White lions of Africa are being hailed as sacred for centruries and when 
we first caught glimpse f the amzing combination of glory, strength and elegance, sleeping white lions mesmerised us as if we surrendered ourselves to these haunting giants. The name of their ancestral territory in South Africa, Timbavati, means ‘the place where the white lions came down to Earth’. They are said to embody majesty and the light of the gods because of their colouring.
Yet, in a distressing irony, their rarity has counted against them. Their genetic
code has made them a valuable commodity exploited by zoos and circuses. Worse, they are prey to the notorious ‘canned hunting’ operators in South Africa, who breed them in cages so they can then be shot by international businessmen.
Until the arrival of this remarkable family at Timbavati, the first to be specially
bred in the wild, white lions were technically extinct. ‘Meet our first wild-born generation,’ whispers Linda Tucker, sitting alongside me in the Jeep. Linda gave up a high-powered career as a model and advertising executive in London to devote her life to lion conservation – and this is the culmination of a ten-year campaign against the odds.
It is estimated that there are only 500 white lions in the world and all but a handful are in captivity. Many of those in zoos, or held in pens awaiting slaughter, are hopelessly inbred by speed reproduction programmes. Yet three lions in front of us, affectionately nicknamed the Royal Trio, are a picture of health. They have now survived three years in the wild, hunting, finding shelter, defending themselves just as ‘real’ lions should.
It is a triumph for Linda, the first uplifting proof that this species might once again be viable. ‘Meet Nebu, Matsieng and Zukhara,’ she says. ‘They are the hope for the future.’
I first met Linda a decade ago when she was campaigning to secure the freedom of a lioness called Marah from a hunting camp in the Free State. Canned hunting is the ultimate degradation of these magnificent creatures and the Free State, dominated by Boers, is at the heart of the industry. Reared in captivity, lions are offered as trophy animals for so-called hunters who pay as much as £75,000 a kill, then stuff the huge maned heads and put them on their walls back home.
Fashioning themselves on the Victorian image of the proud white hunter,
these tourists are shooting easy targets. On the appointed day, a captive lion is released into a small enclosure and blasted to death at close range. Well-used to humans and vehicles, these supposedly savage animals are in fact almost pathetically tame.
There is a consensus in South Africa that this blood-soaked pantomime should be stopped, but the political will to enforce a ban is lacking. A voluntary moratorium was agreed upon in 1997, but without any means of holding the powerful hunting lobby in check.
Despite widespread condemnation from ordinary citizens as well as scientists, the practice has grown exponentially and today about 4,000 lions are held in South African breeding camps. The majority are the familiar tawny variety; the rarity of white lions means that a single white male can be sold for up to £80,000. In an attempt to ensure that breeding results in pure-white cubs, the owners often match cousins and siblings, ensuring genetic weakness and further contri–buting to the destruction of the species.
It might seem astonishing that so little has been done to protect them, but
here again, says Linda, their appearance has played a part. ‘Unfortunately, there is a mistaken conception that the white lions become extinct in the wild because of their inability to survive due to lack of camouflage,’ she says. ‘They are believed to be freaks of nature and of no real conservation value so it is assumed there is no reason to protect them.
‘No one is taking responsibility for the fact that it was purely human intervention – capture, forced removals and hunting – that wiped them out.’
Linda had been a London fashion model throughout her 20s, working for L’Oreal and Yardley. She was also with the Metropolitan agency at the same time as an emerging Claudia Schiffer. Later, she moved into the advertising industry, working as an account manager for Saatchi & Saatchi. But it was a South African safari in 1991 that transformed her life.
‘It was a moonless night,’ she recalls, ‘and we’d been listening to some lions roaring in the distance. When their roars became really urgent, our guide suspected that a heavily pregnant lioness had given birth.’
In the thrill of reckless enthusiasm, the party decided to seek out the pride, climbed into an open-topped Land Rover and set out into the bush. ‘We had no idea that we were invading their space and endangering our lives,’ admits Linda.
