Last of the Free

An evocative picture of one of the last great predators. A visitor on safari in the Tuli bushlands in summer 1991 would, with luck, have witnessed an extraordinary sight: a pride of lions moving through the scrub. Batian, the pride male, rangy and beautiful; Rafiki and Furaha, his sisters, sleek and powerful; and Gareth, the other male, older, two-legged and human. Gareth Patterson, a young Englishman, adopted three orphaned lions in Kenya and moved the cubs to the safety of the Tuli in southern Botswana. Here, he and his girlfriend Julie made camp in an isolated spot and set about returning the lions to the wild state, divorcing them from the only family they knew - mankind.