God Save The King! And his kingdom! ~ * ~ Long live the King! ~ * ~

GSTK campaigns for King of Beasts are collected here:

	Friendly Competition Just having some fun. ^_^ Kevin Richardson has more than lions at his sanctuary, and one of the documentaries said his favorites are actually the hyenas. (Loves them all, of course!) So, I've always had this fun image in the back of my mind of lions and hyenas rallying with signs that pick on each other. Yet, when I went to actually draw it, it just didn't seem like it was ready to be put down on paper. In come the snow leopard, and everything fell into place. I love doing images that have me giggling the whole time I'm working on them. ~ * ~ The Prideland comic is by artists who also like Kevin and sometimes include him in their fun. Printable page 9
Feeling discouraged by how it's looking for our own wildlife with the government now undoing generations of protections that truly great men and women had put in place for us, I needed a giggle. So... (2017Dec), as a joke, I sent this for the Lion Whisperer's fanart friday... ^,^ "I used a Pokémon #2 pencil on ordinary sketch pad paper and inked with a marker-pen. ... I'm not passionate about drawing, but I love being a creative smart aleck and recently found drawing to be a wonderful outlet. ^_^ Oh, and am passionate about saving lions and wildlife. Yeah, yeah, that, too. ;p" and: "...please don't feed me to the lions"... ^,^ They never replied... So, I was like, "I don't think they're very amused with me..." I must try harder! ^_^	Printable bonus page 7
Printable page 39	Lions and other predators will sometimes go after a crocodile, if it's at a disadvantage somehow - like being young. The most dangerous time in a crocodile's life is before and right after they hatch. Monitor lizards and other animals will raid crocodile nests and eat the eggs, and newly hatched crocs are easy prey for birds even when in the water. Mother crocs are protective, but moms can't be everywhere at once. Adult crocodiles are too dangerous for most other predators to mess with, making their main predators humans. Nile and West African crocodiles (the big ones you usually see in nature shows) are currently holding their own; the dwarf crocodile is vulnerable (which is right above endangered); and the slender-snouted crocodile is critically endangered. This page at Active Wild has info about all four crocodile types found in Africa, and The Guardian has an interesting article about some cave-dwelling dwarf crocodiles which turn orange from being in bat guano. ewww ^^
People kill lions and elephants because they're too wimpy to go after cape buffalo. ;p There's a lot of fame given to "man-eating" predators, but some of the most dangerous animals in the world don't have claws or fangs. They just don't tolerate much. ^,^ Cape buffalo, for instance, will gang up on predators and are known to even kill them - sometimes to protect other prey animals, but sometimes just as a show of force. They're not domesticated, and for very good reason: They are known to kill people. (Water buffalo and American bison are a totally different story and are good with people.)	Printable page 41

