Lion: The Rise and Fall of the Marsh Pride (2022) Movie Script
1
When it happened, the worst
thing to do is say, "I told you so."
But, yeah, you felt like kicking
the furniture and everything,
you know, emotionally,
you're pretty angry with
the person who did it,
irrespective of their reasons.
And you know you're
going to see, you know,
a bunch load of old chums, really,
who are going to be
lying around dying.
And, um, everybody
arrives there shocked.
But there isn't a single
person there that didn't know
that this happens.
Yeah, it's a tragedy.
It's now six years since
that incident happened.
Whenever we come to this place,
the memories come back.
This is where we lost these lions.
We were here, and we
could feel tension,
we knew that something
was going to happen.
Many of the members
of the Marsh Pride
were very close to us.
For us to lose them
in such a manner
was heart-breaking.
They were the best known
pride anywhere in the world.
ARCHIVE: Our story today
concerns the family life
and hunting activities
of a pride of lions
that has taken up residence
in the South Western portion
of Kenya, East Africa.
Here, in the lush
surroundings of a marsh
adjacent to the great Mara plains.
NEWSREEL: The famous pride of lions
in Kenya from the Marsh Pride...
REPORTER SPEAKS FRENCH
It's a family of lions who
star in the hugely popular
international wild life series.
REPORTERS SPEAK IN VARIOUS LANGUAGES
There are still people who are
following this particular
pride of lions that had
had a few babies recently.
Many people around the
world may have heard of them.
We've followed them for about...
The Marsh Pride have moved audiences
around the world for decades.
It's like a drama,
but it's a real drama,
and it's unfolding
right in front of you.
Go, Simba. Run, boy. Run, run, run.
It couldn't be more Shakespearian,
it couldn't be more
Medieval England.
Bibi, I'm sorry.
There's nothing we can do.
Trying to second guess what might
happen next is almost impossible.
Maasai people and lion, they fought
together for many, many years.
They survived together.
It's a long story, yeah.
Even talking with the days actually.
If you start talking
about the Marsh Pride,
each of those lions has
his or her own story.
The story of the Marsh Pride
is both a story about lions,
and it's about lions trying
to live amongst humans.
In the Maasai Mara,
Kenya's richest game reserve,
a pair of lionesses watch
over a herd of wildebeest.
And watching over them
all is Jonathan Scott,
a young English naturalist
who, for five years,
studied, photographed and
drew the wildlife here.
LIONESS ROARS
WILDEBEEST SQUEALS
CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS
When I first saw the Marsh Pride,
of course, I was
just living my dream.
Here was a kid from England,
degree in Zoology,
wanting to find a way of living
with wild animals in Africa.
It was the best place
as far as I was concerned.
This is where you
studied for so long
the animals you called Marsh Lions,
now I think we
should make that clear,
marsh lions are just lions
but they live in a marsh.
That's right. A particular
group of lions actually made
this area the core
area of their territory.
The Marsh is a glorious place,
full of birdlife,
buffalo, elephants
in the dry season,
wildebeest and zebra.
We're in the garden of Eden
and that is Marsh Pride territory.
These animals are so
individual and so complex,
that you haven't got a hope in hell
of understanding them
unless you put in the time.
I suppose what I love about
looking back at my scrap book is,
the richness of the
story that we would be able
to unfold over the years.
LION ROARS
And so 1998, we had the
two Marsh Pride males,
Scar and Scruffy,
and they couldn't have
been more different.
Scar was this wonderful,
magnificent, big male lion.
Scruffy looked younger,
didn't have such a full blown mane,
and in fact, never developed one.
That's the case sometimes.
But Scruffy, he was my hero.
If you wanted to be led into battle,
you would make the
biggest mistake of your life
if you went with the guy with the
big brown mane over the scruffy one.
Scruffy was, he was the real deal.
The males are vitally
important to secure
the territory for the females.
You're part of the glue
that binds the pride together.
When we talk about a pride,
what are we really talking about?
We're talking about the family.
Only lions come together,
form these groups,
and raise the cubs as a family.
And it's something that
none of the other cats do.
The best-case scenario for a lion
pride is where they create a creche,
where they've got lion cubs,
where they've got
cubs of a similar age.
So the lionesses by 1998
had come into season,
and we had these 11 young cubs
in the safety of the
most perfect breeding place
you could ever wish for.
This is really the heart of
the Marsh Pride territory,
and I can literally look today
at every single one of these trees,
every patch of bush,
and there's a story.
That's where the lions came
under attack from the buffaloes.
The biggest thing that
stands out to me from that day
was the difference
between Scar and Scruffy.
Buffalo show no mercy to lions,
cos if you're a buffalo,
those cubs are the same creatures
that are going to
kill you or your calves.
Glamour boy was Scar.
Well, tell you what,
when the chips were down,
Scar was rubbish.
It was Scruffy
who just got in there.
So, the cubs were
tucked away in the bushes.
Those were little, tiny cubs,
they weren't ready to
be running around in the open.
Now the buffalo have
tracked them by scent,
and they're almost on top of them.
The big thing that was
going through my mind was,
here is the nucleus
of a new chapter
in the Marsh Pride's history,
and it's gonna be smashed out
of the water by the buffalo.
Amidst the devastation, who knew how
many of those cubs would survive?
The mothers were
absolutely stressed.
They were salivating,
they were out of breath,
and they were calling.
You know, you could feel the energy
that had been sucked out of them
in trying to defend the cubs
and trying to chase
the buffaloes away,
and the anxiety
they were now feeling
because what would it
have been like to have been
a tiny lion cub
to have gone through that?
I was sure we would lose maybe
three, four, five cubs
and, in the end, we just lost one.
And it would have been more if
it hadn't have been for Scruffy.
Yet, and this is
the fascinating thing,
what happens?
The year after, 1999,
he's moved out of
the reserve into areas
where there's Maasai
with their cattle.
He hooks up with a female from
another pride,
they kill a cow, and they're
speared.
In the age-old conflict between
man and livestock and wildlife.
If you cross the line as a lion
and you ate a cow,
there would be retribution,
but I understand that.
But there were far fewer Maasai,
there was far fewer cattle,
and the way in which the Maasai,
and the cattle, and the wildlife
and the lions operated,
it worked.
There was still a harmony to it.
A lion does not fear
going through the long grass.
A lion does not fear
going through a dark night.
A lion does not fear
going through forest.
Often the elders and the
community also see it themselves,
to a lion.
They say they have
a heart of a lion,
they are fearless like a lion.
You find the Maasai people
and the lions history
or historically,
you cannot separate the two.
What you've got to
remember with the Maasai
is their relationship with lions.
And we should say
a huge thank you to them
for not killing animals for food.
But that traditional
sense of the male lion
as the ultimate prize for a
warrior to test his courage.
You were a hero within your
group if you killed a male lion.
First of all, I was not
a very brave warrior,
that's why I'm here.
I was a coward, because I have
seen since I was a young man,
I've seen what lion can do.
Because those warriors,
they don't succeed all the time,
well, very often, the lions succeed.
A couple have shredded.
Even our children,
we tell them, "Be careful,
"that male might turn around and
say,
"You are invading my family,"
and it will turn against you.
Looks like we've had visitors
in the middle of the night.
Take a look at this here, beauty.
Lion footprints.
Adult female, I think.
Front foot, back foot,
Right through the
middle of the camp,
in case we had any doubts that we
were in the heart of the action.
We spend all day looking for them,
instead they come looking for us.
I completely understand
why someone whose livelihood
is threatened by the
company of a big predator,
might see that lion footprint
a couple of metres away
from the tent they were sleeping in,
terrifying and unwelcome.
For me, it's an absolute thrill.
This is the Maasai Mara in Kenya.
Over the next six weeks,
we're going to be
following in intimate detail,
the lives of Africa's big cats.
Sending back a weekly report,
a diary of their hardships
and good fortunes as they happen.
Over the last few weeks,
we've been treated
to one of the most
incredible TV soaps ever,
it's the Big Cat Diary,
staggering film of everyday life
of lions, leopards and cheetahs.
It took endless amounts
of patience and skill
and some revolutionary
film techniques
for the BBC Natural History Unit
to get pictures like
we've never seen before.
I couldn't know
then what I was doing
was eaves dropping
for a little while
on a family story that
had occurred for millennia.
But the real joy is when you
begin to uncover some of the stories
because of who you absolutely
personally recognise.
Having lost his sidekick,
Scar was going to be the
epicentre of this narrative.
It's really hard to know what
goes on inside the head of
a lion who loses his ally.
Do they feel a sense of
vulnerability and fear?
Is it bravado that carries them on?
The more time we spent with Scar
and watched his body language,
the more it seemed to me that he was
increasingly nervous
within his own territory.
ELEPHANT TRUMPETS
You know, the tenure of an adult
male two, three years at best,
most of the time,
until he's challenged by
a mightier male or males,
looking to expand their own
interests and territories.
When you saw him around other lions,
even his own pride,
he would often be staring
off to the horizon.
When hyenas came on the scene,
instead of just being the big
man who would always run in
and try and kill one,
he'd just look a little bit
uncomfortable and vulnerable.
HYENAS CACKLE
And he was quite happy to sit back
and leave it to the
older cubs in the pride
to do the job of
chasing hyenas away
when really it
should have been him.
You see the adolescent dynamic
of this mob of younger lions
finding their feet
and testing their world.
Hyenas and lions,
there's no love lost between them.
They're both after the same nosh,
they both can threaten
each others lives,
and what keeps lion prides
safe from attack by
hyenas is big adult males.
And I could see Scar shrinking.
And so, as Scar
starts to lose his grip,
we start to see this
state of flux in the pride.
It was clear that
Scar needed backup.
You see this shift of behaviour
with some of his own cubs,
who ordinarily would be kicked out
because they're young males
who themselves are becoming
quite feisty and mature.
Instead, he thinks,
"Oh, you could be allies.
"Come with me, dudes,
we'll stick together."
And then you get this
curious alliance,
where you've got this
lumping great, big male, Dad,
that in any other circumstance
would chase young males off,
even if they're his own progeny.
We had all the ingredients
of what was, let's face it,
an extraordinary drama
playing out before our eyes.
You've got this big fella
who's going to lose the throne
unless he allies
with these young lads.
Any one snapshot of a group of lions
looking happy and calm together
can be misleading.
There's nothing
predictable about the dynamics
of a family like the Marsh Pride.
You might think everything
is pretty stable and settled
and it's OK, and you can't
see that curveball coming.
And neither can they.
Everything can change in an hour.
For Scar, the profound change
came when two big, mature males
came over the horizon.
We called them Simba and Blondie,
and they had one thing on their mind
and that was takeover.
They wanted that throne.
I can remember the adrenaline again.
You know that if there's
going to be a fight,
the likelihood is
one of them's going to die,
and the likelihood is
that's going to be Scar.
Everything about their body
language showed intent to take over.
Their gaze was fixed,
their eyes are big.
Then we witnessed them making
their mark on the local hyenas.
