The rise and fall of the pride behind ‘The Lion King’
Joe Shute talks to Jonathan Scott, who has observed the Marsh Pride of Kenya for 45 years, on the world’s most famous lions
It was nearly half a century ago when Jonathan Scott first set eyes upon the lions of the Musiara Marsh. Back in 1977, he had newly arrived in Kenya’s Masai Mara National Reserve to work as a tour guide and wildlife photographer and spotted two of the big cats lounging on the edge of the swamp where, during the dry season, they hunt for prey.
The lions in question were nonplussed. “They just stuck their noses into the wind, looked around and slumped down again into the grass,” the now 73-year-old recalls. “But, my God, I just knew then that this was my dream coming true.”
From that first brief encounter, ounter, Scott, who grew up on a farm rm in Berkshire and studied zoology logy at Queen’s University in Belfast, elfast, has dedicated his life to following the Marsh Pride. .
Over the decades he has watched them become the e most famous lions on earth h – the inspiration for Disney’s The Lion King (back in the 1970s, one of the dominant males in the pride was even named Scar, ar, the power-hungry uncle voiced by Jeremy Irons in the film) and stars of countless documentaries and books, including several of his own.
In 1982, Scott, his wife Angela and their co-author Brian Jackman published their bestselling book, The Marsh Lions: The Story of an African Pride, and has since followed the animals in his long-running BBC documentary series Big Cat Diary, which he works on with Angela (with whom he has two children).
Scott tells a Shakespearean story of life and death on the African savannah, but in recent years an unmistakable sense of an ending has hung over this most famous of dynasties. Over the past few decades more than half of Africa’s lions have been wiped out with now only around 20,000 left in the wild. The Marsh Pride, too, has shrunk in size: hemmed in by the cattle herds of Masai herdsman, persecution which has seen them fall victim to spearings and poisonings, a shrinking habitat and an increasingly inhospitable climate, which is i hollowing out their hunting grounds. ground
Scott admits there t are now real fears the pride pri will soon no longer be able abl to properly hold onto its territory ter and fragment instead instea into individual nomads. nom “The Masai Mara is meant m to protect lions,” he says. “And we have betrayed be their trust.”
They will soon be back on our screens for a new BBC BB documentary, Lion: The Th Rise and Fall of the
Marsh M Pride, in which Scott is one of the main contributors. He has reams of scrapbooks, dating back to 1977, recording their lives in intimate detail. This breadth of knowledge has meant this particular pride has become a vital indicator for the overall health of the species across Africa. Today, lions occupy just eight per cent of their historic range. “What is very important about them is the Marsh Pride is a barometer on how lions are doing in general,” he says.
According to the latest figures available, Scott, who lives in Nairobi and keeps a cottage on Governors’ Camp in the heart of the Masai Mara reserve, says there are four adult lionesses, two males, five sub-adult cubs and perhaps three more smaller cubs. Compared with 2004, when there were 29 lions counted in the Marsh Pride, this marks a significant drop.
At present, the pride is also currently not even in its own territory (which spans around 20 square miles). According to Scott, the lions have recently moved north into a “bit of no-man’s land” frequented by Masai herdsmen. While this is unusual, the same thing happened two years ago and the lions eventually returned. The lions are used to roaming between borderlands. “But we know increasingly the Marsh Pride is under pressure,” Scott says.
His scrapbooks detail decades of the pride’s shifting loyalties, ruthless power grabs and extraordinary resilience. Following the lions at such close quarters has also given Scott unique insights into their complex social structure. Despite the large males and their magnificent manes often attracting the most attention, Scott says the pride is in fact an “incredible sisterhood”, with a core of lionesses at its heart. These female lions also develop incredibly strong bonds with their cubs. Although lions can breed very quickly, with a gestation period of three-and-a-half months, it takes two years of close care to reach the point where the cub can even begin to look after itself.
Given the many years he has spent following the pride, Scott has had few close run-ins with the lions. The most alarming encounter was in a thick forest near Governors’ Camp where he accidentally stumbled across one of the big Marsh Pride males snoozing under a tree just a few metres away. “He took one look,” Scott recalls, “exhaled with the most almighty grunt, turned and I can still hear the sound of his paws as he ran off.”
In 2018, the Marsh Pride featured in an episode of the David Attenborough
series Dynasties which showed the pride nearly wiped out by a devastating mass poisoning which ultimately killed one adult matriarch and another cub. The highly toxic illegal pesticide carbofuran was suspected in the poisoning left by a Masai herdsman to kill the lions menacing his cattle.
Scott has great sympathy with the Masai who have co-existed with lions for centuries. He says there have been significant efforts to help reduce conflict between Masai and lions (including fitting reinforced enclosures with solar-powered lights to protect cattle from night-time raids). But still, as the suitability and availability of grazing land reduces, persecution of the big cats continues.
There have been numerous other poisonings within the pride over recent years. Just in the past few weeks, two lionesses have been lost from the small core group: one after being forced out of her range due to human conflict and another to a lion.
Amid such tragic episodes, Scott has also witnessed the remarkable durability of the Marsh Pride. He cites one lioness, Bibi, who starred in Big Cat Diaries and was found poisoned in 2015. Scott then filmed her female cub, Kabibi, until last year in June she also disappeared, believed to have been killed by pastoralists. However Scott says her daughter now has small cubs of her own which she is caring for within the pride. “The story goes on,” he smiles.
Over the years he has spent in their habitat he has watched what was once a “garden of Eden” succumb to very modern pressures. The marshlands have dried up in deeper, more ferocious droughts, the riverine forests have thinned and wild animals dwindled. But he insists it is still his own personal paradise.
In 1992 he and Angela married on an escarpment overlooking the Marsh Pride territory and he says “it is still the place on earth where I would want to spend my last day”. The lions that belong to it, however, may not have the same choice.