Printable page 51	Global Tiger Day is July 29 Some people think tiger bone has medicinal properties and want it even more now that they are killing off the species, rather than use any of the multitude of alternatives that don't involve exterminating something. At only around 3-4,000 left, tigers number far less than lions and are so protected that people now kill lions to fill the desire for tiger bone. Tigers and lions have the same build, and their bones can't be told apart. If they truly believed such things actually work, they would be fighting tooth and nail to protect these species, instead of driving them to extinction without a care then merrily switching to another. They aren't even getting what they think they are: sometimes dog or pig bones have even been substituted. They may as well take a placebo. Some tiger bone wine merchants have willingly altered ingredients to replace the bones with herbs that provide the desired benefits. It's not something that can't be done. Be a steward of the Earth.
This week, we have a very serious, very important matter that may shock and upset you... Please, don't read further if you are of delicate constitution. ...still reading? Okay... I hope you can handle it... *deep breath* Here we go... Cacao trees (where chocolate comes from)... *sniffle* are... *gulp* in danger. ... I warned you it was horrible. If you have nightmares tonight, don't blame me. ;p I knew cacao trees were native to rainforest habitat, but I never really thought much about it from a crop perspective - and sure didn't realize, til now, that production is in such decline. The best cacao grows best in shade in the tropics - in rainforests, which are disappearing. Advocates are helping farmers turn around the propaganda of clear-cutting for this crop. By using the existing forest, it saves time, money, labor, AND rainforest and the creatures that inhabit it, which, in turn, saves us. Life is a cycle - start pedaling! ^_^ September 13 is International Chocolate Day. Find great info and charts about cacao at Santa Barbara Chocolates. Video about how cacao tree farms help lemures. IUCN article about cacao production and restoring rainforests.	Printable page 56
Printable page 67	Nov 16 is International Day for Tolerance. ...though, some people make it incredibly hard these days for their own lack of it... ^,^ It's really meant about people tolerating each other, but I'm extending it to encourage people to tolerate wildlife - and I'm not the only one who sees it goes hand-in-hand: Pope Francis, for one, said, "Our indifference or cruelty towards fellow creatures of this world sooner or later affects the treatment we mete out to other human beings." ... So true. It's a mental state, and we need to change our mentality as a society to be nurturing and not apathetic or abusive. There's a song by Toby Mac that says, "Speak life." I love that. - Don't tear down others. Build them up, instead: Speak life into others, and you speak life into our world. What better animal to use for Tolerance Day than the wonderfully clever honeybadger, another misunderstood ferocious little beastie. ^_~ My introduction to them was the old NatGeo documentary Honeybadger: Raising Hell (Stone Hills Wildlife Sanctuary in Zimbabwe), and I love this clip BBC has from Masters of Mayhem.
Dec 4 is International Cheetah Day. There really are "King Cheetah". It's what they call cheetahs with a unique color variation that makes their spots so much bolder that they run together into stripes. It's similar to what makes some leopards black. I believe I saw somewhere that there are less than ten in the wild - that are known about, anyway. The New York Times had a small article on some tabby cats having the same mutation as king cheetahs, here's a photo submitted to NatGeo of a king cheetah cub, and Active Wild has a photo of a king cheetah in their cheetah info. ^_^	Printable page 70

Printable page 72	Unicorn for King No More Extinction! ^_^ Look what I found on Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom YouTube channel. Loved Marlin Perkins! ^_^ "We brought back no trophies. Our only trophy was knowledge - not antlers over the fireplace; and knowledge, surely, is the richest prize Man can seek in the wild kingdom." I'm so glad I had that show as a kid. I don't remember specifics, like that quote (in fact, I even always remembered the show as just "Mutual of Omaha" ^,^), but something more than just interest was seeded. So glad there are so many others today continuing the sharing of ethics and keeping the fire burning.
Hyena may be mischievious, stinky bum nutcases, but they are not evil, conniving, or stupid. ^_~ And they're not detrimental to the environment: They're an apex predator essential to the health of the ecosystem. "Life-like" or "realistic looking" in movies is just that: It doesn't necessarily mean the behaviour is, too. I had never really thought about hyena before - I'm a cat person - but given their poor rap in previous media, even not having anything against them I had thought they were just nuisance scavengers. Kevin's media has converted me, and it's pretty cool to know that hyena are actually more closely related to cats than to dogs. All you cat-people take note! ^_~ This was going to be a serious page ^,^, with serious scenes in the background, but you see what happens... and, then, of course, it spawned a bonus page... ^,^ ...I don't know if she'll be able to come up with that many verses extolling the virtues of hyena, so check out Kevin's media for more about the Sanctuary's hyenas. Some is collected in the Hyena section here, but there's more in his feeds! National Geographic has a recent article to set the record straight on the role of hyena in nature, and, while we're talking about hyena, Smithsonian Magazine has an interesting article about prehistoric hyena having roamed Canada.	Printable page 99 Printable bonus page 37
Printable page 100	World Lion Day is August 10 I guess it's about time Lion countered all the other animal campaigns to be the King of Beasts. ^_~ Pretty fitting that it came out as page 100 - though it's actually the 137th when you count the bonus pages. ^_~ ...early last week, late this week... ;p I actually started this in July and just got back to it last night. It was to the good, though, because I erased part of what I'd been doing with it and something better came out. ^_^ Let's make sure lions remain a living, breathing legend!
Painted dogs, or "African wild dogs", are a good example of what not to try to get for a pet. Yeah, I actually came across some place selling them, with other exotic animals. You really need to think about WHY you are getting a pet before you go down the exotic "pet" road. Animals like this are most certainly NOT "pets". Such animals are often not people friendly, they have very special needs for food and housing, and many are often cute, or cool, but deadly dangerous, making them effectively just wildlife confined to cages with none of the "pet" benefits, no enrichment for either the animal or the human, just there for status quo of having it. Not to mention the much more expensive vet care exotics cost. Many are abandoned after the novelty wears off. People with Kevin's level of care and dedication are rare, and his lions are rescues - not pets. He didn't set off to own them: He took up that responsibility to keep them out of the canned lion industry. Like lions, African wild dogs should stay wild, and they need wild habitat to stay wild in. They share that habitat with lions, so helping lions will help the painted dogs. ~ Kevin often speaks at Painted Dog Conservation Inc's fundraisers in Australia. 10 points of interest from Africa Geographic ~ facts and figures from African Wildlife Foundation ~ info from NatGeo's Photo Ark ~ and What's in a Name? from Africa Geographic ~	Printable page 109

