Tony Fitzjohn

Anthony Raymond Fitzjohn
Born	(1945-07-07) July 7, 1945
Residence	Tanzania
Nationality	British
Fields	Conservationist
Known for	Field director, George Adamson Wildlife Preservation Trusts
Notable awards	OBE (2006)
Spouse	Lucy Fitzjohn

Anthony Raymond Fitzjohn, OBE is a conservationist who worked extensively with George Adamson at Kora in Africa.

Biography

Tony Fitzjohn was adopted as a baby and brought up in north London. His birth mother was a member of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force and his father was a married man in the Royal Air Force; it was a wartime liaison. He was awarded a bursary to Mill Hill School, a London public school. 'He was always a very striking individual,' says the Labour MP Bob Marshall-Andrews QC, the chairman of trustees at the George Adamson Wildlife Preservation Trust and a lifelong friend who used to play rugby with Fitzjohn at school. 'And he's always been a non-conformist. Anyone who knew him back then would have said, "He'll either be an immense success or quite the reverse." '

After he left school Fitzjohn worked for Express Dairies, then went on an Outward Bound course where he met a man who used to be a ranger in the Serengeti. At the age of 22, he left a dead-end job and hitchhiked from South Africa to Kenya. His only ambition was to work with animals. He got himself to Africa where he did odd jobs, such as building and working on boats, and then he came across Joy Adamson of Born Free fame, who was working at Lake Naivasha, setting up her Elsa Conservation Trust. She told him that her husband, George, was looking for an assistant, because his previous one had been killed by a lion. Fitzjohn thought that sounded like a job that would suit him perfectly, and when he got to Kora in 1971 he felt totally at home. 'It was just magic. About a week later, George asked me, "How long can you stay?", thinking I'd say a couple of months. And I said, "I don't know, George – about 10, 12 years?" '

In the end he stayed for 18. 'George's relationship with his lions, and with all animals for that matter, was extraordinary,' Fitzjohn says. 'He was a genuine, humble St Francis of Assisi. We'd go off tracking in the morning and the kudu would come out of the bush, the tree squirrels would twitter away, birds would start bombing. They'd never do that to me. And I saw his relationships with lions – they would greet him so gently. I would look at George and think, that's what I want in life.'

When Fitzjohn arrived at Kora there was a lion there who was to become famous. Christian was a captive-bred lion cub that had been bought from Harrods by two young Australians, had grown too big to be exercised in Battersea Park, and had been brought to Kora to be rehabilitated into the wild. (He became famous when a YouTube clip was posted of the reunion between him and his owners after a year in Africa.) 'In appearance and temperament,' George Adamson wrote in his book, 'Tony was Christian's counterpart. He had a fine physique and good looks; he was fearless in dealing with lions. Like Christian he had an unnerving habit of disappearing from camp without warning, for weeks on end, and of materialising again just as unexpectedly. There the parallel ended, for his dexterity with girlfriends was in a different league from Christian's, and I never once found Christian with a bottle at his elbow…'

Life at Kora was simple and remote – there were no communications and it took two days to get to Nairobi. George's brother Terence was a year younger; he loved the landscape but he didn't like lions, he was an elephant man. But he built 300 miles of roads, and found water by divining. 'He was a good old boy,' says Fitzjohn, though he and Terence never really got on. 'We used to vie for George's attention.'

Nor did Fitzjohn get on with Joy ('dreadful woman'), who by the time he arrived was living far away (although she and George never really split up), working on her own projects with cheetahs and subsequently a leopard. In 1980 she was murdered by a former employee, whom she had sacked after accusing him of stealing.

There was no GAWPT back then. They lived off George's colonial pension and the small income that came in from his book and a trickle from the documentaries made about his work. Any money they had went into buying camel meat for the lions.

Partnership

Fitzjohn turned out to be a natural with the lions. Within days of his arrival, he managed to assert control over an aggressive male lion, armed with nothing but his own supreme self-confidence and the sheer force of his personality. So began a working partnership (with Adamson) which lasted nearly 18 years. During their time together, Adamson and Fitzjohn reintroduced more than 30 lions and 10 leopards into the wild and pioneered the development and management of the Kora National Park. Setting up camps, creating airstrips and cutting more than 300 miles of bush roads, was punctuated by fighting numerous battles with ivory poachers and Somali bandits, as well as Fitzjohn being mauled by a lion and almost killed in 1975.^[1]

The years at the Kora National Reserve proved an invaluable learning experience for Fitzjohn which helped him build the Mkomazi National Park. Kora made Fitzjohn an expert in capturing, collaring and radio-tracking Africa's top predators, as well as raising and returning them to the wild.

