enough information for us to understand the pride structures, the ages, sex structures which is very useful information in trying to determine the long term viability of these populations in Nairobi's National Park is." The information gathered will support Nairobi National Park and the adjacent area's lion management strategies. Benjamin Nkavu, Deputy Director of Kenya Wildlife Service, says that new legislation recently passed by the Kenyan parliament may also help deter farmers from killing lions. The new law means that livestock farmers will be compensated by the government if their cattle are killed by lions, in an effort to encourage herders not to kill the predators. "We have also the predators, especially the lions, their numbers are going low, we are conscious about that, human beings especially Kenyans have been looking at the predators as a nuisance because they are really going into their livestock - but with the new act there will be compensation for livestock, so we hope that that will reduce the killings of these predators and that is our concern right now." The lion tagging project is expected to run for a period of five years. Scientists hope it will raise awareness amongst local people and tourists on lion movements and provide advice for how to prevent livestock from being hunted down for food by these big cats.