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Jonathan Scott (born 1949 in London) is an English zoologist, wildlife photographer and television presenter specializing in African wildlife.
Jonathan Scott was brought up on a farm in Berkshire, England and educated at Christ's Hospital School and Queen's University, Belfast. Jonathan and his wife Angela, who is also an award winning wildlife photographer, have a permanent base at Governor's Camp in the Maasai Mara National Game Reserve in southwest Kenya. They live in the suburb of Langata close to Nairobi National Park. Much of their work focuses on big cats, though they also enjoy spending time with the Maasai people and their families who live in the area surrounding the Maasai Mara.
Jonathan travelled from London to Johannesburg in 1974 and has lived in Africa ever since. Jonathan was resident naturalist at Mara River Camp from 1977 to 1981 and then at Kichwa Tembo Camp from 1981 to 1992. He co-authored The Marsh Lions (1977) with journalist Brian Jackman and followed this with The Leopard's Tale (1985), which he authored alone. He sold limited editions of his pen and ink wildlife drawings to support himself in those early days. He married Angela Bellamy on 26 March 1992 in a ceremony conducted on the top of the 300-meter Siria Escarpment overlooking Marsh Lion territory in the Maasai Mara.
Jonathan and Angela have written and illustrated 35 books including 8 titles in Collin's award winning children's education series Big Cat. Jonathan was a presenter on Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom from 1982 to 1984. He co-presented Africa Watch with Julian Pettifer in 1989 and Flamingo Watch with Simon King and Chris Packham in 1995 before going on to present his own series for the BBC Dawn to Dusk. Jonathan is probably best known as co-presenter of the popular wildlife soap opera Big Cat Diary which aired from 1996 to 2008, becoming known as Big Cat Week from 2003 to 2006 and then finally concluding with Big Cat Live in 2008. Angela was one of the big cat game spotters as well as the stills photographer for the series. Jonathan and Angela wrote and illustrated three books to accompany the series: Big Cat Diary: Lion, Leopard and Cheetah. The success of the Diary format saw Jonathan go on to co-present two series of Elephant Diaries (2005–2006), Big Bear Diary as well as narrating Chimpanzee Diaries. He presented a two-part series for BBC2 called The Truth About Lions which aired in 2011. Jonathan and Angela filmed two programmes entitled Sacred Nature in Season 2 of Tales by Light produced by Abraham Joffe of Untitled Film Works filmed in 2016 in the Maasai Mara in Kenya and the Serengeti in Tanzania. The show was funded by National Geographic/Canon Australia. The programmes showcase Jonathan and Angela's work as Conservation Photographers.
Jonathan and Angela traveled the world in the late 1990s presenting segments for Wild Things (Paramount Productions). They continue to host small groups and conduct photo workshops from places as far afield as Africa to Antarctica. They were guest lecturers for many years on the MS Explorer (an Antarctic expedition cruise ship popularly known as the Little Red Ship) and then on various ships owned by Quark Expeditions, and are the only couple to have both won the prestigious Overall Award in the Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition - Jonathan in 1987 and Angela in 2002. Jonathan received the Cherry Kearton Medal from the Royal Geographical Society in 1994; in 1996 he was awarded an African Travel and Tourism Association Award; and in 2008 he was named Graduate of the Year by Queen's University, Belfast. Jonathan and Angela were named the Cheetah Conservation Fund's 2014 Cheetah Conservationists of the year.
Jonathan and Angela are Canon Ambassadors, members of the SanDisk Extreme Team and Patrons of the Cheetah Conservation Fund (UK) and Colobus Conservation, and were Ambassadors for Galapagos Conservation Trust [1] until 2019. They are Ambassadors for the Kenya Wildlife Trust's Mara Predator Conservation Programme
Jonathan and Angela have a son, David, and a daughter, Alia, and grandson Michael. David and his fiancee Tori, who are based in Santa Fe in the US, are the family’s Creative Directors and Business Managers.
As stated above, Jonathan was a co-host of Big Cat Diary. Along with other naturalists, Jonathan tracked down and documented the lives of several big cats. His co-host Simon King documented the lives of the Marsh Pride lions and the life of a solo female lioness, Bibi, who had cubs but was shunned from the Marsh Pride. During all this Scott documented the cheetah Kike with her three nine-month-old cubs while Saba Douglas-Hamilton documented the lives of leopard Bella and her two cubs (Chui and unnamed female).
