Watch the Trailer and $10 Goes to Save Lions

It’s a fact learned by few people who go on safari. They don’t realize that the animals they are watching, enjoying, enthralled by, might not be there for their own children to one day see. And that’s what the Jouberts, who have been filming predators in southern Africa for twenty years, mostly for National Geographic, are trying to do with The Last Lions. They want to make people aware of the beauty and irreplaceable richness that will die when the predator cats do.

The Jouberts follow one lioness, who, with her three cubs, flees a pride of females and settles on Duba island in Botswana. The rest of the movie is about her battle to keep her family alive, to feed them, and to fend off attacks by other cats and a massive herd of buffalo. It’s a story of Africa’s wildlife, heartbreaking at times, but it reminds you what’s at stake. Lions in all their glory.

Financed by National Geographic, which has launched Cause an Uproar in order to spread information about the plight of lions.  Also, The Big Cat Initiative, which was started by the Jouberts and National Geographic, is working in Botswana, Cameroon, Kenya, and other countries, to try and halt the decrease in the number of cats. As Dereck Joubert says, “We are fighting for one cat at a time.”

But the Jouberts also do their own share.

As stakeholders in the Great Plains Conservation, which owns properties in Botswana, Tanzania, and Kenya – such as Duba Plains, where the movie was filmed, and Ol Donyo Lodge – the company puts money back into conservation and cat programs and anti-poaching. To support their company and its properties is to support wildlife.

Tent at Lukula

Lukula Camp, also known as The Selous Project, is located within a 300,000-acre private concession in the Selous National Park, which is more than twice as big as Kruger National Park. Up to eight people have sole use of a very luxurious, though simple, tented lodge.  The camp has no permanent structures and only four spacious sleeping tents set along the riverbank in a clearing under the trees. Each authentic and stylish tent possesses beautifully worked pieces of campaign furniture made from recycled hardwoods, brass, copper and weathered canvas, enhanced by carpets, cushions and colors brought from Zanzibar and elsewhere. Large en-suite bathrooms have bucket showers, flush toilets, washbasins and vanity stands. Hot water is available upon request 24/7. Each sleeping tent has large comfortable beds, luxurious linen, full-length mirrors and standing fans.  The camp is solar-powered.

For those intrepid travelers who wish to literally “sleep under the stars,” a fly camp can be set up with mosquito nets serving as your tent, and your bed a luxurious mattress underneath.

Crossing the Luwegu River

What They Are Doing

Lukula was a hunting concession until 2008, when it was converted by Great Plains into a non-consumptive, non-hunting reserve.  Great Plains pays the cost of the hunting quota for the area, even though not a single animal is shot. Lukula employs two groups of anti-poaching scouts drawn from the local community, who patrol the area on foot year round. Once the operation is profitable, the company plans to share ownership with the local community.