Elsa the Lioness

Elsa was the stimulus for the conservation efforts of Joy and George Adamson. In 1956, George, who was a game warden in the Northern Frontier District of Kenya, was forced to sheet and kill an attacking lion. He discovered that the dead lion had three cubs, which was probably why she attacked. George took the cubs home to save their lives. The bigger two cubs were eventually sent to a Rotterdam zoo. The cub that George kept was named Elsa and became part of the Adamson’s family. After some time, the couple decided to set Elsa free, but realized they had to teach her survival skills. They spent many months training Elsa to hunt and to survive on her own, recording their activities and Elsa’s responses. The idea of releasing her back into the wild was successful. Elsa thrived on her own and soon had a litter of cubs. Joy used her notes and George’s journals to tell the story of Elsa in a book called Born Free, published in 1960. The book became a bestseller that put the spotlight on the need to conserve African wildlife. The methods developed by the Adamson's to release or re-release animals into their habitats became the model for many conservation efforts around the world and sparked the creation of Kenya’s national parks. Elsa died in January 1961 from disease resulting from a tick bite.