At the very moment when a male lion appeared in the glare of their headlights, the Land Rover shuddered to a halt. When the ranger tried to reverse, the vehicle jolted once more and the steering wheel spun uselessly in his hands – a tree trunk had snapped the steering column.
With the spotlight turned off to preserve battery power and the radio malfunctioning, Linda recalls the stomach-churning fear as the group waited for the lions to close in. ‘At one point, a sudden movement compelled us to turn the light on for a moment and there was a fully grown lion crouched not 30ft away.
'He contracted his belly to emit one of those earth-shuddering roars that we had heard from the camp – only now we were in the middle of it. It literally shook me to the ends of my toes. The Land Rover was rattling and we thought this would be our last night on Earth. We had come to be entertained by these animals and now we were going to be their prey.’
Linda thought she might be hallucinating when out of the blackness she
saw a woman walking through the ring of lions towards them. She had a baby on her back and was leading a young girl and young boy. Silently, they all climbed into the Land Rover and sat beside the terrified occupants. Inexplicably, the lions had fallen silent and a strange calm enveloped the group. Shortly afterwards, they were rescued.
Linda later discovered the woman was Maria Khosa, a Shangaan priestess known as the Lion Queen of Timbavati. This woman would change her life for ever.
Back in London, Linda was haunted by the incident and when, three years later, she found herself stressed and exhausted at work, she decided to go back to find her. Maria, who has since died, became a mentor to Linda as she worked to establish the Global White Lion Protection Trust (WLT) which she runs with her partner Jason Turner, a professional lion ecologist.
The greater Timbavati region in eastern South Africa is the only place on Earth where white lions have been found. Europeans first recorded them in the Thirties, but they have been associated with the region for centuries.
Marah’s arrival in the world seemed especially propitious, as Linda recalls. ‘In 2000, I heard that a lion cub had been born on Christmas Day in Bethlehem, a small town in the Free State. I knew instinctively that she was the one.’
The aim was to purchase her freedom, which became possible thanks to the help of Mireille Vince, a keen reader of The Mail on Sunday and the Daily Mail. She not only contributed towards the £70,000 it cost for Marah’s release, but also donated funds to help acquire land.
Even with such generous help, the process took five long years. First Marah was housed in a zoo, as lions that have been handled by humans are legally barred from release into the wild in South Africa. This is because of the concern that animals who have lost their fear of humans would be dangerous if allowed to roam freely.
Then Linda had to take legal action to release Marah from the zoo, which was reluctant to let her go as she had been identified as a prime genetic specimen for breeding.
It was while she was incarcerated that Marah gave birth to her first litter of three snow-white cubs. Once again, Linda turned to her lawyers, this time to ensure the cubs were not handled by zoo-keepers, and that Marah would be allowed – even in her concrete cell – to raise her offspring herself so the cubs could be released into the wild.
At the same time, Linda was scrambling to acquire land in Timbavati. She poured her life savings into her cause and eventually a former hunting camp became available. Linda and Jason changed its name to Tsau, the Bushman name for lion meaning ‘star beast’ – and began preparing for Marah and her cubs.
Finally, in 2005, Marah was released into 4,942 acres of pristine bush. ‘We were both elated and concerned,’ recalls Linda. ‘Few people believed she would survive. She had never hunted for herself. But after five days she killed a porcupine and, just five weeks after her release, she was hunting for herself and her cubs. All her wild instincts came alive.’
Today there are seven white lions on the Tsau reserve. Marah died attempting to hunt a warthog when, after heavy rains, she went deep into a burrow and the sand collapsed on her. But her three cubs born in captivity survive her, along with the Royal Trio and their father, Mandla. The prime alpha male had been rescued from a canned hunting operation.
Spending just a little time with the Royal Trio, you quickly realise how suited they are to their habitat. The tall, sun-bleached grasses provide cover and the tracts of dry, sandy riverbed render the lions almost invisible when they lie down to sleep during the day.
