Lion: The Rise and Fall of the Marsh Pride

A 90 minute documentary by BBC/PBS on the worlds most famous lions with key commentary from Big Cat Diary (1996-2008) Presenters Simon King, Jonathan Scott and Jackson ole Looseyia, conservationists Dr Paula Kahumbu and Simon Thomsett, Kenya Wildlife Services Veterinarians, members of the Maasai community, personnel from the Mara Predator Conservation Program, Driver/Guides Sammy Munene and Moses Manduku. Jonathan and Angela have been watching these lions since 1977 - in fact Jonathan named them the Marsh Pride because their dry season territory focuses on Musiara Marsh, a lush hot spot for wildlife fed by a perennial spring and running for more than a kilometre south towards Governors Camp where Jonathan and Angela have a base. In 1982 Jonathan and co-author Brian Jackman published The Marsh Lions (Elm Tree Books) that was updated by Jonathan and Angela and Brian Jackman for a paper back edition published by Bradt Guides in 2012.

The landmark documentary is available on BBC iPlayer and PBS in the USA. It charts the history of the pride with archive from the BBC Natural History extensive library gathered on the pride over 40 years dating back to a BBC Wildlife on One program called Ambush at Masai Mara (1981) featuring Jonathan and the Marsh Pride narrated by David Attenborough. 

The focus of the documentary is to raise awareness of the threats facing lions across Africa - there are only 20,000 - by telling a very personal story of the the Marsh lions who are a boundary pride whose territory stretches beyond the northeastern boundary of the Maasai Mara National Reserve overlapping private land owned by Maasai pastoralists. In earlier times the Maasai lived in relative harmony with the wild animals - in places they still do - and conflict with large predators was limited to a great extent by the herdsmen’s routine. They would graze their livestock in the daytime while most predators were hidden away in cover, returning to their homesteads before dark and corralling their animals in a stockade surrounded by thorn bush. But in recent years throughout Maasailand pastures formerly communally owned as Group Ranches has been subdivided in to 100-150 acre plots. Some of this privately owned land is now leased to tourism partners to form Wildlife Conservancies providing a monthly income per acre to the landowners. Cattle are moved elsewhere or rotated around the pastures in the Conservancies so that a mix of tourism, cattle herding and conservation is possible, with tourism limited to sustainable levels with one bed per 700 acres. However some land owners, particularly those living along the boundary of the Reserve chose not to become members of the Wildlife Conservancies, and in some cases maintained large herds of cattle and relying on moving them into the Reserve illegally at night to find sufficient grazing. Cattle from other areas are also at times brought in to Reserve, with the consequence that 10s of 1000s of cattle are denuding areas of forage for the wild herbivores such as topi, hartebeests, impalas, wart hogs, ostriches, buffalos, wildebeests and zebras, This has greatly increased conflict between the pastoralists and predators and in December 2015 eight members of the Marsh Pride were poisoned inside the Reserve after they attacked and killed cattle grazing illegally in their territory. Three of the lions died as a result of this incident, including the lionesses Sienna and Bibi (17 years of age), and the story was widely circulated in the international media and social platforms. The documentary reaches a climax with this incident and examines the catastrophic effect that poison - in this instance the pesticide Furadan - has had on Africa’s wildlife due to its deadly and indiscriminate impact decimating in particular large predators and birds of prey.