EPISODE 03: Becoming the Big Cat People – 'The Marsh Lions'

Welcome to The Big Cat People podcast! We're Jonathan and Angela Scott, award-winning wildlife photographers, authors and conservationists. We've have made our name documenting the lives of lions, leopards and cheetahs in the Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya.

Today's episode will be the third in a ten part series named 'Our Story: Becoming the Big Cat People'.

This episode is named 'The Marsh Lions'. After two years in Botswana I travel overland back to Kenya and meet up with an old friend from my university days, Paul Pavlides. Paul introduces me to Jock Anderson who manages Mara River Camp nestled along the Mara River just outside the boundary of the Maasai Mara National Reserve. In January 1977 I head for the Mara to realise my dream of living among Africa's spectacular wild creatures: after all the Mara is a predator's paradise. The deal is no pay but free board and lodging and the chance to learn to become a safari guide accompanying visitors on daily game drives. I am overjoyed at this opportunity. My mentor is a safari guide called Joseph Rotich, known to one and all as Bwana Chui - Mr Leopard in Swahili - due to his uncanny ability to find the most elusive of all the big cats. Joseph teaches me how to see - how to read the signs that can reveal where a predator might be hiding. He introduces me to the pride of lions that I later name the Marsh Lions and I begin to record every detail of their lives in notebooks filled with drawings and photographs. 

In 1982, five years after coming to live in the Maasai Mara, The Marsh Lions (1982) is published, co-authored with the journalist Brian Jackman, illustrated with my pen and ink drawings and photographs and based on events recorded in my diaries. I make my first appearance on television when I am featured on Nature Watch hosted by Julian Pettifer. The Marsh Pride make headlines in the film Ambush at Maasai Mara in the series Wildlife on One for the BBC. This heralds the beginning of a forty year relationship with the BBC Natural History Unit in Bristol.

This podcast series is a continuing effort to educate and inspire our audience. If you'd like to learn more about us, or to check out our latest collection of educational ebooks, please visit our website: www.bigcatpeople.com