Linda and Jason have noticed one fascinating difference between the white and tawny cousins: white lions like to hunt during the full moon, a time when they are probably at more of an advantage.
Yet even now there is constant danger, with trophy hunters operating on three of the reserve’s four borders, which explains why Tsau is surrounded by double electric fences. Every day, at dawn and dusk, Linda and Jason head out with radio devices to locate the lions.
‘The fences have alarms on them that notify us if there is a sudden drop of power and a tracking team, using Bushman methods, is constantly on patrol,’ she says. ‘If our lions escaped, they could be shot on sight.’
Even electric fences are fallible. Linda tells of an incident when a wild lion from a surrounding reserve broke in. ‘A tawny lionesses was in oestrus [on heat]. She left her pride, dug under the reserve’s electric fence, swam across the Tsau river and came to present her charms to Mandla. Unfortunately, her mate, a huge black-maned lion, noticed she was gone, and followed her.
‘We discovered him feverishly pacing the other side of our southern fence. It was terrifying. Male lions kill for territory and females. We had no way of knowing if Mandla could handle a wild lion in his prime.
‘We rushed back to camp for a dart gun and when we returned we found the black-mane prowling inside Mandla’s territories. He had hurled his way through with such ferocity that he had broken 28 strands of electrified fencing. We had no way of knowing if he had killed Mandla.’
Eventually, they found Mandla with lacerations all over his face and paws. The black-mane was still in the vicinity, and they couldn’t take a chance that he would charge again. Jason discovered him in the bush and let off a warning shot, forcing him to flee. ‘Mandla had stood his ground, and gave as good as he got,’ says Linda proudly. ‘It was incredible.'
The lion is a symbolic species around the world – a symbol of courage, royalty and truth. New research at the Cradle of Humankind in South Africa suggests that humans and lions may have evolved together; lions were critical to humans evolving into meat-eating predators. Legend and science agree lions are critical to the survival of the eco-system in this region.
Yet, at between 18,000 and 23,000, the number in the wild is at an all-time low. Some 80 per cent of these are in sub-Saharan Africa, with much of the large South African population menaced by (illegal) trophy hunters.
Estimates released last week by the respected LionAid charity suggest that out of 49 continental African nations, lions are extinct in 25, virtually extinct in ten, and only have some possible future in 14. Only five places have more than 1,000 lions.
The Born Free Foundation has petitioned for the African lion to be listed as a critically endangered species. Yet, trophy hunting continues to rise. Between 1999 and 2008, more than 7,000 wild lion specimens were traded internationally for recreational hunting purposes.
‘The return of the white lion to their original homeland is just a part of the story,’ says Linda. ‘We are also committed to supporting the prevention of the trophy hunting of lions altogether.’
Jason continues: ‘The crux of the argument is that trophy hunting takes out the prize specimen – the lion with the biggest mane, the buffalo with the biggest horn – and it works against the gene pool of the whole species.
And for lions the issue is even more critical: when you kill a pride male, another male will move in and kill the cubs. We have had situations where the hunting of one male resulted in the death of 11 cubs. It just isn’t sustainable.’
Linda adds: ‘To the Shangaan, the killing of a “lion sun god” is the ultimate sacrilege and a transgression against the laws of nature. I was told, “If you harm the white lions, you harm the land. If you kill the white lions, you kill the land”. We need to stop treating these iconic creatures like commodities.’
On our second day we visit the second pride at Tsau. Mandla and his mate, Zihra, a beautiful lioness who bears the features of her mother, Marah, are patrolling the perimeter fence.
At one point, Mandla stops and emits an almighty roar followed by a series of grunts. On a still night, his roar will be heard up to five miles away.
Mandla and Zihra, parents to the Royal Trio, will create another litter to be born in Timbavati and thus further strengthening the gene pool. There is further good news, too: it seems the white lions’ unusual biological make-up might come to their aid for once.
The ‘white’ gene that has been so elusive has recently been discovered and should enable the international community to take more decisive action. At last, white lions will be viewed as a sub-species in their own right.
