On the southernmost part of Africa, on the edge of the Knysna forest, lives a man. He is Gareth Patterson, "Ra de Tau," father of lions as he is called in Botswana. He is a man of great passion and his intent is pure for that which he loves.

British-born, Gareth spent his childhood in Nigeria and Malawi, where his mother encouraged his love for the wild by giving him Bwana Game to read by George Adamson of Born Free fame. Gareth was sent to an English boarding school for his last two years of schooling. There he wrote to George Adamson, asking if he could assist him, and his letter was passed on to Joy Adamson. She invited Gareth to work with her, but during the beginning of his final school term, tragedy struck in the Kenyan bush: Joy Adamson was murdered by an ex-employee.

Gareth was so determined to work with wildlife that he became a trainee ranger at Mpumalanga's Sabi Sand Game Reserve where he started at the bottom, carrying luggage and cleaning the swimming pool, before graduating to game drives. After this period, he worked for the Wilderness Leadership School, establishing an environmental education trails center in the Drakensburg Mountains. He later moved to the Tuli Game Reserve in Botswana.

When the reserve manager expressed a desire to know more about the lions in the area, Gareth volunteered to study them, for he had always believed he had an affinity for them. As he got to know the lions, he became aware of poaching going on in the area, and out of desperation for the dwindling lion population, he wrote his first book, Cry for the Lions, in 1988 to raise public awareness. It sold well and introduced Gareth to the South African public. As this book was being published, Gareth was in the field, investigating the status of lions in the wild, examining its past, and assessing the future of the species in southern Africa.

His findings were published in 1991 in his second book, Where the Lion Walked. The final chapter was about meeting George Adamson who invited Gareth to his camp at Kora in Kenya. A strong relationship developed between George (82) and Gareth (24). About six months later, Gareth left to write his third book, The Lions' Legacy, and was due to return to Kenya so that an Australian film company could make a film about him, George, and the lions when George was murdered by poachers/bandits.

Gareth was devastated and raced back to Kora where the fate of three young lions was being deliberated. Eventually, the wildlife authorities in Kenya decided that Gareth should return them to the wilds in Botswana--a move that Dr. Richard Leakey helped orchestrate. Tuli Safari Lodge sponsored Gareth's project to return the three lions to the wild, and he set up a primitive camp in the Tuli bushlands, close to the Zimbabwe border. And so Gareth took over George Adamson's legacy. He lived only with his then girlfriend, Julie Thompson, and the three lions: Batian, Furaha, and Rafiki. He spent eight to ten hours at a time in the open bush where he taught the lions to establish territory, to hunt, and above all, to fear man. Gareth's tales of this time have filled two books, Last of the Free and With My Soul Amongst Lions.

The three lions fully accepted him as part of the pride and would let him know if he was inefficient upon occasion during the hunts. The three lions even saved Gareth from certain injury if not death when a leopard tried to attack him.

Although Gareth did a magnificent job in returning the three lions to the wild, he lost two of the lions to man. South African "white hunters" lured Batian, the male, out of the reserve then shot him. Furaha, Batian's sister, was shot by Botswanan wildlife authorities after the management of a private game reserve accused the lioness of killing a man, something Gareth does not believe to this day. Their deaths broke Gareth's heart. After spending several years in the Tuli, concentrating on the lions' rehabilitation, anti-poaching, and undertaking an environmental education program with Julie, he returned to South Africa to begin his fight against canned lion hunting.

Gareth first heard about canned lion hunting in 1990, but it was in 1996 that he was handed a video by brave Bruce Hamilton, a Durban game ranger, who had filmed a canned lion hunt on a game farm where he was manager. He was so disgusted by it that he resigned and gave Gareth the video, hoping he could do something about it. Gareth, who was investigating the effects of trophy hunting in southern Africa, handed the video to the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), and they took it to the then Environmental and Tourism minister, Dr. Pallo Jordan, who expressed shock. Month later, however, nothing had been done. Later Gareth was involved in a top investigation with a British television team, The Cook Report, which infiltrated the lowveld hunting industry. They had secretly filmed a canned lion hunt up to the point when one of The Cook Report's men was supposed to shoot the lion when he declared himself. Gareth, and the others involved in the expose, received death threats, and one of Gareth's informants was forced off the road three times.

The film was seen by ten million people in Britain and created such an outrage that the South African Embassy in London was besieged with phone calls and threats to act on such atrocities. The uproar has influenced the South African tourism industry and created much awareness not only in South Africa, but world-wide. Sadly though, "canned hunting" is still alive and well today, and Gareth is still actively fighting against it. Gareth has poured the royalties from the foreign edition rights to his last two books (translated into fourteen languages) into exposing the canned lion industry.

Recently, Gareth has written a book for the Captive Animal Protection Society, Making a Killing: The South African Canned Lion Scandal, and has also contributed a chapter in The Con in Conservation compiled by Bill Jordan of Care for the Wild entitled "From Conservation to Coexistence." His latest project, To Walk With Lions: Rediscovering the Nature of God and the Art of Coexistence, will be published later this year.

While not writing and speaking, Gareth is also a trustee of Lion Haven, a 100 hectare natural habitat sanctuary set on a plateau in the beautiful Cape mountains, overlooking the Indian Ocean. Lion Haven, on the Botlier's Game Reserve, was created to give life-long sanctuary to four lion orphans who previously faced an uncertain future and could not be returned to the wilds. Projects such as these allow Gareth to work toward something he deems as priceless and precious, something that may not be here in the years to come if something is not done.

For the past year the African elephant has also been the focus of Gareths work.Gareth has covered hundreds of kilometres on foot learning about the last of the legendary Knysna elephants in the Southern Cape, South Africa.