{"id":627298,"date":"2026-09-17T08:16:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T08:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/627298\/"},"modified":"2026-09-17T08:16:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T08:16:08","slug":"kent-project-helps-lions-in-the-wild-and-kenyan-villagers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/627298\/","title":{"rendered":"Kent project helps lions in the wild and Kenyan villagers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A Kent-based charity is funding a &#8220;pioneering&#8221; scheme helping villagers in Kenya and discouraging them from killing lions in the wild.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Chris Macsween runs Lion Aid from her home in Dover. The project was devised together with the Maasai communities, who administer it themselves. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The charity&#8217;s Merrueshi Project helps villagers to protect their livestock, discouraging them from retaliatory killings of wild animals.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Macsween described the scheme as &#8220;the biggest joy of my life, allowing rural communities and wildlife to coexist harmoniously&#8221;. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">She added: &#8220;It has never successfully been done before and it&#8217;s a wonderful project.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The charity has so far equipped six villages bordering the Amboseli National Park on the Kenya-Tanzania border and aims to expand to more.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The former accountant said: &#8220;Lions are so special because they are the iconic predator.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;They are at the top of the food chain and they are losing their lives.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Kent-based charity is funding a &#8220;pioneering&#8221; scheme helping villagers in Kenya and discouraging them from killing lions&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":627299,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[61,60,82,263],"class_list":["post-627298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=627298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627298\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/627299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}