Linda and Jason initiated a global search for the ‘white’ gene seven years ago but they describe the process as being like ‘finding a needle in a haystack’. Teams of scientists around the world took part.
‘We started to look at the occurrence of the white phenotype in different species to identify candidate genes [which might be responsible for the lions’ white appearance],’ says Jason. ‘They included domestic cats with different colouration, such as Siamese and Burmese cats.’
Geneticists at Swansea University tested the code of white bears from Canada and although they discovered no link, their work provided some clues. The couple were then led to the National Cancer Institute in Maryland, where scientists had discovered that, as with humans, the lions’ white colouration could indicate a higher vulnerability to skin cancer.
Jason says: ‘They then put us in touch with a genetics lab in Namibia, part of the Cheetah Conservation Fund, which has found the genetic marker for the king cheetah that gives them more profound colour and three distinctive black stripes down their backs. Having the genetic code of another African big cat was a strong clue for us.’
Finally, the pair discovered that laboratories in China and Korea were also investigating the genes. They agreed to collaborate and, using the strong genetic inheritance of the lions at Timbavati, the code was finally cracked.
‘This is what we have been waiting for,’ says Linda. ‘Finally, we have the proof that these animals are a specific sub-species and that means they can be protected as such. This is a watershed moment for us.’
They will take their finding to CITES, the international body that registers endangered species. This breakthrough could mean that the white lions of Timbavati and their tawny cousins in the greater Kruger region, which may also be carrying the gene, will finally get the protection they deserve.
The hope is that the discovery of the genetic code will galvanise international organisations and the South African government to protect all lions in the region. Then the Trust can drop its fences, which will give the lions more freedom.
‘Now that we have brought the white lions back, we hope they will become the motivational symbol behind the conservation strategy of this whole biosphere,’ says Linda.
Meanwhile, Linda and Jason continue to raise funds to increase the lions’ territory.
Surrounded by safari camps that practise trophy hunting, their ambition of removing the fences seems a long way off. But they cling fast to their dream that one day even this might happen.
we first caught glimpse f the amzing combination of glory, strength and elegance, sleeping white lions mesmerised us as if we surrendered ourselves to these haunting giants. The name of their ancestral territory in South Africa, Timbavati, means ‘the place where the white lions came down to Earth’. They are said to embody majesty and the light of the gods because of their colouring.
Yet, in a distressing irony, their rarity has counted against them. Their genetic
code has made them a valuable commodity exploited by zoos and circuses. Worse, they are prey to the notorious ‘canned hunting’ operators in South Africa, who breed them in cages so they can then be shot by international businessmen.
Until the arrival of this remarkable family at Timbavati, the first to be specially
bred in the wild, white lions were technically extinct. ‘Meet our first wild-born generation,’ whispers Linda Tucker, sitting alongside me in the Jeep. Linda gave up a high-powered career as a model and advertising executive in London to devote her life to lion conservation – and this is the culmination of a ten-year campaign against the odds.
It is estimated that there are only 500 white lions in the world and all but a handful are in captivity. Many of those in zoos, or held in pens awaiting slaughter, are hopelessly inbred by speed reproduction programmes. Yet three lions in front of us, affectionately nicknamed the Royal Trio, are a picture of health. They have now survived three years in the wild, hunting, finding shelter, defending themselves just as ‘real’ lions should.
It is a triumph for Linda, the first uplifting proof that this species might once again be viable. ‘Meet Nebu, Matsieng and Zukhara,’ she says. ‘They are the hope for the future.’
I first met Linda a decade ago when she was campaigning to secure the freedom of a lioness called Marah from a hunting camp in the Free State. Canned hunting is the ultimate degradation of these magnificent creatures and the Free State, dominated by Boers, is at the heart of the industry. Reared in captivity, lions are offered as trophy animals for so-called hunters who pay as much as £75,000 a kill, then stuff the huge maned heads and put them on their walls back home.