HYENAS CALL FRANTICALLY
When a coalition
of male lions move in,
and one of the first things
they do is kill a hyena,
that has a ripple effect
throughout the community.
Straight away, every one of
the hyenas knows they mean business,
so there's a difference,
immediate difference
in respect and distance
that they're likely to push.
And once they've done the
job that they intended,
they reaffirm the bond between them
with the most kitten like
floppy cuddles you can imagine.
They are one big aura
of combined might.
For themselves,
they identify with each other,
but also for any other
lion in the neighbourhood.
Now, would Scar have
come across the carcass
of the hyena that they killed?
Smell the saliva, and the urine
and the scent of two big males?
Maybe, maybe not.
If he did, what a statement.
What a calling card to say,
"Mister, we're in,
and this is what we do."
We never experienced a
full-on scrap with Scar.
I think he was too canny for that.
Having lost tenure of the pride,
he realised when it was time to run,
and most males do.
And for a male lion,
life after pride life
is usually pretty short.
But that's a natural cycle.
That's a natural death.
It was the pride as
a whole that faced
an entirely new set of threats.
It became clear that there was a
parallel story of change
occurring within the
human community on the edge
of the Marsh Pride's territory.
The Maasai were becoming
more sedentary,
they were no longer as nomadic in
their movement with their cattle.
Part of the problem for
the Maasai, in a sense,
was that the government likes to
have people on plot A, B, C.
They want you to become settled.
They want you to become
part of the cash economy.
And that, of course,
means that fences go up,
people's livelihoods change
and having lions as your
next door neighbours
becomes a different reality.
We have changed our
lifestyle as a community,
as a Maasai people,
and that has affected
the Marsh Pride.
IN MAASAI:
just a pastoralist who
really loves his cows.
So cows for Maasai's
are very sacred animal,
like they are seen as a livelihood,
not only, you know, because
of the milk, the meat,
but they have a deeper
cultural meaning for a Maasai.
IN MAASAI:
concerns is the Marsh Pride,
which tend to move out and cause
conflict by killing livestock,
and, you know, this will put them
in conflict with human beings.
One of the approaches that the Mara
Predator Conservation programme uses
is through an approach we
call the lion ambassadors.
David is sort of like the eye
of the community in that area.
Someone who's able to
advocate for the lions,
and especially such incredible
family like the Marsh Pride.
Goodbye.
CHILD CRIES
David's job entails
communicating with herders
to try and create a lot of awareness
and champion for issues of lions.
IN MAASAI:
2004 to the Marsh Pride,
it was lovely to be
greeted by a genuine mob.
They had been doing
very well in our absence,
and 29 lions in the
pride at the time,
including cubs and
lionesses that we knew well.
What we saw with the 29 lions
told you everything, really,
about how different lions
are from all the other cats.
Big and powerful enough not
to have to hide away at night,
isn't solitary.
We have Simba on parade with,
with the whole mob,
you know, in his finery.
He'd lost his sidekick to
an encounter with the buffalo,
so his buddy had been killed.
He's the only pride male now
trying to actually control this
big area, this pride territory.
One of the lionesses who
stood out as a character for us
was a female we called Bibi.
We'd known Bibi since
she was a tiny cub.
I've got a soft spot for Bibi
because she's a survivor of
the debacle with the buffaloes.
She was probably, almost certainly,
was the daughter of Scar.
It sounds a bit strange
to describe a lioness as sweet,
but there was a sweetness
about her character.
Lionesses generally all
conceive more or less together
if they're in a pride.
They all have young cubs at
more or less the same time,
so you get a rash of little babies.
The other lionesses
within the group,
they were a strong unit.
They had quite well-grown
cubs, many of them.
Bibi had very, very small cubs,
so she had conceived out of synch.
She's been caught in
an awkward situation,
and she's just irrelevant
to the rest of the pride.
She had taken
herself off to give birth
and to have these tiddlers.
It was like having a one-year-old
whilst all your mates
have got 18-year-olds.
Being a single mum as
a lioness is not easy.
And there's no doubt that
Bibi would have preferred
to have been in the
fold of the pride.
She would shadow,
sometimes at 300-400 metres,
sometimes a little more than that,
but within eyesight.
And it was clear that she wanted in,
but was also feeling threatened
and not quite comfortable.
The main group of the
Marsh Pride are hunting.
The leading lioness moving in
towards a mixed group of animals -
topi, zebra, wildebeest.
The art of the experienced lioness
is to try and keep an eye on all of
the animals she's moving towards.
There's a buffalo starting
to move in towards her.
I think the ultimate challenge
for any pride of lions
is when they decide they're
going to tackle a buffalo.
BUFFALO CALLS
The buffalo's
definitely caught a scent.
There's a lot of strategy involved
but, in trying to
actually catch the buffalo,
that's a whole different game.
There - she's gonna go for it.
Battle on.
Buffalo scores first strike,
she's going in.
And she's on.
You've got a lioness who's
on to the killing bite,
and she's bitten over
the nose and mouth.
And you will see the buffalo
desperately trying to breathe,
and the breath will be coming out
of the lionesses nostrils,
and you'll see the lioness and
nostrils just inflating
as the buffalo, pfff,
you know desperately...
HE INHALES DEEPLY
..and it can't do it
because it's locked down.
And you imagine what that takes,
not just in terms
of getting that bite,
but getting into position
around the front end of a buffalo.
Is there anywhere that
you would rather not be?
BUFFALO CALLS
Buffaloes are tough,
buffaloes are mean,
very mean indeed,
but yet they have the food,
they have the meat that
the Marsh Pride requires -
the easy meal.
But then they see these other
buffet,
that's so easy to pick - the cows.
They hide in the reeds,
but not entirely,
they just look through the reeds,
and they said,
"Aw, even though there's
"a Maasai there, I could
still kill that cow."
They are naughty, very naughty.
HE LAUGHS
ARCHIVE: What these men are about
to do is extremely dangerous.
30 men and boys preparing
to track and kill a lion.
It's the mark. Here.
So it's a dangerous business.
Yeah, it is a dangerous business.
It's not an easy
business altogether.
It is for you to choose
to kill or to die.
This is a revenge mission,
a hunt for two lions which have
been killing the local cattle.
When there's killings of livestock,
there is a lot of anger, and people
don't think at that point,
"What can I do?"
They would go and identify that
particular lion that is responsible
and, you know, go with
a spear and kill it.
We are going to kill the lion.
As long as it's a spear,
a spear doesn't destroy them,
but a spear will just take one.
And then the others learn,
"Mm-mm, I shouldn't go that way."
So, to them, this is just
an enemy that has come
to kill your cows,
so let me wipe it out.
The number of livestock are growing,
there's a talk of population
doubling every nine years.
Now you've got a whole
different situation,
and with people eating
up the landscape,
which was primarily before
available to the lions,
who's gonna be squeezed most?
The lions at the edge,
the Marsh Pride.
So all these things put a lot
of pressure on the available land
for conservation, or land that's
available for lions to roam in.
In 2004, we could see that
the pressures were developing.
The Maasai communities
will revolve primarily
around the herds of cattle
and, of course, our attention
was focused almost wholly
on the lion's story.
In order for Bibi to stand the
greatest chance of raising her cubs,
she had to maximise
their chance of survival.
When a lioness is on her own,
she's far less likely to
be successful hunting at night
because, at night,
all of the hyenas are out,
every other lion is out.
So she's pressured
to be busy by day.
She's out when it's hot,
when it's really uncomfortable,
and whilst her cubs are exposed
to the dangers of the day,
not least the burning sun.
This is what being a lioness is
all about, raising offspring.
The gestation period's
only what, 110 days,
so, three and a half months,
but your investment
in that cub's life
to get it through to maturity,
it's a very long,
protracted process.
So the chances of any cub surviving
all the trials and tribulations
of what it takes to be
a full grown lion,
you've really got your
back up against it.
And for somebody like Bibi,
ostracised by the pride,
membership of the pride territory is
about all she's got going for her.
She's got somewhere to call home.
The fig tree played a really
important role to Bibi as a nursery.
Those fig trees were so massive,
they would have, like, hidden caves
and these
wonderful dark passageways,
where a little lion cub could get
right in amongst the tree roots,
and no hyena, buffalo, no lion
could get in and drag them out.
It's a great patch
when the season is dry
and all the wildebeest and
zebra come down here to drink,
but at the moment,
it looks absolutely bare of life.
And that means getting a meal is
going to be a real challenge.
Despite being quite small,
warthogs are incredibly
tough animals,
and it's going to take
all of Bibi's strength
to suffocate her prey.
Using her vice like grip with
those immensely powerful jaws
to close on the
throat of the warthog
and eventually stifle it's breath.
Bit of a grim sight, really.
With Bibi off dealing with
breakfast in the form of
a warthog that she's just
killed not very far away,
the cubs are left all
alone in the fig tree,
and danger has moved
into the neighbourhood.
There's a Martial eagle sitting at
the top of the tree,
studying the ground.
If the cubs move out of the cover
and into the open,
they are very vulnerable.
A bird of this size,
this power could very
easily kill one of Bibi's cubs
and carry it away before
she even knows it's happened.
Poor Bibi, she's putting in
a supreme effort
to try and get her warthog kill
back to where the cubs are waiting,
about a kilometre away.
And now she's stumbled into
a small group of elephants.
They haven't seen her yet,
but if they do,
they're not going to take
lightly to a lion in their midst.
Huh.
A very experienced cat, Bibi,
she's just slipped out of the way.
And, for now, she's left the
warthog kill lying in the grass.
Where are they?
Here they come.
One, anyway.
Both of them.
Fantastic.
So whilst Bibi was
trying to hold it together
as a single mum,
the pride male, Simba,
had his own problems.
He was strutting his
stuff by hanging out
with the pride from time to time,
capitalising on the kills made,
and roaring regularly.
ROARING
Simba, declaring to everybody
that this is still his patch.
It's a mixed message,
as far as he's concerned.
He's an adult male, yes, but if any
other adult males are in the area,
and particularly if
there are several together,
they might well take
that message as a challenge
and come in and try and
take over the pride.
For a lone male at
the top of the tree,
there's an omnipresent threat.
Behind every tree, behind every
bush, there's a potential takeover.
They slink around, they're silent,
they're not telling
you where they are,
they're not announcing themselves,
they're not even letting
you see who they are.
They don't roar,
they don't pee and scrape mark,
they don't leave a
sign of their presence
because they don't want you
knowing what they're up to
and coming and jumping on
their back ahead of time.
And then one day,
they see their moment.
As is so often the
case with lion life,
this was like history
repeating itself.
Simba himself had taken
over the Marsh Pride
with his sidekick
Blondie in the past,
was now on his own and under
threat from two new invading males.
You're looking for property,
looking what real
estate is available to me?
What are the strengths
and the weaknesses
based on the roaring of
the one pride male, Simba?
