Kenyan wildlife rangers are fitting lions with GPS collars to prevent them from being slaughtered by Maasai herdsmen.
Livestock farmers track and kill the predators to avenge the loss of animals, threatening the existence of 35 to 40 lions at a park on the outskirts of the Kenyan capital.
The collars alert rangers when the predators venture out of Nairobi National Park and enable them to be tracked down and returned.
Spokesman Paul Muya of the Kenya Wildlife Service, said that rangers will be able to move to areas where the lion have encroached using coordinates sent by the collars and return the animals to the park.
The collars send GPS coordinates by text messages to rangers’ mobile phones
Two lions were fitted with collars on Saturday, Mr Muya said. Collars will be fitted to 10 lions from different prides.
It comes after Kenyan conservationists implanted 1,000 microchips into rare rhino horns.
In a bid to fight back against increasingly sophisticated hunters, the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) is using the chips along with the DNA records to track the decreasing rhino population and their valuable horns.
The technology, gifted by charity World Wildlife Fund (WWF), is designed to protect the remaining 1,000 rhinos in the country as well as to collect evidence to use against poachers in court.
Experts have warned that if the current trend continues, more than 1,000 rhinos could be poached by 2014 and Kenya alone saw 23 of its rhinos killed last year.
The number of rhinos being poached in Kenya has risen dramatically in recent years and the reason is their valuable horns, that can sell for £40,150 per kilogram, which is more valuable than gold.
While trading of the horns was regulated in the 1990s and poaching figures fell sharply as a result, there is increasing demand for the horns in South East Asia after a Vietnamese politician claimed the ingredient, used in traditional medicine, cured his cancer.
Courtesy of in2eastafrica.net