Fashioning themselves on the Victorian image of the proud white hunter,
these tourists are shooting easy targets. On the appointed day, a captive lion is released into a small enclosure and blasted to death at close range. Well-used to humans and vehicles, these supposedly savage animals are in fact almost pathetically tame.
There is a consensus in South Africa that this blood-soaked pantomime should be stopped, but the political will to enforce a ban is lacking. A voluntary moratorium was agreed upon in 1997, but without any means of holding the powerful hunting lobby in check.
Despite widespread condemnation from ordinary citizens as well as scientists, the practice has grown exponentially and today about 4,000 lions are held in South African breeding camps. The majority are the familiar tawny variety; the rarity of white lions means that a single white male can be sold for up to £80,000. In an attempt to ensure that breeding results in pure-white cubs, the owners often match cousins and siblings, ensuring genetic weakness and further contri–buting to the destruction of the species.
It might seem astonishing that so little has been done to protect them, but
here again, says Linda, their appearance has played a part. ‘Unfortunately, there is a mistaken conception that the white lions become extinct in the wild because of their inability to survive due to lack of camouflage,’ she says. ‘They are believed to be freaks of nature and of no real conservation value so it is assumed there is no reason to protect them.
‘No one is taking responsibility for the fact that it was purely human intervention – capture, forced removals and hunting – that wiped them out.’
Linda had been a London fashion model throughout her 20s, working for L’Oreal and Yardley. She was also with the Metropolitan agency at the same time as an emerging Claudia Schiffer. Later, she moved into the advertising industry, working as an account manager for Saatchi & Saatchi. But it was a South African safari in 1991 that transformed her life.
‘It was a moonless night,’ she recalls, ‘and we’d been listening to some lions roaring in the distance. When their roars became really urgent, our guide suspected that a heavily pregnant lioness had given birth.’
In the thrill of reckless enthusiasm, the party decided to seek out the pride, climbed into an open-topped Land Rover and set out into the bush. ‘We had no idea that we were invading their space and endangering our lives,’ admits Linda.
At the very moment when a male lion appeared in the glare of their headlights, the Land Rover shuddered to a halt. When the ranger tried to reverse, the vehicle jolted once more and the steering wheel spun uselessly in his hands – a tree trunk had snapped the steering column.
With the spotlight turned off to preserve battery power and the radio malfunctioning, Linda recalls the stomach-churning fear as the group waited for the lions to close in. ‘At one point, a sudden movement compelled us to turn the light on for a moment and there was a fully grown lion crouched not 30ft away.
'He contracted his belly to emit one of those earth-shuddering roars that we had heard from the camp – only now we were in the middle of it. It literally shook me to the ends of my toes. The Land Rover was rattling and we thought this would be our last night on Earth. We had come to be entertained by these animals and now we were going to be their prey.’
Linda thought she might be hallucinating when out of the blackness she
saw a woman walking through the ring of lions towards them. She had a baby on her back and was leading a young girl and young boy. Silently, they all climbed into the Land Rover and sat beside the terrified occupants. Inexplicably, the lions had fallen silent and a strange calm enveloped the group. Shortly afterwards, they were rescued.
Linda later discovered the woman was Maria Khosa, a Shangaan priestess known as the Lion Queen of Timbavati. This woman would change her life for ever.
Back in London, Linda was haunted by the incident and when, three years later, she found herself stressed and exhausted at work, she decided to go back to find her. Maria, who has since died, became a mentor to Linda as she worked to establish the Global White Lion Protection Trust (WLT) which she runs with her partner Jason Turner, a professional lion ecologist.
The greater Timbavati region in eastern South Africa is the only place on Earth where white lions have been found. Europeans first recorded them in the Thirties, but they have been associated with the region for centuries.
Marah’s arrival in the world seemed especially propitious, as Linda recalls. ‘In 2000, I heard that a lion cub had been born on Christmas Day in Bethlehem, a small town in the Free State. I knew instinctively that she was the one.’
