His parents starred in the iconic film Born Free and began a lifetime of wildlife conservation – now Will Travers, president of the Sussex-based charity, Born Free Foundation, is celebrating the Year of the Lion to help the majestic animals in captivity and the wild
Will Travers is worried. Not only is he busy trying to protect 20,000 lions in the African wild and find new homes for big cats rescued from zoos worldwide, but now one of his cubs has gone missing.
Luckily, it’s not a real lion, rather a life-size bronze statue that is part of the Born Free Forever sculpture exhibition currently touring the UK to raise awareness of the plight of these beautiful animals for the Sussex-based charity.
‘It was in Bristol and has been taken overnight,’ Will, 63 says. ‘I’m worried that it will be melted down for the bronze. It was a cub and weighed 180kg. The adult lions are a tonne so can’t be moved, but four strong adults could have picked up the cub.’
Worth £15,000, the cub is one of the 25-strong pride, which includes a lion and lioness named Bill and Virginia after his parents, 91-year-old actress Virginia McKenna and the late actor Bill Travers, as well as another pair called George and Joy [Adamson] – the wildlife conservationists the film stars played in the 1966 Oscar-winning movie, Born Free.
The theft is particularly upsetting as the exhibition is part of the charity’s Year of the Lion which was created in honour of Will’s father in what would have been his 100th birthday. Bill sadly died suddenly in 1994 after dedicating his life to stopping the suffering of wildlife, along with Virginia and Will, who founded the charity together and which has its headquarters in Horsham.
‘When we first began, we had a tiny shoebox in London but soon realised we were all spending half our time getting to and from the office,’ says Will, who lives just over the Sussex/Surrey border near Dorking. ‘Then we moved it to our home in Surrey but when we had more people than would fit in our sheds, we realised we had to get something bigger.
‘In 1996 we moved into offices in Horsham, and we now have our hub there. It’s a fantastic town and Sussex has always been where other animal charities have their headquarters, such as the RSPCA, so it’s nice to be around like-minded organisations and people.’
Will is the President of the Born Free Foundation but his mother is still very much involved. ‘She is a trustee and we have a meeting next week and so she is busy reading all the documents for that,’ he says. Virginia will also be attending a glitzy gala evening at Denbies Wine Estate called the Mane Event this month (on the 23rd September) where they will be raising funds for their lion rescue and conservation work.
Attendees can bid in an auction for a host of lion-friendly lots including one of the bronze lion sculptures (the most expensive of which is Elsa, named after the cub in the Born Free film, which has a price tag of £130,000), a climbing frame for a rescued big cat, being able to name ‘your own cub’ or a lion monitor in Kenya.
Will has climbed Mount Kilimanjaro twice to raise much-needed money to conserve and help the animals – either in captivity or in the wild.
But then lions have been in his life since he was five and his parents took him to Kenya to live while they filmed Born Free. ‘It was a magical time,’ Will admits. ‘My parents were up at 5.30am and off filming with the lions while I had two hours of home tutoring and then went bird watching, and looking at insects and riding horses. It was extraordinary and instilled in me a real appreciation of nature.
‘We were taken on the set once and saw the holding area where the various lions were in their enclosures. We weren’t allowed near them though. Little children are very unpredictable and can’t understand that they have to be calm and still around lions who are hardwired to run after things that are unpredictable and can’t stay still or calm.’
The film, which told the true story of Joy and George raising Elsa, an orphaned cub and successfully returning her to the wild as an adult, had a profound effect on Will’s parents who realised they wanted to stop the suffering of wild animals and help protect threatened species.
But they always knew that being so close to lions wasn’t without its risks. ‘My dad was pinned down by a lion, which had come from a circus,’ he says. ‘The film makers thought that circus lions would be more compliant but the opposite was true – they were the most aggressive and who can blame them?
‘Mum had her leg broken by one of the lions during filming. She was playing a game with them – pretending to hunt gazelles – and was crawling through the grass, but after a while her knee became sore and so she stood up. Boy, one of the male lions, took umbrage that she had spoilt the game and knocked her down. He was 60kg and landed on her, breaking her ankle.
‘Dad took off his shirt and started moving it through the grass to re-establish the game and managed to distract the lions and then save her.
‘The real George Adamson, who became a family friend, was very badly bitten several times and one of his assistants was almost killed by a lion. They are wild animals and no matter how much they think of you as a friend, they are hard-wired to respond to anything they think is dangerous – it's their instinct to defend themselves.’
That didn’t stop the couple bringing home a five-month-old lion, Christian, that two friends, Ace and John had seen for sale as a cub in Harrods. He stayed with the family in their back garden while Bill negotiated his release back into the wild in Kenya.
While his friends had pets that were cats and dogs, Will could look out of his bedroom window and see Christian in the enclosure they’d built for him.
Amazingly, after he was successfully released into the wild, Ace and John went back to look for him and Christian ran out from behind some rocks to greet them. ‘It was caught on film – a 9ft tall lion on his hind legs literally leaping into their arms. It makes you tingle all over,’ Will says.
He’s never lost that special connection for the big cats and is proud that the Born Free Foundation has helped increase the population of wild lions in Kenya by 25 per cent since 2010. They have recently rescued 20 lions but as Will says: ‘A lion isn’t just for Christmas.’ It costs £10,000 to care for one lion per year, and their current annual cost comes to around £2million.
He’s hoping lots of the lion sculptures find new homes at the gala auction and that they could find a sponsor to host the exhibition in Sussex. ‘They would need a lot of space but also it costs a lot to move these statues around, so that would need to be covered,’ he explains. ‘But I would love to see the lions in Sussex.’ No doubt it would be a roaring success.
Good to Know
Born Free’s Mane Event is at Denbies Wine Estate, Dorking on 23 September, 2022. Tickets are £122 and include a welcome drink, and a three-course meal with wine. The auction takes place live at the gala and online ROAR! On Line Auction | Powered by Givergy