HE ROARS
When they spot a
vulnerable male, as Simba was,
you can almost feel the
weight lifting off them
and the confidence
coming back into their skin
as they rise up to the challenge,
literally rise up to the challenge.
Oh, gosh, suddenly
he's a forlorn character,
he's calling for backup,
he's calling for help here.
Oh, not more than 50 metres away,
we've got two male lions
closing the gap on Simba.
And they look mean,
they look really mean.
Here they go.
Ooh, watch your back Simba,
watch your back.
There's no more than just
a few metres between them now.
This is weird. He knows,
he must know they're there.
Here we go. This is it.
Go, Simba. Run, boy. Run, run, run.
Run. Get out of it!
The idea that all
males stand and fight,
there's some kind of
valour to being beaten-up
to the point of death.
They want to live,
and when it is really,
really dangerous and scary,
they're legging it.
You look at the body
language of the two young males,
yes, they're sort of fully intent,
and they wanna come closer,
but there's a degree of reticence.
The minute he stops and
stands and faces them.
OK.
They're not looking for a fight,
they're happy if they can move
him on and he continues to run.
Those invading males, wisely,
don't want to take too many risks,
because if they
encounter a serious fight
and they get cut up,
their own chances of fathering cubs
in the future are wrecked.
I think a lot of people tend to
like the idea of the gladiators,
fight to the death.
Often lions simply say,
"OK, under threat, time to go."
Simba does the obvious thing,
go to the safest place
in your territory,
and then roar at the top of
your voice to say
"I am here, I am not leaving.
"This is my place.
"If you dare, come
and try and oust me."
HE ROARS
These two new males had
achieved their first objective,
they'd pushed Simba
to the very margins
of the Marsh Pride territory.
Their next step
was to try and kill any young
cubs that remain in the pride.
And the cubs on the
front line were Bibi's.
Yeah.
Hold it there.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
So Bibi, you could say,
drew the short straw.
She's a lone lioness
with dependent cubs,
and then, you know, just to give her
the absolutely ultimate challenge,
along come any
lioness' worst nightmare -
two nomads start sniffing around.
You could see that she
was deeply concerned
and upset for her cubs, I'm sure,
who we couldn't see,
but they were very close to
her somewhere in the vegetation.
Those males are looking to kill cubs
so that they can then mate with the
female and start their own pride.
Uh-oh.
This is bad now.
If she was to get up
and charge those males,
confronts them, but
after all she's a lioness,
you know, she's not as big as them.
She was thinking,
better not to give your hand away,
better not to rush
out all big and bluster
because one of them,
whilst one is confronting her,
could easily just go
in to where she was,
where the cubs were, smell,
end of story.
Ah, this is just awful.
It's as though
everything is conspiring
against Bibi and her cubs.
We've got the two male lions
15 metres outside the ditch
where she's hiding her cubs,
and now coming from the opposite
direction - a whole herd of buffalo.
You're in that charged,
emotional space with the cats,
and it's a curious cocktail
of feelings, because it's exciting,
but is also something that you
ironically don't want to see,
because you don't want to
see the cubs being killed.
Bibi, I'm sorry, nothing we can do.
There's so nothing we can do, now.
It's down to you.
OK, she's still in those bushes,
I can just see her.
OK, he's come out.
Bibi managed to
intimidate the young male.
Miraculously, it looks as though the
herd of buffalo is swinging away.
They're still really close to where
Bibi and the cubs are hiding
but I don't think
they're going to go through
the bushes where she
currently is crouching.
The male lions, however,
are keeping an eye on her,
and I don't know what
their next move is going to be.
The trouble is, it's getting dark,
and we're gonna have to leave soon.
This story will only
have a conclusion
if and when we find her tomorrow.
We did find her the following day.
The males were not to
be seen, the new males.
She was apparently completely alone.
And we did fear the worst.
We thought we were going
to find her, find corpses.
SHE CALLS
But true to form, she found her cubs
stuck in the bottom of a fig tree,
who had found their way back
to the castle of the fig tree.
Yeah, massive sense of
relief when you see the tiddlers.
You shouldn't necessarily feel so
invested, but you do,
you get into their world
and you want them to
make it out the other side.
And on that occasion, they did.
When I next joined the Marsh Pride,
it was all change again,
as far as the males are concerned.
Simba - nowhere to be seen.
We found a different king at
the top of the Marsh Pride.
A new, beautiful pride male
that we called Notch.
He was on his tod with
a fleet of his own babies,
a whole new generation
of little cubs sired by Notch.
Bibi had lost her previous litter.
In every likelihood, when Notch
took over the Marsh Pride,
he will have killed Bibi's cubs.
But when we found
him with the pride,
it's all happy families,
and that's lion life.
They can't afford to
hang around, and to grieve
and to hold grudges against
the male that comes in.
They've just gotta get on with it.
Those four lionesses
from the Marsh Pride,
they were just brilliant,
brilliant lionesses.
White Eye, Bibi, Lispy
and then you have Red.
The power.
She was the best hunter
I've ever seen.
The gang of four females
were an awesome hunting force
and each of them
had their skill base,
they really did.
White Eye was excellent,
excellent when it came
to suffocating buffalo.
White Eye, I mean, what
an extraordinary lioness.
It's tough enough to be a lion,
but a lion with one eye?
Bibi was a very good
wildebeest hunter.
She could run out and grapple them,
and Red was just the
queen of pincer movement,
she was super and powerful.
So between them,
they had their system sorted,
and I think the same
came down to motherhood.
The four lionesses
are so powerful together,
it's a family unit
but one, very strong.
They've been through
the hoops, all of them,
they've all had losses,
but now they've got a young family,
more or less the right
age right across the board,
things are looking pretty good.
We were really beginning
to feel just how these cats
had become big stars.
We had people literally
stop us and say,
"We're here because
of the Marsh Pride.
"We wanted to come and see
these animals for ourselves."
It's the celebrity factor, isn't it?
We've created
celebrities out of them.
They know a Canon lens
as opposed to a Nikon lens
better than you or I.
They have been
photographed so many times,
I mean, they are stars.
CAMERA SHUTTERS CLICK
And, of course, tourism exploded.
And obviously the
Maasai people benefit.
Without the tourism there,
they will struggle to
fund the community,
to fund the projects that
protects the territory of lions.
ARCHIVE: For the lions,
chattering sightseers
are a necessary side-show.
They may not know it,
but the tourist fees helps
keep their kingdom theirs,
and so ensures the
future of the cubs.
Your people who come from all over
the world,
they think "Oh, he's a kitty."
No, he's not. They're killers.
They kill our cows, so we love them,
but they still give
us a lot of trouble.
After a hard day's
toil in the savannah,
it's time for the visitors
to return to camp
to practise the lion anecdotes that
they'll dine out on, all year.
The visitors haven't
a clue what it really means
to be living next to wildlife.
For them, it's a
short little period whereby
they might have had that sense of
fear, which is also very thrilling,
and you get walked to your tent,
you know, in the evening
by an armed Maasai, who's
reassuring you that everything's OK
cos he'll be looking
after you at night.
We delude them by showing them
that everything is great.
And the behind the
scenes of every production,
there's always things going on,
things you don't want people to see,
skeletons in your cupboard.
So what can seem like this
pristine Garden of Eden,
you know, this place
that we think of
as the most magical place on Earth,
it's partly an illusion.
You know, forget lions for a minute.
I drive to the Mara, and I would
expect to see on my drive in
augur buzzards, bateleur eagles
wheeling around the sky,
tawny eagles, two a penny,
and suddenly
they were disappearing.
There's no vultures any more.
Why isn't anybody
doing anything about it?
The canary in the
mineshaft has died,
and meanwhile, you know, the
minibuses are driving around,
pointing at elephants and lions.
At first we didn't
know what was going on,
and then this word began
to become the buzz word,
appeared in the press,
"furadan", "carbofuran".
NEWSREEL: A highly toxic
insecticide is killing off
some of the most
striking wildlife in Kenya.
Lions are among the
animals dying through
what experts believe is
deliberate poisoning by herdsmen.
We were monitoring very carefully
the numbers of lions countrywide.
You could see the numbers
were plummeting.
I was at that time
running a campaign
to stop the poisoning of
lions and other animals in Kenya.
It had become an easy way
of getting rid of a problem.
They get very upset when
they lose a cow to lions,
and their solution
is kill the lions.
The Kenya government
was not acknowledging
the state of the problem,
so we went instead
to call for a total ban
on a certain pesticide -
furadan - and the active
ingredient, carbofuran.
ARCHIVE: It's a
hideous, painful death.
Recently, nearly 200
vultures were killed
when they ate a dead animal
deliberately contaminated
with carbofuran.
There's been well over
a 60% decline in vultures.
The most important janitor on the,
you know, in the
Serengeti Mara ecosystem.
Yeah, nobody would have cared
much if it was just vultures
that were dying, but the
moment you were saying that,
no, lions are dying,
"Oh, gosh, that matters."
When exposed to man's devices,
lions are extremely fragile.
The latest weapon being used
against them is poison. Yes, poison.
When CBS 60 Minutes came,
it was just the best
opportunity for us.
Hello. Hello.
Do you speak English? Yah.
Good. Do you have furadan? Furadan?
They revealed..
I'll take one bottle, please.
..how simple and easy it
was to buy this chemical
over the counter in Kenya.
1.50.
It's $2, that's pretty cheap.
After that huge impact
of the show reflected,
not just in Kenya, but all around
the world,
we all thought that
the Kenya government
would take notice and take action.
Um, they didn't.
I think most of the murder
mysteries of Agatha Christie
were as poison because it's quiet,
you're never gonna get caught.
It's way more mysterious
and nasty than, you know,
the bold act of throwing a spear at
something or shooting something.
The way the poisoning
really happens is,
say a lion kills a cow,
and the owner takes out the cow
and laces it with the poison.
So the lion would come
and feed on that carcass,
but you would see that this
animal is really in deep pain,
then it will die.
That's actually one
of our greatest fears.
The Kenya government
never banned carbofuran,
they never banned furadan.
In fact, the sale of
carbofuran in other products
continues until today.
No, 60 Minutes didn't
put an end to it, no.
They still carried on.
THEY SPEAK MAASAI
One thing that I can say is
that Maasai's really value
wildlife in general.
But then, over time,
there's a higher value
that has been placed on livestock
because it is seen as
a livelihood for them.
What we established is that
a lot of people do not link
the benefits that come from tourism
to having lions in the Mara.
If you ask those who are positive,
they would tell you that, you know,
their children are having some
benefits, uh, in terms of bursaries
that is paid to the schools.
But if you look at the
other side of the coin,
you would have people who
do not get any benefits.
If they lose livestock,
no-one compensates them.
So in a way, for us, such a
place presents a huge challenge.
So our only hope is the
conservation education
that we are carrying
out in the community.
Good morning, school.
CLASS: Good morning, sir.
Good morning, once again.
CLASS: Good morning, sir.
So we are very much privileged
to have a talk with you.
This school is very important
because it's
being surrounded by wildlife,
especially the lions.