The aim was to purchase her freedom, which became possible thanks to the help of Mireille Vince, a keen reader of The Mail on Sunday and the Daily Mail. She not only contributed towards the £70,000 it cost for Marah’s release, but also donated funds to help acquire land.
Even with such generous help, the process took five long years. First Marah was housed in a zoo, as lions that have been handled by humans are legally barred from release into the wild in South Africa. This is because of the concern that animals who have lost their fear of humans would be dangerous if allowed to roam freely.
Then Linda had to take legal action to release Marah from the zoo, which was reluctant to let her go as she had been identified as a prime genetic specimen for breeding.
It was while she was incarcerated that Marah gave birth to her first litter of three snow-white cubs. Once again, Linda turned to her lawyers, this time to ensure the cubs were not handled by zoo-keepers, and that Marah would be allowed – even in her concrete cell – to raise her offspring herself so the cubs could be released into the wild.
At the same time, Linda was scrambling to acquire land in Timbavati. She poured her life savings into her cause and eventually a former hunting camp became available. Linda and Jason changed its name to Tsau, the Bushman name for lion meaning ‘star beast’ – and began preparing for Marah and her cubs.
Finally, in 2005, Marah was released into 4,942 acres of pristine bush. ‘We were both elated and concerned,’ recalls Linda. ‘Few people believed she would survive. She had never hunted for herself. But after five days she killed a porcupine and, just five weeks after her release, she was hunting for herself and her cubs. All her wild instincts came alive.’
Today there are seven white lions on the Tsau reserve. Marah died attempting to hunt a warthog when, after heavy rains, she went deep into a burrow and the sand collapsed on her. But her three cubs born in captivity survive her, along with the Royal Trio and their father, Mandla. The prime alpha male had been rescued from a canned hunting operation.
Spending just a little time with the Royal Trio, you quickly realise how suited they are to their habitat. The tall, sun-bleached grasses provide cover and the tracts of dry, sandy riverbed render the lions almost invisible when they lie down to sleep during the day.
Linda and Jason have noticed one fascinating difference between the white and tawny cousins: white lions like to hunt during the full moon, a time when they are probably at more of an advantage.
Yet even now there is constant danger, with trophy hunters operating on three of the reserve’s four borders, which explains why Tsau is surrounded by double electric fences. Every day, at dawn and dusk, Linda and Jason head out with radio devices to locate the lions.
‘The fences have alarms on them that notify us if there is a sudden drop of power and a tracking team, using Bushman methods, is constantly on patrol,’ she says. ‘If our lions escaped, they could be shot on sight.’
Even electric fences are fallible. Linda tells of an incident when a wild lion from a surrounding reserve broke in. ‘A tawny lionesses was in oestrus [on heat]. She left her pride, dug under the reserve’s electric fence, swam across the Tsau river and came to present her charms to Mandla. Unfortunately, her mate, a huge black-maned lion, noticed she was gone, and followed her.
‘We discovered him feverishly pacing the other side of our southern fence. It was terrifying. Male lions kill for territory and females. We had no way of knowing if Mandla could handle a wild lion in his prime.
‘We rushed back to camp for a dart gun and when we returned we found the black-mane prowling inside Mandla’s territories. He had hurled his way through with such ferocity that he had broken 28 strands of electrified fencing. We had no way of knowing if he had killed Mandla.’
Eventually, they found Mandla with lacerations all over his face and paws. The black-mane was still in the vicinity, and they couldn’t take a chance that he would charge again. Jason discovered him in the bush and let off a warning shot, forcing him to flee. ‘Mandla had stood his ground, and gave as good as he got,’ says Linda proudly. ‘It was incredible.'
The lion is a symbolic species around the world – a symbol of courage, royalty and truth. New research at the Cradle of Humankind in South Africa suggests that humans and lions may have evolved together; lions were critical to humans evolving into meat-eating predators. Legend and science agree lions are critical to the survival of the eco-system in this region.
Yet, at between 18,000 and 23,000, the number in the wild is at an all-time low. Some 80 per cent of these are in sub-Saharan Africa, with much of the large South African population menaced by (illegal) trophy hunters.