The challenge facing him at Mkomazi demanded all these skills, and more. It required someone who was an experienced wildlife manager, fluent in Swahili, a bush pilot, a skilled engineer and mechanic who could build roads, cut boundaries, strip down and re-assemble 4WD vehicles and plant machinery, set up two-way radio networks, construct and de-silt dams, maintain electrical and power equipment, organize anti-poaching patrols, deal with the bureaucracy, and keep a remote camp supplied. All this, and the ability to establish breeding programs for highly endangered species whilst constructing and repairing schools in the villages around Mkomazi Game Reserve, helping with medical dispensaries and maintaining friendly relations with the local communities.^[2]

Arriving in 1989 with nothing but a Land Rover and a hangover, he put in all the infrastructure himself: an airstrip, 600 miles of roads, dams, electricity, water. He built a house and learnt to fly, married Lucy and had four children. He has now established a black rhino sanctuary, and set up a programme for breeding and releasing the endangered African Wild Dog (also known as the African Hunting Dog). In 1980 there were 10-12,000 rhinoceros in Tanzania; five years later there were about 25. The rhino sanctuary at Mkomazi was established in 1997, and now has 13 rhinos in it, which amounts to 20 per cent of Tanzania's rhino population. Some came from a zoo in the Czech Republic (a gift); the rest from the Addo national park in South Africa ($45,000 each and a further $55,000 to transport). Their enclosure is big – 17 square miles with solar-powered electric fences to stop poachers getting in and rhinos getting out. | url = http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/7589992/Conservationist-Tony-Fitzjohn-born-to-be-wild.html

The modern-day requirements of this operation, staffed only by volunteers, means that Fitzjohn has to spend a lot of time traveling in order to raise funds and generate publicity for the project. He lectures at the Royal Geographical Society, schools, zoos, wildlife parks, and talks to diverse groups of supporters. He has also testified on wildlife issues on behalf of the Tanzanian government at a Congressional Sub-Committee hearing in Washington, D.C.. Having spent his life committed to the conservation of East Africa, he believes that Tanzania can provide the perfect refuge for some of the continent’s most endangered animals.

In recognition of his service to wildlife conservation, Fitzjohn was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 2006.^[3]

Track record

• Established and stocked the first successful Rhinoceros sanctuary in Tanzania.
• 30 years of successful rehabilitation of zoo animals into the wild.
• Gained National Park status for two game reserves.
• Completed the construction of a new secondary school for 400 children.
• Provided local communities with clean water supply, dispensary and Flying Doctor service.
• First successful captive breeding program for endangered African Hunting Dog in East Africa.
• Ground-breaking veterinary research into disease of endangered species.
• 20 years of developing and supporting Anti-Poaching Units.

Films

The Leopards of Kora

A BBC documentary released in 1992, about the release of two leopards into the Kora Preserve in the mid-1980s.

Born to be Wild

A BBC documentary released in 1999, about the translocation of the elephant, Nina, to the Mkomazi Game Reserve after 27 years in captivity.

Mkomazi

Return of the Rhino: Produced by Henson International Television with music by Nikolas Labrinakos this documentary follows the capture in South Africa of four black rhinos and their journey back to their original homeland of Mkomazi in Tanzania.

To Walk with Lions

This 1999 film is the dramatic continuation of George Adamson's (Richard Harris) fight to save Kenya's wildlife. Together with his young assistant Tony Fitzjohn (John Michie), Adamson battles to keep the animals on his game reserve Kora from dangerous poachers and deadly shifta warriors who are determined to destroy rhinos and elephants for their tusks, and lions for their rich pelts.

References

4. Born Wild: The Extraordinary Story of One Man's Passion for Lions and for Africa by Tony Fitzjohn: Tony Fitzjohn's autobiography.

External links

• GAWPT UK Website
• Mkomazi US Website (WildLifeNow.com)
• Mkomazi German Website
• Mkomazi Netherlands Website
• Tony Fitzjohn Interview Plum TV, Aspen
• Today Show Interview with John Rendall and Ace Bourke Re: Christian the Lion