Have you ever seen a lion?
CLASS: Yes.
Either way, whether you were walking
to school or maybe looking after.
So how many of you
have ever seen a lion?
How many? Wow, that's great.
Growing up in a situation whereby
you tend to take care of livestock,
any time during the day,
when they are hiding,
there might be, you
know, an incident of
a lion attacking either
livestock or people.
So it's not easy,
it needs a lot of awareness,
it needs a lot
dedication and hard work.
IN MAASAI:
IN MAASAI:
whereby lions kill people,
especially young people,
it's not that common,
but it happens.
I know of one farmer who has
actually lost their son
due to a lion.
It was terrible.
Then you are trying to, you know,
let them understand
the importance of a lion.
It's very, very, very, very hard.
Uh-huh.
IN MAASAI:
SHE SINGS IN MAASAI
There will always be
people who are going to pay
a certain price for us
to continue having lands
in an area such as this,
you know, like in Olare Orok.
SINGING CONTINUES
It felt as though some of
the foundation blocks
of the solidarity of the females
in the Marsh Pride had
been chiselled away.
The strength of that
gang has been eroded.
We, the people who bring the travel
industry to see the park, the pride,
we have to answer
a lot of questions.
People would arrive and say, "Can
I see White Eye? Can I see Red?"
And the answer from guides would be,
"No, because they've gone."
Bibi was now in charge.
She accepted it immediately.
She said, "Let's move on."
And so she was playing
the role of a wise grandma.
But she was very sad.
The one thing that has kept me going
back year after year after year
is a new generation of cubs,
is new life.
The Marsh Pride have been a strong
pride for quite a long time,
but they're changing with time.
Forward, Sammy, forwards.
Forward. Bit more. Bit more,
I've got a grasp. There, there.
My first time to know
the Marsh Pride was in 1998,
and Bibi was born in that year.
Every time I look at Bibi,
I feel that we need
to respect them because,
as cats, because I didn't
know that cats could survive
for such a long time in the wild.
Right, I'll get some of Mr Alan
playing with his food.
Alan was two and
greedy, quite greedy.
We used to call him a small hippo.
Oh. Thanks, Alan.
That's really interesting.
Siena was so brave.
Siena was like
the main leader of
the family, even in hunting,
doing everything.
She, at times,
I call her a survivor.
People think that actually
Red was Siena's mother,
and I sort of like that idea,
because like Red, she had it all.
Lions are always showing
love to each other, yeah.
That's the story about lions,
all the time.
They show love amongst themselves.
When you watch lions like we have,
what do I see?
I see the whole history in an
instant, just goes straight through.
They're, in a sense,
a reflection of their past,
and yet here they are living today,
and I think that is the real joy,
is you feel so
connected to those stories.
You feel it, you really feel it,
because it's like you
are part of the family.
2015 was, was a, a big
year in the sense that it was,
the dry season was long,
and people around the
reserve were allowed,
with agreement, to take their
livestock into the reserve,
but only do so at night-time.
And that meant that the tourists
could drive around
during the day time
and enjoy all the animals and be
deluded in thinking
that it wasn't a, you know,
a cattle ranch at night-time.
And this was happening,
you know, every night,
and some of them were building up,
you know, quite a taste for cows.
Everyone was
completely aware of the...
..the biggest threat of
all lurking in the wings
to the Marsh Pride,
from human beings.
And to see it coming.
To see it coming.
Lions and humans find it
difficult to live together,
and to an extent,
I can understand it.
This is our home, this is our right,
who are you to say a lion
has more right than we do?
It's threatening our livestock,
it's threatening our livelihood,
we're going to do
something about it.
We spotted them,
the only one that I didn't
see, Bibi, wasn't there,
and Siena wasn't there.
But the way they were walking,
by just looking at them,
I knew something had happened.
There's nothing you can do.
They must be in huge pain.
He can barely move, Sammy.
No, it's all of them, all of them.
When they get to the top,
they lie down,
start grooming each other -
not in a happy mood
but in a sad mood.
I was so scared.
So what I did, I tried
to call someone who can help.
There's always that feeling
that a miracle can happen.
Maybe the vets can do something.
Especially if you are dealing
with something you love.
Eight of the Marsh Pride
had been poisoned.
And it was just,
and do you know, the biggest
thing that came through to me
was a sense of guilt.
What do you think we should do?
I saw them coming from the carcass.
Straightaway I assumed, because from
the signs that were being shown,
we could tell this is
a likely poisoning case.
We just prepared some darts with
antidote and anti-inflammatories
and we darted a few of them.
And we thought we were on the
right path, they were doing fine.
I thought some of them
would lose their sight,
but they didn't.
Luckily they were big,
they were big,
so they survived.
They left Alan just not far,
maybe 50 metres.
I knew all of them
have eaten the same meal,
but I think because
Alan was so greedy,
he had eaten more.
He couldn't walk.
So we came back to the
isolated young male, Alan,
that was, in a very bad shape.
Very bad shape.
We said, "OK,
let's try an antidote."
We waited for 30 minutes,
we repeated the treatment.
I reckon by then,
there were two hours,
I think, two or three hours,
he had improved.
The one worry we had was
where is the other two?
Where is Siena, where is Bibi?
Where is Bibi? Where is Siena?
They had not been seen.
We were in denial,
we thought maybe...
They would reappear from somewhere.
..from somewhere.
The thing is just to hope,
because the only thing is hope.
We hope for the best, we always hope
for the best, yeah.
But it ended up not being the best.
So, the next day, we found Bibi
dead.
It was so sad, it was a sad day.
I don't like thinking
about that day.
Of all these lions,
Bibi was my favourite.
When I talk about her,
it's a little emotional.
This is a lioness
that has lived here
for a very long time,
but we lost her.
There was something
awfully poignant
about the death of Bibi.
The heart had been ripped
out of the Marsh Pride.
Siena?
You could see some
bloody patch on the grass,
you could tell that,
this must have been a,
a lion that probably died here.
She's just been eaten,
and there's nothing else left,
you know that the story
hasn't ended there.
It isn't ever a local problem.
When you poison, it's always spread.
She would also be carrying huge
amounts of, you know, poison.
Vultures will come down, eat a kilo
literally within
less than ten minutes
and be off and gone downwind
literally at 90km an hour.
If you've got wings and
you fly way out of the reserve,
drop down dead there,
you create another
satellite explosion of deaths
around where that happened.
It's sort of like a wave of deaths
that all go out
from that one sort of epicentre.
Just an aspirin size piece of,
you know, carbosulfan
would kill many lions,
you know 50 to a 100 vultures.
Now it was a catastrophe.
The same day we checked on Alan...
..he was, he was still doing well.
He was doing well. We said OK.
But we insisted on,
the team on the ground,
especially the rangers, keeping
him constant observation.
Yeah. 24 hours. 24 hours.
There was a vehicle that
was stationed there
just to secure him from hyenas and
even some buffaloes.
Yeah. Yeah.
This morning,
I found Alan
injured and buffaloes were nearby.
Yesterday I thought someone from
the park conservancy will,
will take care of him
and keep the hyenas or
whoever might harm him away,
but they didn't.
Unbelievable young boy
coming up to be another huge lion.
Now he can't make it.
The rangers were to
stay closer to him,
maybe they didn't stay all
night or maybe they...did.
Who knows? I don't know.
The buffalo, I'm sure,
just saw him wandering through,
and they said, "Right, this
guy's obviously on his way out,
"we're just gonna try and kill him."
They're trying to get rid
of their major predator.
And as a result, I don't know
how he managed to survive,
he's as tough as anything.
When I saw Alan dragging
himself under the car,
I knew he was looking for refuge.
Having been beaten all night,
and now the stress of
being surrounded by people,
that made him even weaker.
We're on the Musiara area,
we had the, the sick lion cub is
right underneath our car.
OK, it's been beaten nearly to
death by buffalo during the night.
That's why the vet needs to come,
because it's absolutely
been nearly bashed to death.
If we leave it, the hyenas
will kill it within seconds.
Many people who were there,
deep in their hearts,
they knew things are not good,
but, you know, you've
got something heavy...
There's a bigger problem.
..on your shoulder, you know.
Yeah, it's...it was a
very painful decision but
we felt that was the only
fair thing to do to him.
Because he had suffered a lot,
he had seen everything,
he had seen it all, and we thought
it's better to put him to rest.
NEWSREEL: A third lion
has died in the Marsh,
a pride featured on a
BBC wildlife programme
was allegedly poisoned
by Maasai herdsmen.
The cub known as Alan...
Everybody seems to be
standing around in slow motion.
You're angry at absolutely
everybody and everything.
I mean, everybody was.
I remember Simon frantically
trying to get my attention
to this problem and to raise it
on an international platform.
And I actually
called the authorities,
and I warned them
that if nothing is done,
this is going to
hit global headlines.
In this case, what was
different is these lions
are so famous that the government
cannot ignore it any more.
It's the first time anyone has
ever been prosecuted in Kenya
for poisoning lions.
So in my mind, this is actually
a signal that things are changing,
and they're changing for the better.
It felt like it was so momentous,
that maybe now the government
would really lay down the law,
that people would be arrested
and charged and convicted,
that this would send a clear
message across the country.
But that didn't happen.
People were arrested, the case
dragged on, people were released.
It's a sad thing, but
it's a reality that happened
and we felt, we felt betrayed
because, you know, these are
lions that we had treasured
in our culture.
And, you know, trying to win
that community back
to be able to support conservation
as they did in the past
is really a big task.
As a community, they keep
some things to themselves,
and I don't believe that
I know everything
surrounding that incident.
They sort of sat together
and said, you know, look,
this has already happened,
how do we move on from here?
IN MAASAI:
So there was some, I would say,
some community agreement
that this should
never happen again.
IN MAASAI:
He started understanding that the
place of a lion in the Mara
is critical, and that, you know,
nobody should be
allowed to poison any more.
And they learned a big lesson,
but they stayed
intact as a community.
We can only trust that
it won't happen again.
The human population is
literally driving wildlife
off the planet.
And we've got a choice here,
we've still got lions.
It's the most wonderful
natural heritage for Kenya,
but we either think it's precious
enough or we're gonna lose it,
and right now the signs
are not looking good.
That will be so hurting,
one day to find there are no lions.
We are working so
hard to ensure
that the Marsh Pride survives.
Lions must keep their ground.
This is the small pocket of
the world that lion exist.
There are not many,
there are very few.
I've seen lions going in
thousands to become hundreds
in my lifetime,
and I'm not old.
We have to engage our
communities as modern Africans,
not as traditional
Africans of 50 years ago.
We have to rethink the
way that we engage them,
and it has to come from the
people themselves on the ground.
There it is, right over there.
I see Yaya in the front.
Yaya's mother was Siena.
When you see Yaya,
you remember Siena.
It's automatic, yeah.
We like to see her.
Yeah, just seeing her,
it brings joy to our hearts.
We need Yaya for the future...
..for the future of the Marsh Pride...
