Laurence Frank
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Member
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Living With Lions
Director |
Laurence has worked on conservation of African predators for fifty years, starting with studies of DDT and related pesticides in African raptors in the early 1970’s. Between 1978-1998, he studied the behavioural ecology of spotted hyenas in the Maasai Mara National Reserve, Kenya, and behavioural and developmental endocrinology in a research colony of hyenas at the University of California, Berkeley.
In 1997, he started work on the conservation biology of African lions in unprotected rangelands, first on the commercial ranches of Kenya’s Laikipia County, later on the group ranches around Amboseli National Park and conservancies north of the Maasai Mara National Reserve. Living With Lions has always focused on two elements: 1) helping pastoralists and ranchers better protect livestock and prevent lions from developing a taste for beef; and 2) biological research on lion behavioural adaptations to disturbance and persecution by people. Laurence has published over a hundred papers on African carnivores. Former Ph.D. students and mentees are prominent among predator researchers and conservationists in Kenya and other African countries. He continues his conservation work in Laikipia, and currently collaborates with colleagues from the University of California, Santa Cruz, on studies of ecological energetics, movements, and predation ecology of lions. |
