29 Nov 2007

Like domestic cats, they are much better at climbing up trees than climbing down. They hate being pinched the back of the thigh. Their tongues are astonishingly abrasive, designed to scrape animal flesh from bone.

As the cubs grow older, human contact is reduced to a minimum; instead, the lions are let out at night to hunt. By the age of two, they are killing nearly all their food, operating as a pride, and are ready for stage-two release. This involves transferring a pride into a semi-wild ecosystem of no less than 500 acres; the lions are expected to sustain themselves by hunting. Then they'll be moved into a wilder stage-three area inhabited by hyenas, where they are removed from all human contact. It's the cubs born during this stage – reared by a pride in the wild, with all their natural fear and wariness of humans intact – which can then, it is hoped, undergo a stage-four release into national parks and other protected wild areas.

Until I arrived, the Alert programme had not yet progressed past stage one, but eight other African countries had expressed interest in replenishing their lion populations this way. So it is on a hot sunny morning that I join about 80 people at the game reserve near Turk Mine, Zimbabwe, to watch the first stage-two release of lions into the fenced semi-wild ecosystem. Emotions are running high. "This has never been done," Andrew tells me. "No one has ever released a captive-born pride into the wild before."

"They look ready," says David Youldon, chief operating officer of Alert. The seven lions, five females and two males, pace their enclosure. The big male, Maxwell, has been in a fight with Phyre, an aggressive female, and both lions bear wounds on their faces. "Not so good for the cameras but normal," David tells us. "It's a hard, violent life being a lion." Sir Ranulph Fiennes, there to lend support, pulls back the gate's release bar and the seven lions pad out into their new 1,000-acre world. The crowd wishes the lions good hunting. Two tough-looking male handlers sob.

Three days later, the news is not good. Phyre and Maxwell are still fighting and the pride hasn't made a kill. It's been a week since they've eaten. Then on day four, the lions bring down an eland, and it seems from all the blood on her face that Phyre did most of the killing. "My baby!" says David, emotionally. "I'm so proud of her it's ridiculous." Two days later they bring down a warthog. The lions are doing as well in their new surroundings as anyone had dared hope. Perhaps the future of the African lion is not as fragile as it seems, after all.

Lion walks are available at Masuwe Safari Lodge (www.lionencounter.com) and Antelope Park (www.antelopepark. co.zw). For more information and to make a donation, contact alert@africanencounter.org
A version of this article appears in the December edition of High Life, the British Airways magazine