..for the future of the
life of lions in Africa.
When it happened, the worst
thing to do is say, "I told you so."
But, yeah, you felt like kicking
the furniture and everything,
you know, emotionally,
you're pretty angry with
the person who did it,
irrespective of their reasons.
And you know you're
going to see, you know,
a bunch load of old chums, really,
who are going to be
lying around dying.
And, um, everybody
arrives there shocked.
But there isn't a single
person there that didn't know
that this happens.
Yeah, it's a tragedy.
It's now six years since
that incident happened.
Whenever we come to this place,
the memories come back.
This is where we lost these lions.
We were here, and we
could feel tension,
we knew that something
was going to happen.
Many of the members
of the Marsh Pride
were very close to us.
For us to lose them
in such a manner
was heart-breaking.
They were the best known
pride anywhere in the world.
ARCHIVE: Our story today
concerns the family life
and hunting activities
of a pride of lions
that has taken up residence
in the South Western portion
of Kenya, East Africa.
Here, in the lush
surroundings of a marsh
adjacent to the great Mara plains.
NEWSREEL: The famous pride of lions
in Kenya from the Marsh Pride...
REPORTER SPEAKS FRENCH
It's a family of lions who
star in the hugely popular
international wild life series.
REPORTERS SPEAK IN VARIOUS LANGUAGES
There are still people who are
following this particular
pride of lions that had
had a few babies recently.
Many people around the
world may have heard of them.
We've followed them for about...
The Marsh Pride have moved audiences
around the world for decades.
It's like a drama,
but it's a real drama,
and it's unfolding
right in front of you.
Go, Simba. Run, boy. Run, run, run.
It couldn't be more Shakespearian,
it couldn't be more
Medieval England.
Bibi, I'm sorry.
There's nothing we can do.
Trying to second guess what might
happen next is almost impossible.
Maasai people and lion, they fought
together for many, many years.
They survived together.
It's a long story, yeah.
Even talking with the days actually.
If you start talking
about the Marsh Pride,
each of those lions has
his or her own story.
The story of the Marsh Pride
is both a story about lions,
and it's about lions trying
to live amongst humans.
In the Maasai Mara,
Kenya's richest game reserve,
a pair of lionesses watch
over a herd of wildebeest.
And watching over them
all is Jonathan Scott,
a young English naturalist
who, for five years,
studied, photographed and
drew the wildlife here.
LIONESS ROARS
WILDEBEEST SQUEALS
CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS
When I first saw the Marsh Pride,
of course, I was
just living my dream.
Here was a kid from England,
degree in Zoology,
wanting to find a way of living
with wild animals in Africa.
It was the best place
as far as I was concerned.
This is where you
studied for so long
the animals you called Marsh Lions,
now I think we
should make that clear,
marsh lions are just lions
but they live in a marsh.
That's right. A particular
group of lions actually made
this area the core
area of their territory.
The Marsh is a glorious place,
full of birdlife,
buffalo, elephants
in the dry season,
wildebeest and zebra.
We're in the garden of Eden
and that is Marsh Pride territory.
These animals are so
individual and so complex,
that you haven't got a hope in hell
of understanding them
unless you put in the time.
I suppose what I love about
looking back at my scrap book is,
the richness of the
story that we would be able
to unfold over the years.
LION ROARS
And so 1998, we had the
two Marsh Pride males,
Scar and Scruffy,
and they couldn't have
been more different.
Scar was this wonderful,
magnificent, big male lion.
Scruffy looked younger,
didn't have such a full blown mane,
and in fact, never developed one.
That's the case sometimes.
But Scruffy, he was my hero.
If you wanted to be led into battle,
you would make the
biggest mistake of your life
if you went with the guy with the
big brown mane over the scruffy one.
Scruffy was, he was the real deal.
The males are vitally
important to secure
the territory for the females.
You're part of the glue
that binds the pride together.
When we talk about a pride,
what are we really talking about?
We're talking about the family.
Only lions come together,
form these groups,
and raise the cubs as a family.
And it's something that
none of the other cats do.
The best-case scenario for a lion
pride is where they create a creche,
where they've got lion cubs,
where they've got
cubs of a similar age.
So the lionesses by 1998
had come into season,
and we had these 11 young cubs
in the safety of the
most perfect breeding place
you could ever wish for.
This is really the heart of
the Marsh Pride territory,
and I can literally look today
at every single one of these trees,
every patch of bush,
and there's a story.
That's where the lions came
under attack from the buffaloes.
The biggest thing that
stands out to me from that day
was the difference
between Scar and Scruffy.
Buffalo show no mercy to lions,
cos if you're a buffalo,
those cubs are the same creatures
that are going to
kill you or your calves.
Glamour boy was Scar.
Well, tell you what,
when the chips were down,
Scar was rubbish.
It was Scruffy
who just got in there.
So, the cubs were
tucked away in the bushes.
Those were little, tiny cubs,
they weren't ready to
be running around in the open.
Now the buffalo have
tracked them by scent,
and they're almost on top of them.
The big thing that was
going through my mind was,
here is the nucleus
of a new chapter
in the Marsh Pride's history,
and it's gonna be smashed out
of the water by the buffalo.
Amidst the devastation, who knew how
many of those cubs would survive?
The mothers were
absolutely stressed.
They were salivating,
they were out of breath,
and they were calling.
You know, you could feel the energy
that had been sucked out of them
in trying to defend the cubs
and trying to chase
the buffaloes away,
and the anxiety
they were now feeling
because what would it
have been like to have been
a tiny lion cub
to have gone through that?
I was sure we would lose maybe
three, four, five cubs
and, in the end, we just lost one.
And it would have been more if
it hadn't have been for Scruffy.
Yet, and this is
the fascinating thing,
what happens?
The year after, 1999,
he's moved out of
the reserve into areas
where there's Maasai
with their cattle.
He hooks up with a female from
another pride,
they kill a cow, and they're
speared.
In the age-old conflict between
man and livestock and wildlife.
If you cross the line as a lion
and you ate a cow,
there would be retribution,
but I understand that.
But there were far fewer Maasai,
there was far fewer cattle,
and the way in which the Maasai,
and the cattle, and the wildlife
and the lions operated,
it worked.
There was still a harmony to it.
A lion does not fear
going through the long grass.
A lion does not fear
going through a dark night.
A lion does not fear
going through forest.
Often the elders and the
community also see it themselves,
to a lion.
They say they have
a heart of a lion,
they are fearless like a lion.
You find the Maasai people
and the lions history
or historically,
you cannot separate the two.
What you've got to
remember with the Maasai
is their relationship with lions.
And we should say
a huge thank you to them
for not killing animals for food.
But that traditional
sense of the male lion
as the ultimate prize for a
warrior to test his courage.
You were a hero within your
group if you killed a male lion.
First of all, I was not
a very brave warrior,
that's why I'm here.
I was a coward, because I have
seen since I was a young man,
I've seen what lion can do.
Because those warriors,
they don't succeed all the time,
well, very often, the lions succeed.
A couple have shredded.
Even our children,
we tell them, "Be careful,
"that male might turn around and
say,
"You are invading my family,"
and it will turn against you.
Looks like we've had visitors
in the middle of the night.
Take a look at this here, beauty.
Lion footprints.
Adult female, I think.
Front foot, back foot,
Right through the
middle of the camp,
in case we had any doubts that we
were in the heart of the action.
We spend all day looking for them,
instead they come looking for us.
I completely understand
why someone whose livelihood
is threatened by the
company of a big predator,
might see that lion footprint
a couple of metres away
from the tent they were sleeping in,
terrifying and unwelcome.
For me, it's an absolute thrill.
This is the Maasai Mara in Kenya.
Over the next six weeks,
we're going to be
following in intimate detail,
the lives of Africa's big cats.
Sending back a weekly report,
a diary of their hardships
and good fortunes as they happen.
Over the last few weeks,
we've been treated
to one of the most
incredible TV soaps ever,
it's the Big Cat Diary,
staggering film of everyday life
of lions, leopards and cheetahs.
It took endless amounts
of patience and skill
and some revolutionary
film techniques
for the BBC Natural History Unit
to get pictures like
we've never seen before.
I couldn't know
then what I was doing
was eaves dropping
for a little while
on a family story that
had occurred for millennia.
But the real joy is when you
begin to uncover some of the stories
because of who you absolutely
personally recognise.
Having lost his sidekick,
Scar was going to be the
epicentre of this narrative.
It's really hard to know what
goes on inside the head of
a lion who loses his ally.
Do they feel a sense of
vulnerability and fear?
Is it bravado that carries them on?
The more time we spent with Scar
and watched his body language,
the more it seemed to me that he was
increasingly nervous
within his own territory.
ELEPHANT TRUMPETS
You know, the tenure of an adult
male two, three years at best,
most of the time,
until he's challenged by
a mightier male or males,
looking to expand their own
interests and territories.
When you saw him around other lions,
even his own pride,
he would often be staring
off to the horizon.
When hyenas came on the scene,
instead of just being the big
man who would always run in
and try and kill one,
he'd just look a little bit
uncomfortable and vulnerable.
HYENAS CACKLE
And he was quite happy to sit back
and leave it to the
older cubs in the pride
to do the job of
chasing hyenas away
when really it
should have been him.
You see the adolescent dynamic
of this mob of younger lions
finding their feet
and testing their world.
Hyenas and lions,
there's no love lost between them.
They're both after the same nosh,
they both can threaten
each others lives,
and what keeps lion prides
safe from attack by
hyenas is big adult males.
And I could see Scar shrinking.
And so, as Scar
starts to lose his grip,
we start to see this
state of flux in the pride.
It was clear that
Scar needed backup.
You see this shift of behaviour
with some of his own cubs,
who ordinarily would be kicked out
because they're young males
who themselves are becoming
quite feisty and mature.
Instead, he thinks,
"Oh, you could be allies.
"Come with me, dudes,
we'll stick together."
And then you get this
curious alliance,
where you've got this
lumping great, big male, Dad,
that in any other circumstance
would chase young males off,
even if they're his own progeny.
We had all the ingredients
of what was, let's face it,
an extraordinary drama
playing out before our eyes.
You've got this big fella
who's going to lose the throne
unless he allies
with these young lads.
Any one snapshot of a group of lions
looking happy and calm together
can be misleading.
There's nothing
predictable about the dynamics
of a family like the Marsh Pride.
You might think everything
is pretty stable and settled
and it's OK, and you can't
see that curveball coming.
And neither can they.
Everything can change in an hour.
For Scar, the profound change
came when two big, mature males
came over the horizon.
We called them Simba and Blondie,
and they had one thing on their mind
and that was takeover.
They wanted that throne.
I can remember the adrenaline again.
You know that if there's
going to be a fight,
the likelihood is
one of them's going to die,
and the likelihood is
that's going to be Scar.
Everything about their body
language showed intent to take over.
Their gaze was fixed,
their eyes are big.
Then we witnessed them making
their mark on the local hyenas.
