IT’S JUST BEFORE sunrise when Lucy Serea puts on her military-green uniform, hitches binoculars over one shoulder, and slips her feet into a pair of pink Crocs. As dawn breaks over the ranger base on the outskirts of Amboseli National Park — a 40,000-hectare UNESCO-designated biosphere reserve in southern Kenya — Serea joins 16 other female rangers for a morning jog and stretch. The women sing traditional songs in their native Maa language while they work out in the open grassland. Beyond them, across the border in Tanzania, Mount Kilimanjaro rises from the clouds.

At 9:00 a.m., Serea, a 27-year-old Maasai woman bearing her clan’s traditional circular scars on each cheek and one burned ear, replaces her pink Crocs with combat boots for her first wildlife patrol of the day. This is the daily routine of the members of Team Lioness — one of Kenya’s rare all-female ranger units.

Most days, these women walk long distances, patrolling the 147,000 hectares of community lands around Amboseli that are part of a critical elephant corridor between the reserve and Kilimanjaro National Park in Tanzania. Home to around 2,000 elephants, at least 50 other mammal species, and 400 bird species, Amboseli is located in one of the most poaching-prone regions of East Africa. The rangers monitor elephant migration routes, track wild animal behavior, look for signs of unauthorized hunting such as traps and animal remains, and gather intelligence from community members. In other words, they act as the first line of defense against poaching, including the retaliatory killing of wild animals who destroy crops or harm humans. What’s more, they do this taxing work in the face of entrenched prejudices within their communities where the assumption is that a Maasai man is stronger, wiser, and more capable than a woman.

Most of the 17 Team Lioness rangers are the only Maasai women in their families with formal, paid jobs. In traditional Maasai culture, women are mainly responsible for domestic work like cleaning their manyattas (mud huts), cooking, collecting water, and caring for children. Men rear cattle and are typically the ones who might hold outdoor jobs, such as in conservation work.

In a culture still dominated by men, Serea and her colleagues are not just changing the gender equation in the field of conservation, they are also breaking away from outdated yet persistent patriarchal traditions like polygamy, child marriage, and a life confined to domesticity. Along the way, they are serving as powerful role models for women and girls in their communities and beyond.

Journalist Nikole Wintermeier and photographer Clara Watt profile Kenya’s all-female Maasai wildlife ranger team whose members are redefining what conservation means for wildlife, local communities, and themselves.

Photo by Clara Watt

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