Woburn Safari Park - Where It All Started 2003+

This blog post is going to give everyone a bit of a background to the lions featured in this blog. Having been going through all my photo albums I rediscovered these photos kept away for a few years and now having scanned them in, they are now on here for you all to see.

If you look at this page here you will see photos from my first visit to Woburn Safari Park in 2002. The pride back then consisted of two elderly males Romeo and Legs Diamond and two generations of lionesses. Well when Romeo Died in December 2002 and Legs Diamond died in January 2013, new pride leaders needed to be found. In march 2013 brand new males Sly and Shane arrived from Knowsley Safari Park, here is Sly pictured below...

As you can see their arrival was a bloody one, Sly lost the majority of the end of his tail and him and Shane ended up scarred all their lives, within the first few months of their reign all four of the old lionesses died. As can be seen below by one of the girls they stood their ground and gave Sly a good bashing to show the new boys who is in charge. Sly and Shane were really given a good beating by all of the lions, and as you can see by the photos, they never really lost the scars. Sly himself always looked as grizzly as above. Lion prides are extremely stressing and complicated groups to hold, almost impossible to be held perfectly in captivity.

However Sly and Shane were here for a very important reason, they were to be the brand new breeding males keeping the otherwise halted lion pride growing into the next generation. Sly and Shane did eventually fit into the group to make their mark. So it wasn't long before the pitter patter of lion cubs was to be heard.

The first cubs born to mothers Tamby and Amber had to be hand-reared and were sent off to the nearby Linton Zoo and Paradise Wildlife Park. Gladly the next litters of cubs were successful as the pictures below show. The cubs sent to Linton Zoo where Riziki and Karla and their story can be told in the Linton Lions page, their daughter Safi, is one of the 'superstar' lions followed in this blog.

These cubs were born to Tamby in January 2004 and here they are pictured in the reserve as they started to venture out.

As the cubs continued to grow so did the pride numbers, Tamby mothered three litters throughout here lifetime at the park and sadly died last year, however her sister Amber only gave birth to one litter of girls before she died around 2006. The pictures below show Shane and some of the females and young males in the reserve.

 After the death of Sly in 2008 and Shane in 2010, and with the pride females dying the last being Tamby in the Summer of 2012 there are only their cubs left as the Woburn Pride. Eight of the cubs born are still resident at the Safari Park, three castrated male lion brothers live with five females their four sisters and their one cousin. Pictures of this group can be seen from my visit during November 2012 in the morning and the afternoon. This is all that are left of the pride that was started in 2003 and it is going to start once again and with the arrival of Kasanga, hopefully it wont be too many years before cubs are born again.

So this is where it all started and below are two of my favourite photos from this set, Shane showed below with the entire reserve behind him and a young lioness walking through the grass with Sly and Shane in the background with two lionesses.

I hope that you have all enjoyed reading this post, and I was trying to keep it as brief as possible I promise! I hope you all find it interesting.

Cheers

James