HYENAS CALL FRANTICALLY
When a coalition
of male lions move in,
and one of the first things
they do is kill a hyena,
that has a ripple effect
throughout the community.
Straight away, every one of
the hyenas knows they mean business,
so there's a difference,
immediate difference
in respect and distance
that they're likely to push.
And once they've done the
job that they intended,
they reaffirm the bond between them
with the most kitten like
floppy cuddles you can imagine.
They are one big aura
of combined might.
For themselves,
they identify with each other,
but also for any other
lion in the neighbourhood.
Now, would Scar have
come across the carcass
of the hyena that they killed?
Smell the saliva, and the urine
and the scent of two big males?
Maybe, maybe not.
If he did, what a statement.
What a calling card to say,
"Mister, we're in,
and this is what we do."
We never experienced a
full-on scrap with Scar.
I think he was too canny for that.
Having lost tenure of the pride,
he realised when it was time to run,
and most males do.
And for a male lion,
life after pride life
is usually pretty short.
But that's a natural cycle.
That's a natural death.
It was the pride as
a whole that faced
an entirely new set of threats.
It became clear that there was a
parallel story of change
occurring within the
human community on the edge
of the Marsh Pride's territory.
The Maasai were becoming
more sedentary,
they were no longer as nomadic in
their movement with their cattle.
Part of the problem for
the Maasai, in a sense,
was that the government likes to
have people on plot A, B, C.
They want you to become settled.
They want you to become
part of the cash economy.
And that, of course,
means that fences go up,
people's livelihoods change
and having lions as your
next door neighbours
becomes a different reality.
We have changed our
lifestyle as a community,
as a Maasai people,
and that has affected
the Marsh Pride.
IN MAASAI:
just a pastoralist who
really loves his cows.
So cows for Maasai's
are very sacred animal,
like they are seen as a livelihood,
not only, you know, because
of the milk, the meat,
but they have a deeper
cultural meaning for a Maasai.
IN MAASAI:
concerns is the Marsh Pride,
which tend to move out and cause
conflict by killing livestock,
and, you know, this will put them
in conflict with human beings.
One of the approaches that the Mara
Predator Conservation programme uses
is through an approach we
call the lion ambassadors.
David is sort of like the eye
of the community in that area.
Someone who's able to
advocate for the lions,
and especially such incredible
family like the Marsh Pride.
Goodbye.
CHILD CRIES
David's job entails
communicating with herders
to try and create a lot of awareness
and champion for issues of lions.
IN MAASAI:
2004 to the Marsh Pride,
it was lovely to be
greeted by a genuine mob.
They had been doing
very well in our absence,
and 29 lions in the
pride at the time,
including cubs and
lionesses that we knew well.
What we saw with the 29 lions
told you everything, really,
about how different lions
are from all the other cats.
Big and powerful enough not
to have to hide away at night,
isn't solitary.
We have Simba on parade with,
with the whole mob,
you know, in his finery.
He'd lost his sidekick to
an encounter with the buffalo,
so his buddy had been killed.
He's the only pride male now
trying to actually control this
big area, this pride territory.
One of the lionesses who
stood out as a character for us
was a female we called Bibi.
We'd known Bibi since
she was a tiny cub.
I've got a soft spot for Bibi
because she's a survivor of
the debacle with the buffaloes.
She was probably, almost certainly,
was the daughter of Scar.
It sounds a bit strange
to describe a lioness as sweet,
but there was a sweetness
about her character.
Lionesses generally all
conceive more or less together
if they're in a pride.
They all have young cubs at
more or less the same time,
so you get a rash of little babies.
The other lionesses
within the group,
they were a strong unit.
They had quite well-grown
cubs, many of them.
Bibi had very, very small cubs,
so she had conceived out of synch.
She's been caught in
an awkward situation,
and she's just irrelevant
to the rest of the pride.
She had taken
herself off to give birth
and to have these tiddlers.
It was like having a one-year-old
whilst all your mates
have got 18-year-olds.
Being a single mum as
a lioness is not easy.
And there's no doubt that
Bibi would have preferred
to have been in the
fold of the pride.
She would shadow,
sometimes at 300-400 metres,
sometimes a little more than that,
but within eyesight.
And it was clear that she wanted in,
but was also feeling threatened
and not quite comfortable.
The main group of the
Marsh Pride are hunting.
The leading lioness moving in
towards a mixed group of animals -
topi, zebra, wildebeest.
The art of the experienced lioness
is to try and keep an eye on all of
the animals she's moving towards.
There's a buffalo starting
to move in towards her.
I think the ultimate challenge
for any pride of lions
is when they decide they're
going to tackle a buffalo.
BUFFALO CALLS
The buffalo's
definitely caught a scent.
There's a lot of strategy involved
but, in trying to
actually catch the buffalo,
that's a whole different game.
There - she's gonna go for it.
Battle on.
Buffalo scores first strike,
she's going in.
And she's on.
You've got a lioness who's
on to the killing bite,
and she's bitten over
the nose and mouth.
And you will see the buffalo
desperately trying to breathe,
and the breath will be coming out
of the lionesses nostrils,
and you'll see the lioness and
nostrils just inflating
as the buffalo, pfff,
you know desperately...
HE INHALES DEEPLY
..and it can't do it
because it's locked down.
And you imagine what that takes,
not just in terms
of getting that bite,
but getting into position
around the front end of a buffalo.
Is there anywhere that
you would rather not be?
BUFFALO CALLS
Buffaloes are tough,
buffaloes are mean,
very mean indeed,
but yet they have the food,
they have the meat that
the Marsh Pride requires -
the easy meal.
But then they see these other
buffet,
that's so easy to pick - the cows.
They hide in the reeds,
but not entirely,
they just look through the reeds,
and they said,
"Aw, even though there's
"a Maasai there, I could
still kill that cow."
They are naughty, very naughty.
HE LAUGHS
ARCHIVE: What these men are about
to do is extremely dangerous.
30 men and boys preparing
to track and kill a lion.
It's the mark. Here.
So it's a dangerous business.
Yeah, it is a dangerous business.
It's not an easy
business altogether.
It is for you to choose
to kill or to die.
This is a revenge mission,
a hunt for two lions which have
been killing the local cattle.
When there's killings of livestock,
there is a lot of anger, and people
don't think at that point,
"What can I do?"
They would go and identify that
particular lion that is responsible
and, you know, go with
a spear and kill it.
We are going to kill the lion.
As long as it's a spear,
a spear doesn't destroy them,
but a spear will just take one.
And then the others learn,
"Mm-mm, I shouldn't go that way."
So, to them, this is just
an enemy that has come
to kill your cows,
so let me wipe it out.
The number of livestock are growing,
there's a talk of population
doubling every nine years.
Now you've got a whole
different situation,
and with people eating
up the landscape,
which was primarily before
available to the lions,
who's gonna be squeezed most?
The lions at the edge,
the Marsh Pride.
So all these things put a lot
of pressure on the available land
for conservation, or land that's
available for lions to roam in.
In 2004, we could see that
the pressures were developing.
The Maasai communities
will revolve primarily
around the herds of cattle
and, of course, our attention
was focused almost wholly
on the lion's story.
In order for Bibi to stand the
greatest chance of raising her cubs,
she had to maximise
their chance of survival.
When a lioness is on her own,
she's far less likely to
be successful hunting at night
because, at night,
all of the hyenas are out,
every other lion is out.
So she's pressured
to be busy by day.
She's out when it's hot,
when it's really uncomfortable,
and whilst her cubs are exposed
to the dangers of the day,
not least the burning sun.
This is what being a lioness is
all about, raising offspring.
The gestation period's
only what, 110 days,
so, three and a half months,
but your investment
in that cub's life
to get it through to maturity,
it's a very long,
protracted process.
So the chances of any cub surviving
all the trials and tribulations
of what it takes to be
a full grown lion,
you've really got your
back up against it.
And for somebody like Bibi,
ostracised by the pride,
membership of the pride territory is
about all she's got going for her.
She's got somewhere to call home.
The fig tree played a really
important role to Bibi as a nursery.
Those fig trees were so massive,
they would have, like, hidden caves
and these
wonderful dark passageways,
where a little lion cub could get
right in amongst the tree roots,
and no hyena, buffalo, no lion
could get in and drag them out.
It's a great patch
when the season is dry
and all the wildebeest and
zebra come down here to drink,
but at the moment,
it looks absolutely bare of life.
And that means getting a meal is
going to be a real challenge.
Despite being quite small,
warthogs are incredibly
tough animals,
and it's going to take
all of Bibi's strength
to suffocate her prey.
Using her vice like grip with
those immensely powerful jaws
to close on the
throat of the warthog
and eventually stifle it's breath.
Bit of a grim sight, really.
With Bibi off dealing with
breakfast in the form of
a warthog that she's just
killed not very far away,
the cubs are left all
alone in the fig tree,
and danger has moved
into the neighbourhood.
There's a Martial eagle sitting at
the top of the tree,
studying the ground.
If the cubs move out of the cover
and into the open,
they are very vulnerable.
A bird of this size,
this power could very
easily kill one of Bibi's cubs
and carry it away before
she even knows it's happened.
Poor Bibi, she's putting in
a supreme effort
to try and get her warthog kill
back to where the cubs are waiting,
about a kilometre away.
And now she's stumbled into
a small group of elephants.
They haven't seen her yet,
but if they do,
they're not going to take
lightly to a lion in their midst.
Huh.
A very experienced cat, Bibi,
she's just slipped out of the way.
And, for now, she's left the
warthog kill lying in the grass.
Where are they?
Here they come.
One, anyway.
Both of them.
Fantastic.
So whilst Bibi was
trying to hold it together
as a single mum,
the pride male, Simba,
had his own problems.
He was strutting his
stuff by hanging out
with the pride from time to time,
capitalising on the kills made,
and roaring regularly.
ROARING
Simba, declaring to everybody
that this is still his patch.
It's a mixed message,
as far as he's concerned.
He's an adult male, yes, but if any
other adult males are in the area,
and particularly if
there are several together,
they might well take
that message as a challenge
and come in and try and
take over the pride.
For a lone male at
the top of the tree,
there's an omnipresent threat.
Behind every tree, behind every
bush, there's a potential takeover.
They slink around, they're silent,
they're not telling
you where they are,
they're not announcing themselves,
they're not even letting
you see who they are.
They don't roar,
they don't pee and scrape mark,
they don't leave a
sign of their presence
because they don't want you
knowing what they're up to
and coming and jumping on
their back ahead of time.
And then one day,
they see their moment.
As is so often the
case with lion life,
this was like history
repeating itself.
Simba himself had taken
over the Marsh Pride
with his sidekick
Blondie in the past,
was now on his own and under
threat from two new invading males.
You're looking for property,
looking what real
estate is available to me?
What are the strengths
and the weaknesses
based on the roaring of
the one pride male, Simba?
HE ROARS
When they spot a
vulnerable male, as Simba was,
you can almost feel the
weight lifting off them
and the confidence
coming back into their skin
as they rise up to the challenge,
literally rise up to the challenge.