Estimates released last week by the respected LionAid charity suggest that out of 49 continental African nations, lions are extinct in 25, virtually extinct in ten, and only have some possible future in 14. Only five places have more than 1,000 lions.
The Born Free Foundation has petitioned for the African lion to be listed as a critically endangered species. Yet, trophy hunting continues to rise. Between 1999 and 2008, more than 7,000 wild lion specimens were traded internationally for recreational hunting purposes.
‘The return of the white lion to their original homeland is just a part of the story,’ says Linda. ‘We are also committed to supporting the prevention of the trophy hunting of lions altogether.’
Jason continues: ‘The crux of the argument is that trophy hunting takes out the prize specimen – the lion with the biggest mane, the buffalo with the biggest horn – and it works against the gene pool of the whole species.
And for lions the issue is even more critical: when you kill a pride male, another male will move in and kill the cubs. We have had situations where the hunting of one male resulted in the death of 11 cubs. It just isn’t sustainable.’
Linda adds: ‘To the Shangaan, the killing of a “lion sun god” is the ultimate sacrilege and a transgression against the laws of nature. I was told, “If you harm the white lions, you harm the land. If you kill the white lions, you kill the land”. We need to stop treating these iconic creatures like commodities.’
On our second day we visit the second pride at Tsau. Mandla and his mate, Zihra, a beautiful lioness who bears the features of her mother, Marah, are patrolling the perimeter fence.
At one point, Mandla stops and emits an almighty roar followed by a series of grunts. On a still night, his roar will be heard up to five miles away.
Mandla and Zihra, parents to the Royal Trio, will create another litter to be born in Timbavati and thus further strengthening the gene pool. There is further good news, too: it seems the white lions’ unusual biological make-up might come to their aid for once.
The ‘white’ gene that has been so elusive has recently been discovered and should enable the international community to take more decisive action. At last, white lions will be viewed as a sub-species in their own right.
Linda and Jason initiated a global search for the ‘white’ gene seven years ago but they describe the process as being like ‘finding a needle in a haystack’. Teams of scientists around the world took part.
‘We started to look at the occurrence of the white phenotype in different species to identify candidate genes [which might be responsible for the lions’ white appearance],’ says Jason. ‘They included domestic cats with different colouration, such as Siamese and Burmese cats.’
Geneticists at Swansea University tested the code of white bears from Canada and although they discovered no link, their work provided some clues. The couple were then led to the National Cancer Institute in Maryland, where scientists had discovered that, as with humans, the lions’ white colouration could indicate a higher vulnerability to skin cancer.
Jason says: ‘They then put us in touch with a genetics lab in Namibia, part of the Cheetah Conservation Fund, which has found the genetic marker for the king cheetah that gives them more profound colour and three distinctive black stripes down their backs. Having the genetic code of another African big cat was a strong clue for us.’
Finally, the pair discovered that laboratories in China and Korea were also investigating the genes. They agreed to collaborate and, using the strong genetic inheritance of the lions at Timbavati, the code was finally cracked.
‘This is what we have been waiting for,’ says Linda. ‘Finally, we have the proof that these animals are a specific sub-species and that means they can be protected as such. This is a watershed moment for us.’
They will take their finding to CITES, the international body that registers endangered species. This breakthrough could mean that the white lions of Timbavati and their tawny cousins in the greater Kruger region, which may also be carrying the gene, will finally get the protection they deserve.
The hope is that the discovery of the genetic code will galvanise international organisations and the South African government to protect all lions in the region. Then the Trust can drop its fences, which will give the lions more freedom.
‘Now that we have brought the white lions back, we hope they will become the motivational symbol behind the conservation strategy of this whole biosphere,’ says Linda.
Meanwhile, Linda and Jason continue to raise funds to increase the lions’ territory.
Surrounded by safari camps that practise trophy hunting, their ambition of removing the fences seems a long way off. But they cling fast to their dream that one day even this might happen.
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