Explore the big picture with me. Looking for non-preachy links, I kept adding more points and got pretty lengthy. ^_~ Printable page 123 Lion note: Putting food on the table is one thing, but I do not believe in killing things just for the fun of it. The canned lion industry is not stewardship in even the loosest sense of the word. [Just look through this site for my in-depth views on that.]

It boggles me. "Let's be kind to animals and to the planet and eat only veggies"..? Um... Lessee', deforestation for food crops, killing wildlife to protect food crops, disrupting and blocking migration routes, "emissions"-spouting plows, harvesters, processing and trucking for veggies, chemical fertilizers and pesticides running off into our water sources and polluting ecosystems... I don't think any of that is very kind. Whether it's raising livestock or plant crops, the mentality to carelessly deplete land then destroy wildlife for fresh land to deplete and poison is the same. Crop farming is no saint when it comes to harm to animals or pollution. The whole World becoming vegetarian isn't going to magically make it all better. There have always been people against eating meat and dairy, but the current push condemns cattle because of their "emissions". 9_9 They don't even consider simply changing what cattle are fed. They just jump right on eliminating them - and everything we depend on that goes with them, like our own health and petfood. That's not very kind. What did Bessy and Junior and Fluffy ever do to them? The change that needs to be made is to a nurturing mentality, better management, moderation, sustainability, peaceful coexistence: Stewardship.

Have you noticed that even black-maned lions have a "crown" of lighter hair around their faces? I wonder if that golden crown is part of why lions were originally considered the King of Beasts. ^_^ Of course, when I mentioned that in a post, this page was an instant given. ^_~ Printable page 182

2020March ROFLOL ~ I came across a trailer for a series made from Dr. Seuss' Green Eggs and Ham story. At the end of the trailer, another character looks down at Sam and very seriously informs him, "I'm vegan." Sam very solemnly takes the person's hand, "I'm so sorry... How long have you known?" ... ^o^ Ah, so adorable coming from him, that hit my funny bone pretty hard. ;p Thought I'd share. ^_^

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Be a steward of the Earth.

[I'm not a professional and have limited resources/access. I make the printable images to be around 8x11 inches to fill a sheet of regular letter-size paper when printed. Coloring pages may be printed from here and made copies of for non-profit, free-of-charge use only. Plant seeds! ^_^]