Oh, gosh, suddenly
he's a forlorn character,
he's calling for backup,
he's calling for help here.
Oh, not more than 50 metres away,
we've got two male lions
closing the gap on Simba.
And they look mean,
they look really mean.
Here they go.
Ooh, watch your back Simba,
watch your back.
There's no more than just
a few metres between them now.
This is weird. He knows,
he must know they're there.
Here we go. This is it.
Go, Simba. Run, boy. Run, run, run.
Run. Get out of it!
The idea that all
males stand and fight,
there's some kind of
valour to being beaten-up
to the point of death.
They want to live,
and when it is really,
really dangerous and scary,
they're legging it.
You look at the body
language of the two young males,
yes, they're sort of fully intent,
and they wanna come closer,
but there's a degree of reticence.
The minute he stops and
stands and faces them.
OK.
They're not looking for a fight,
they're happy if they can move
him on and he continues to run.
Those invading males, wisely,
don't want to take too many risks,
because if they
encounter a serious fight
and they get cut up,
their own chances of fathering cubs
in the future are wrecked.
I think a lot of people tend to
like the idea of the gladiators,
fight to the death.
Often lions simply say,
"OK, under threat, time to go."
Simba does the obvious thing,
go to the safest place
in your territory,
and then roar at the top of
your voice to say
"I am here, I am not leaving.
"This is my place.
"If you dare, come
and try and oust me."
HE ROARS
These two new males had
achieved their first objective,
they'd pushed Simba
to the very margins
of the Marsh Pride territory.
Their next step
was to try and kill any young
cubs that remain in the pride.
And the cubs on the
front line were Bibi's.
Yeah.
Hold it there.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
So Bibi, you could say,
drew the short straw.
She's a lone lioness
with dependent cubs,
and then, you know, just to give her
the absolutely ultimate challenge,
along come any
lioness' worst nightmare -
two nomads start sniffing around.
You could see that she
was deeply concerned
and upset for her cubs, I'm sure,
who we couldn't see,
but they were very close to
her somewhere in the vegetation.
Those males are looking to kill cubs
so that they can then mate with the
female and start their own pride.
Uh-oh.
This is bad now.
If she was to get up
and charge those males,
confronts them, but
after all she's a lioness,
you know, she's not as big as them.
She was thinking,
better not to give your hand away,
better not to rush
out all big and bluster
because one of them,
whilst one is confronting her,
could easily just go
in to where she was,
where the cubs were, smell,
end of story.
Ah, this is just awful.
It's as though
everything is conspiring
against Bibi and her cubs.
We've got the two male lions
15 metres outside the ditch
where she's hiding her cubs,
and now coming from the opposite
direction - a whole herd of buffalo.
You're in that charged,
emotional space with the cats,
and it's a curious cocktail
of feelings, because it's exciting,
but is also something that you
ironically don't want to see,
because you don't want to
see the cubs being killed.
Bibi, I'm sorry, nothing we can do.
There's so nothing we can do, now.
It's down to you.
OK, she's still in those bushes,
I can just see her.
OK, he's come out.
Bibi managed to
intimidate the young male.
Miraculously, it looks as though the
herd of buffalo is swinging away.
They're still really close to where
Bibi and the cubs are hiding
but I don't think
they're going to go through
the bushes where she
currently is crouching.
The male lions, however,
are keeping an eye on her,
and I don't know what
their next move is going to be.
The trouble is, it's getting dark,
and we're gonna have to leave soon.
This story will only
have a conclusion
if and when we find her tomorrow.
We did find her the following day.
The males were not to
be seen, the new males.
She was apparently completely alone.
And we did fear the worst.
We thought we were going
to find her, find corpses.
SHE CALLS
But true to form, she found her cubs
stuck in the bottom of a fig tree,
who had found their way back
to the castle of the fig tree.
Yeah, massive sense of
relief when you see the tiddlers.
You shouldn't necessarily feel so
invested, but you do,
you get into their world
and you want them to
make it out the other side.
And on that occasion, they did.
When I next joined the Marsh Pride,
it was all change again,
as far as the males are concerned.
Simba - nowhere to be seen.
We found a different king at
the top of the Marsh Pride.
A new, beautiful pride male
that we called Notch.
He was on his tod with
a fleet of his own babies,
a whole new generation
of little cubs sired by Notch.
Bibi had lost her previous litter.
In every likelihood, when Notch
took over the Marsh Pride,
he will have killed Bibi's cubs.
But when we found
him with the pride,
it's all happy families,
and that's lion life.
They can't afford to
hang around, and to grieve
and to hold grudges against
the male that comes in.
They've just gotta get on with it.
Those four lionesses
from the Marsh Pride,
they were just brilliant,
brilliant lionesses.
White Eye, Bibi, Lispy
and then you have Red.
The power.
She was the best hunter
I've ever seen.
The gang of four females
were an awesome hunting force
and each of them
had their skill base,
they really did.
White Eye was excellent,
excellent when it came
to suffocating buffalo.
White Eye, I mean, what
an extraordinary lioness.
It's tough enough to be a lion,
but a lion with one eye?
Bibi was a very good
wildebeest hunter.
She could run out and grapple them,
and Red was just the
queen of pincer movement,
she was super and powerful.
So between them,
they had their system sorted,
and I think the same
came down to motherhood.
The four lionesses
are so powerful together,
it's a family unit
but one, very strong.
They've been through
the hoops, all of them,
they've all had losses,
but now they've got a young family,
more or less the right
age right across the board,
things are looking pretty good.
We were really beginning
to feel just how these cats
had become big stars.
We had people literally
stop us and say,
"We're here because
of the Marsh Pride.
"We wanted to come and see
these animals for ourselves."
It's the celebrity factor, isn't it?
We've created
celebrities out of them.
They know a Canon lens
as opposed to a Nikon lens
better than you or I.
They have been
photographed so many times,
I mean, they are stars.
CAMERA SHUTTERS CLICK
And, of course, tourism exploded.
And obviously the
Maasai people benefit.
Without the tourism there,
they will struggle to
fund the community,
to fund the projects that
protects the territory of lions.
ARCHIVE: For the lions,
chattering sightseers
are a necessary side-show.
They may not know it,
but the tourist fees helps
keep their kingdom theirs,
and so ensures the
future of the cubs.
Your people who come from all over
the world,
they think "Oh, he's a kitty."
No, he's not. They're killers.
They kill our cows, so we love them,
but they still give
us a lot of trouble.
After a hard day's
toil in the savannah,
it's time for the visitors
to return to camp
to practise the lion anecdotes that
they'll dine out on, all year.
The visitors haven't
a clue what it really means
to be living next to wildlife.
For them, it's a
short little period whereby
they might have had that sense of
fear, which is also very thrilling,
and you get walked to your tent,
you know, in the evening
by an armed Maasai, who's
reassuring you that everything's OK
cos he'll be looking
after you at night.
We delude them by showing them
that everything is great.
And the behind the
scenes of every production,
there's always things going on,
things you don't want people to see,
skeletons in your cupboard.
So what can seem like this
pristine Garden of Eden,
you know, this place
that we think of
as the most magical place on Earth,
it's partly an illusion.
You know, forget lions for a minute.
I drive to the Mara, and I would
expect to see on my drive in
augur buzzards, bateleur eagles
wheeling around the sky,
tawny eagles, two a penny,
and suddenly
they were disappearing.
There's no vultures any more.
Why isn't anybody
doing anything about it?
The canary in the
mineshaft has died,
and meanwhile, you know, the
minibuses are driving around,
pointing at elephants and lions.
At first we didn't
know what was going on,
and then this word began
to become the buzz word,
appeared in the press,
"furadan", "carbofuran".
NEWSREEL: A highly toxic
insecticide is killing off
some of the most
striking wildlife in Kenya.
Lions are among the
animals dying through
what experts believe is
deliberate poisoning by herdsmen.
We were monitoring very carefully
the numbers of lions countrywide.
You could see the numbers
were plummeting.
I was at that time
running a campaign
to stop the poisoning of
lions and other animals in Kenya.
It had become an easy way
of getting rid of a problem.
They get very upset when
they lose a cow to lions,
and their solution
is kill the lions.
The Kenya government
was not acknowledging
the state of the problem,
so we went instead
to call for a total ban
on a certain pesticide -
furadan - and the active
ingredient, carbofuran.
ARCHIVE: It's a
hideous, painful death.
Recently, nearly 200
vultures were killed
when they ate a dead animal
deliberately contaminated
with carbofuran.
There's been well over
a 60% decline in vultures.
The most important janitor on the,
you know, in the
Serengeti Mara ecosystem.
Yeah, nobody would have cared
much if it was just vultures
that were dying, but the
moment you were saying that,
no, lions are dying,
"Oh, gosh, that matters."
When exposed to man's devices,
lions are extremely fragile.
The latest weapon being used
against them is poison. Yes, poison.
When CBS 60 Minutes came,
it was just the best
opportunity for us.
Hello. Hello.
Do you speak English? Yah.
Good. Do you have furadan? Furadan?
They revealed..
I'll take one bottle, please.
..how simple and easy it
was to buy this chemical
over the counter in Kenya.
1.50.
It's $2, that's pretty cheap.
After that huge impact
of the show reflected,
not just in Kenya, but all around
the world,
we all thought that
the Kenya government
would take notice and take action.
Um, they didn't.
I think most of the murder
mysteries of Agatha Christie
were as poison because it's quiet,
you're never gonna get caught.
It's way more mysterious
and nasty than, you know,
the bold act of throwing a spear at
something or shooting something.
The way the poisoning
really happens is,
say a lion kills a cow,
and the owner takes out the cow
and laces it with the poison.
So the lion would come
and feed on that carcass,
but you would see that this
animal is really in deep pain,
then it will die.
That's actually one
of our greatest fears.
The Kenya government
never banned carbofuran,
they never banned furadan.
In fact, the sale of
carbofuran in other products
continues until today.
No, 60 Minutes didn't
put an end to it, no.
They still carried on.
THEY SPEAK MAASAI
One thing that I can say is
that Maasai's really value
wildlife in general.
But then, over time,
there's a higher value
that has been placed on livestock
because it is seen as
a livelihood for them.
What we established is that
a lot of people do not link
the benefits that come from tourism
to having lions in the Mara.
If you ask those who are positive,
they would tell you that, you know,
their children are having some
benefits, uh, in terms of bursaries
that is paid to the schools.
But if you look at the
other side of the coin,
you would have people who
do not get any benefits.
If they lose livestock,
no-one compensates them.
So in a way, for us, such a
place presents a huge challenge.
So our only hope is the
conservation education
that we are carrying
out in the community.
Good morning, school.
CLASS: Good morning, sir.
Good morning, once again.
CLASS: Good morning, sir.
So we are very much privileged
to have a talk with you.
This school is very important
because it's
being surrounded by wildlife,
especially the lions.
Have you ever seen a lion?
