George Adamson, the “Lion Man” of Africa, was one of the founding fathers of wildlife conservation. He was best known through the book and film Born Free, the story of Elsa, the orphaned lioness raised and released into the wild by Adamson and his wife, Joy. 

In 1970 he moved to Kora in northern Kenya where he was joined by his brother Terence Adamson and by Tony Fitzjohn as his right-hand man to continue the rehabilitation of captive or orphaned big cats for eventual reintroduction to the wild and to develop the infrastructure and security of Kora (then a national reserve) to national park status which was awarded in 1989.