Widower, 80, Fights to Keep ‘Born Free’ Spirit Alive : Lions Gone, but Kenya’s ‘Crusoe’ Lingers

George Adamson no longer wakes up to the disappointed glare of Bourne and Hollinsworth. The two hooded vultures who sat on the fence wearied of waiting for the day his eyes failed to open and flew away.

The ripe camel carcasses on which both they and Adamson’s world-famous animals breakfasted have gone. (Adamson’s late wife, Joy, wrote “Born Free.”) Kampi ya Simba (Camp of the Lion) has no lions.

Six years ago, after a Japanese journalist was twice mauled, the government stopped Adamson’s controversial program to return “tame” lions to the wild. They said the risks were too high.

Adamson, now 80, went on with his business--keeping in touch with the lions he had freed.

But two months ago he lost his last link with them--Koretta, a 9-year-old lioness whom he fears has been poisoned by Somali tribesmen.

Today, after 16 strenuous years devoted to lions, the flaxen-haired former game hunter, gold prospector, safari leader and game warden is reduced to feeding peanuts to squirrels and maize to raucous guinea fowl.

No Longer Walks Lions

But if he no longer walks his lions to the crocodile-infested Tana River each day, Adamson--a sort of Robinson Crusoe of the bush--still has his daily routine.

Heralded by resident ravens Crikey and Croakey, he rises at dawn from a bed set out under the stars, slips on sandals and faded green shorts and walks over to the communal “mess” for breakfast.

The meal is pure Dr. Doolittle. The first guests are the guinea fowl, followed by white-breasted buffalo weavers, superb starlings, yellow-throated sparrows and a hoard of greedy hornbills. Ground squirrels and a colony of vervet monkeys bring up the rear.

Perching on the table, the chairs, on Adamson’s shoulder, they snatch any crumb in this parched landscape 120 miles east of Nairobi, where 10 inches of rain falls in a good year and an inch in drought.

Adamson wrote in his recently published autobiography “My Pride and Joy” that when he first came to Kenya as a boy of 18, it was “a gray bush country, scorched by a blazing sun in a clear blue sky, which offered few promises. But those promises of solitude, of wild animals in a profusion to delight the heart of Noah and of the spice of danger, were always honored.”

Kora Greatly Changed

Kora is not what it was then, or even 16 years ago when Adamson’s brother Terence first hacked through stubborn thorn to create the camp, access roads and an airstrip for the reserve they nurtured.

Then there was plentiful game--elephant, lion, at least 2,000 rhinos. Overgrazing and Somali poaching has eliminated every rhino. The rest is rapidly dwindling.

“It’s a scandal,” Adamson said. “There are only 12 rangers for this whole reserve compared with 50 at Meru. The Somalis are overrunning it and the authorities don’t seem to care. They’re just waiting for me to move on or die so they can close this place down.”

But despite a bleak future, Adamson feels he is still a lucky man.

Each day is still spent in an optimistic search for lion spoor. In the evening are drinks as the palm-thatched huts are bathed in a soft red light and the sun sinks behind Kora rock.

His grizzled Sudanese cook sets out the camel-skin camp chair near the 10-foot-high fence where once his pride lay contented. With a little persuasion and a large whiskey, Adamson can be slowly drawn to talk about the past.

Schooled in Britain

Born in India of Anglo-Irish parents, he was schooled in Britain before coming to Kenya. He tried everything from gold prospecting to locust control when the raw country was first being opened up by white settlers. Many made millions.

Adamson chose what he termed the “hard option” and remains penniless to this day--despite the financial success of his late wife’s “Born Free” books. He scrapes by on a small pension and money from well-wishers and trusts.

Joy Adamson was murdered by an employee on Jan. 3, 1980.

It was in 1956 that Joy Adamson shot a lioness, adopted one of her three cubs--and began a new era. Elsa became world famous through Joy’s “Born Free” and the movie based on it.

Elsa died young of a tick disease and 24 different lions had to be used to play her role in the film. Unwilling to see the lions returned to captivity after filming, Adamson fought to have them released into the wild.

He gained freedom for three--the beginning of his rehabilitation program.

It was always controversial, attracting criticism that semi-tame lions lose their fear of humans and can become man-eaters. Adamson dismisses the argument as nonsense.

“There is no evidence that the ones I release are more dangerous than wild ones,” he said.

All Lions Are Dangerous

But he is the first to admit that all lions are dangerous. He has been hospitalized three times after attacks. One young lion, Suleiman, nearly killed him.

“I was on a steep part of Kora rock,” Adamson recalls. “He jumped on my back and knocked me down. Then he began to sink his teeth into my neck.

“I tried to beat him off with a stick but that just made him angry and he sank his teeth even deeper. I suddenly realized he was going to kill me if I didn’t do something.”

Adamson managed to wound the animal with a pistol. It let him go.

Terence, who died from an embolism in April, “preferred elephants to lions,” Adamson said. But Terence had a remarkable talent--he could douse for lions.

“Just by holding a photograph and going over a map with a pendulum, he could tell me where lions were. It was uncanny. Seventy-five percent of the time he was right.”

But Adamson has little time to get lonely. A steady stream of visitors--sometimes too many--invade his privacy and eat his supplies.

Among the more famous were actress Ali McGraw, writer Hammond Innes and scientist Julian Huxley. Prince Bernhardt of the Netherlands once came and insisted on being photographed on the camp toilet, an elephant’s jaw fixed to a plank over a ditch.

100-Mile Trek

The camp, just three miles south of the Equator, survives on water drawn from the Tana and food flown from Nairobi by friends. When the larder is low, a 100-mile overland trek is made to the nearest town of Mwingi.

Its remoteness has sometimes been a cause for concern. Three years ago Adamson was warned of a plot to murder him by Somali herdsmen who hoped that with him gone, the reserve would be abandoned.

Adamson shrugged, dug a couple of bunkers, loaded his rifles and waited. Nothing happened.

The Somalis continue to graze their cattle on the forbidden, reserve side of the river. Adamson continues to fume. He is not one for quitting but at last feels the time has come to move on.

He says he is looking for a suitable site in Tanzania to rehabilitate rhinos.

“I don’t want to leave here after all this time, but if the Somalis continue to poach and poison the animals it may come to it,” he said.

In the meantime, he lives in hope of tracing his beloved pride and the 23 captive lions he has released into the wild. They have raised at least 50 more cubs.

Adamson lays no claim to being a scientist or a researcher. He says he is simply a man who loves animals and hates to see them suffer.

“To me it is very rewarding to restore lions to the life for which they were created--wild and free,” he said.

“I’m a lucky man. Not many people end their days doing what they’ve always wanted to do,” he wrote in his book. “But who will raise their voice, when mine is carried away on the wind, to plead Kora’s case?”