CLASS: Yes.
Either way, whether you were walking
to school or maybe looking after.
So how many of you
have ever seen a lion?
How many? Wow, that's great.
Growing up in a situation whereby
you tend to take care of livestock,
any time during the day,
when they are hiding,
there might be, you
know, an incident of
a lion attacking either
livestock or people.
So it's not easy,
it needs a lot of awareness,
it needs a lot
dedication and hard work.
IN MAASAI:
IN MAASAI:
whereby lions kill people,
especially young people,
it's not that common,
but it happens.
I know of one farmer who has
actually lost their son
due to a lion.
It was terrible.
Then you are trying to, you know,
let them understand
the importance of a lion.
It's very, very, very, very hard.
Uh-huh.
IN MAASAI:
SHE SINGS IN MAASAI
There will always be
people who are going to pay
a certain price for us
to continue having lands
in an area such as this,
you know, like in Olare Orok.
SINGING CONTINUES
It felt as though some of
the foundation blocks
of the solidarity of the females
in the Marsh Pride had
been chiselled away.
The strength of that
gang has been eroded.
We, the people who bring the travel
industry to see the park, the pride,
we have to answer
a lot of questions.
People would arrive and say, "Can
I see White Eye? Can I see Red?"
And the answer from guides would be,
"No, because they've gone."
Bibi was now in charge.
She accepted it immediately.
She said, "Let's move on."
And so she was playing
the role of a wise grandma.
But she was very sad.
The one thing that has kept me going
back year after year after year
is a new generation of cubs,
is new life.
The Marsh Pride have been a strong
pride for quite a long time,
but they're changing with time.
Forward, Sammy, forwards.
Forward. Bit more. Bit more,
I've got a grasp. There, there.
My first time to know
the Marsh Pride was in 1998,
and Bibi was born in that year.
Every time I look at Bibi,
I feel that we need
to respect them because,
as cats, because I didn't
know that cats could survive
for such a long time in the wild.
Right, I'll get some of Mr Alan
playing with his food.
Alan was two and
greedy, quite greedy.
We used to call him a small hippo.
Oh. Thanks, Alan.
That's really interesting.
Siena was so brave.
Siena was like
the main leader of
the family, even in hunting,
doing everything.
She, at times,
I call her a survivor.
People think that actually
Red was Siena's mother,
and I sort of like that idea,
because like Red, she had it all.
Lions are always showing
love to each other, yeah.
That's the story about lions,
all the time.
They show love amongst themselves.
When you watch lions like we have,
what do I see?
I see the whole history in an
instant, just goes straight through.
They're, in a sense,
a reflection of their past,
and yet here they are living today,
and I think that is the real joy,
is you feel so
connected to those stories.
You feel it, you really feel it,
because it's like you
are part of the family.
2015 was, was a, a big
year in the sense that it was,
the dry season was long,
and people around the
reserve were allowed,
with agreement, to take their
livestock into the reserve,
but only do so at night-time.
And that meant that the tourists
could drive around
during the day time
and enjoy all the animals and be
deluded in thinking
that it wasn't a, you know,
a cattle ranch at night-time.
And this was happening,
you know, every night,
and some of them were building up,
you know, quite a taste for cows.
Everyone was
completely aware of the...
..the biggest threat of
all lurking in the wings
to the Marsh Pride,
from human beings.
And to see it coming.
To see it coming.
Lions and humans find it
difficult to live together,
and to an extent,
I can understand it.
This is our home, this is our right,
who are you to say a lion
has more right than we do?
It's threatening our livestock,
it's threatening our livelihood,
we're going to do
something about it.
We spotted them,
the only one that I didn't
see, Bibi, wasn't there,
and Siena wasn't there.
But the way they were walking,
by just looking at them,
I knew something had happened.
There's nothing you can do.
They must be in huge pain.
He can barely move, Sammy.
No, it's all of them, all of them.
When they get to the top,
they lie down,
start grooming each other -
not in a happy mood
but in a sad mood.
I was so scared.
So what I did, I tried
to call someone who can help.
There's always that feeling
that a miracle can happen.
Maybe the vets can do something.
Especially if you are dealing
with something you love.
Eight of the Marsh Pride
had been poisoned.
And it was just,
and do you know, the biggest
thing that came through to me
was a sense of guilt.
What do you think we should do?
I saw them coming from the carcass.
Straightaway I assumed, because from
the signs that were being shown,
we could tell this is
a likely poisoning case.
We just prepared some darts with
antidote and anti-inflammatories
and we darted a few of them.
And we thought we were on the
right path, they were doing fine.
I thought some of them
would lose their sight,
but they didn't.
Luckily they were big,
they were big,
so they survived.
They left Alan just not far,
maybe 50 metres.
I knew all of them
have eaten the same meal,
but I think because
Alan was so greedy,
he had eaten more.
He couldn't walk.
So we came back to the
isolated young male, Alan,
that was, in a very bad shape.
Very bad shape.
We said, "OK,
let's try an antidote."
We waited for 30 minutes,
we repeated the treatment.
I reckon by then,
there were two hours,
I think, two or three hours,
he had improved.
The one worry we had was
where is the other two?
Where is Siena, where is Bibi?
Where is Bibi? Where is Siena?
They had not been seen.
We were in denial,
we thought maybe...
They would reappear from somewhere.
..from somewhere.
The thing is just to hope,
because the only thing is hope.
We hope for the best, we always hope
for the best, yeah.
But it ended up not being the best.
So, the next day, we found Bibi
dead.
It was so sad, it was a sad day.
I don't like thinking
about that day.
Of all these lions,
Bibi was my favourite.
When I talk about her,
it's a little emotional.
This is a lioness
that has lived here
for a very long time,
but we lost her.
There was something
awfully poignant
about the death of Bibi.
The heart had been ripped
out of the Marsh Pride.
Siena?
You could see some
bloody patch on the grass,
you could tell that,
this must have been a,
a lion that probably died here.
She's just been eaten,
and there's nothing else left,
you know that the story
hasn't ended there.
It isn't ever a local problem.
When you poison, it's always spread.
She would also be carrying huge
amounts of, you know, poison.
Vultures will come down, eat a kilo
literally within
less than ten minutes
and be off and gone downwind
literally at 90km an hour.
If you've got wings and
you fly way out of the reserve,
drop down dead there,
you create another
satellite explosion of deaths
around where that happened.
It's sort of like a wave of deaths
that all go out
from that one sort of epicentre.
Just an aspirin size piece of,
you know, carbosulfan
would kill many lions,
you know 50 to a 100 vultures.
Now it was a catastrophe.
The same day we checked on Alan...
..he was, he was still doing well.
He was doing well. We said OK.
But we insisted on,
the team on the ground,
especially the rangers, keeping
him constant observation.
Yeah. 24 hours. 24 hours.
There was a vehicle that
was stationed there
just to secure him from hyenas and
even some buffaloes.
Yeah. Yeah.
This morning,
I found Alan
injured and buffaloes were nearby.
Yesterday I thought someone from
the park conservancy will,
will take care of him
and keep the hyenas or
whoever might harm him away,
but they didn't.
Unbelievable young boy
coming up to be another huge lion.
Now he can't make it.
The rangers were to
stay closer to him,
maybe they didn't stay all
night or maybe they...did.
Who knows? I don't know.
The buffalo, I'm sure,
just saw him wandering through,
and they said, "Right, this
guy's obviously on his way out,
"we're just gonna try and kill him."
They're trying to get rid
of their major predator.
And as a result, I don't know
how he managed to survive,
he's as tough as anything.
When I saw Alan dragging
himself under the car,
I knew he was looking for refuge.
Having been beaten all night,
and now the stress of
being surrounded by people,
that made him even weaker.
We're on the Musiara area,
we had the, the sick lion cub is
right underneath our car.
OK, it's been beaten nearly to
death by buffalo during the night.
That's why the vet needs to come,
because it's absolutely
been nearly bashed to death.
If we leave it, the hyenas
will kill it within seconds.
Many people who were there,
deep in their hearts,
they knew things are not good,
but, you know, you've
got something heavy...
There's a bigger problem.
..on your shoulder, you know.
Yeah, it's...it was a
very painful decision but
we felt that was the only
fair thing to do to him.
Because he had suffered a lot,
he had seen everything,
he had seen it all, and we thought
it's better to put him to rest.
NEWSREEL: A third lion
has died in the Marsh,
a pride featured on a
BBC wildlife programme
was allegedly poisoned
by Maasai herdsmen.
The cub known as Alan...
Everybody seems to be
standing around in slow motion.
You're angry at absolutely
everybody and everything.
I mean, everybody was.
I remember Simon frantically
trying to get my attention
to this problem and to raise it
on an international platform.
And I actually
called the authorities,
and I warned them
that if nothing is done,
this is going to
hit global headlines.
In this case, what was
different is these lions
are so famous that the government
cannot ignore it any more.
It's the first time anyone has
ever been prosecuted in Kenya
for poisoning lions.
So in my mind, this is actually
a signal that things are changing,
and they're changing for the better.
It felt like it was so momentous,
that maybe now the government
would really lay down the law,
that people would be arrested
and charged and convicted,
that this would send a clear
message across the country.
But that didn't happen.
People were arrested, the case
dragged on, people were released.
It's a sad thing, but
it's a reality that happened
and we felt, we felt betrayed
because, you know, these are
lions that we had treasured
in our culture.
And, you know, trying to win
that community back
to be able to support conservation
as they did in the past
is really a big task.
As a community, they keep
some things to themselves,
and I don't believe that
I know everything
surrounding that incident.
They sort of sat together
and said, you know, look,
this has already happened,
how do we move on from here?
IN MAASAI:
So there was some, I would say,
some community agreement
that this should
never happen again.
IN MAASAI:
He started understanding that the
place of a lion in the Mara
is critical, and that, you know,
nobody should be
allowed to poison any more.
And they learned a big lesson,
but they stayed
intact as a community.
We can only trust that
it won't happen again.
The human population is
literally driving wildlife
off the planet.
And we've got a choice here,
we've still got lions.
It's the most wonderful
natural heritage for Kenya,
but we either think it's precious
enough or we're gonna lose it,
and right now the signs
are not looking good.
That will be so hurting,
one day to find there are no lions.
We are working so
hard to ensure
that the Marsh Pride survives.
Lions must keep their ground.
This is the small pocket of
the world that lion exist.
There are not many,
there are very few.
I've seen lions going in
thousands to become hundreds
in my lifetime,
and I'm not old.
We have to engage our
communities as modern Africans,
not as traditional
Africans of 50 years ago.
We have to rethink the
way that we engage them,
and it has to come from the
people themselves on the ground.
There it is, right over there.
I see Yaya in the front.
Yaya's mother was Siena.
When you see Yaya,
you remember Siena.
It's automatic, yeah.
We like to see her.
Yeah, just seeing her,
it brings joy to our hearts.
We need Yaya for the future...
..for the future of the Marsh Pride...
..for the future of the
life of lions in Africa.