Jonathan and Angela continue to document the lives of the Marsh Pride of lions that Jonathan first began following in 1977. They also wrote up the story of Half-Tail the leopard from 1988 to the time of her death in 1999. They continued to follow her daughter Zawadi (aka Shadow) from 1996 until she disappeared at the age of 16 in 2012. They now follow Zawadi's four-year-old daughter who can sometimes be seen around Leopard Gorge in the North Mara Conservancy. Bradt Publishers published new updated editions of The Marsh Lions in 2012 and The Leopard's Tale in 2013 bringing readers up to date with Half-Tail and Zawadi's story.
In December 2015 the world heard of the poisoning of eight members of the Marsh Pride of lions. Three of the pride died - Bibi (17 years old), Sienna (11 years old) and a young male named Alan. Jonathan and Angela wrote extensively about this incident in the local and international press and on their Blog.
Jonathan and Angela wrote and illustrated the August 2020 cover story for BBC Wildlife Magazine called "Scarface: The Real Lion King", documenting the trials and tribulations of the Maasai Mara National Reserve and its iconic lions. Scarface is part of a group of male lions known as the 4 Musketeers who took over the Marsh Pride in 2011 and then deserted the area for Paradise Plains. The Musketeers are relatives and approximately 13 years of age. Scarface had a badly withered back leg and was unlikely to survive much longer after a long and successful reign. [lower-alpha 1]
Jonathan and Angela published four children's books with Cambridge University Press beginning in January 2016: Scarface: The Real Lion King, The Great Migration, "Tigers of Ranthambore", and "Honey and Toto: The Story of a Cheetah Family".
Jonathan's The Big Cat Man: An Autobiography (Bradt) was published in August 2016 alongside a large format book of Jonathan and Angela's award-winning photography called Sacred Nature: Life's Eternal Dance (HPH) designed by their son David and based around their love affair with the Mara-Serengeti. This won them the Gold Award for Photography in the Independent Book Publishers Awards in 2017. They were the keynote speakers at Wild Shots in South Africa in October 2016, and at the Royal Geographical Society in London in November 2016 and again in October 2019.
In 2016, Jonathan and Angela appeared in the Australian television series Tales by Light . [3]
Jonathan and Angela's latest TV series Big Cat Tales first aired on Animal Planet in October 2018 in the US and on Sky in the UK in March 2019. The five-part series focuses on the Maasai Mara's iconic big cats and is co-hosted with Jackson ole Looseyia.
Maasai Mara, also sometimes spelled Masai Mara and locally known simply as The Mara, is a large national game reserve in Narok, Kenya, contiguous with the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania. It is named in honor of the Maasai people, the ancestral inhabitants of the area, who migrated to the area from the Nile Basin. Their description of the area when looked at from afar: "Mara" means "spotted" in the local Maasai language, due to the many short bushy trees which dot the landscape.
The Serengeti ecosystem is a geographical region in Africa, spanning the Mara and Arusha Regions of Tanzania. The protected area within the region includes approximately 30,000 km2 (12,000 sq mi) of land, including the Serengeti National Park and several game reserves. The Serengeti hosts the second largest terrestrial mammal migration in the world, which helps secure it as one of the Seven Natural Wonders of Africa, and as one of the ten natural travel wonders of the world.
The cheetah is a large cat native to Africa and Southwest Asia. It is the fastest land animal, capable of running at 80 to 98 km/h, as such has evolved specialized adaptations for speed, including a light build, long thin legs and a long tail. It typically reaches 67–94 cm (26–37 in) at the shoulder, and the head-and-body length is between 1.1 and 1.5 m. Adults weigh between 21 and 72 kg. Its head is small and rounded, with a short snout and black tear-like facial streaks. The coat is typically tawny to creamy white or pale buff and is mostly covered with evenly spaced, solid black spots. Four subspecies are recognised.
The Serengeti National Park is a large national park in northern Tanzania that stretches over 14,763 km2 (5,700 sq mi). It is located in eastern Mara Region and northeastern Simiyu Region and contains over 1,500,000 hectares of virgin savanna. The park was established in 1940.
The term "big cat" is typically used to refer to any of the five living members of the genus Panthera, namely the tiger, lion, jaguar, leopard, and snow leopard, as well as the non-pantherine cheetah and cougar.
Nairobi National Park is a national park in Kenya that was established in 1946 about 7 km (4.3 mi) south of Nairobi. It is fenced on three sides, whereas the open southern boundary allows migrating wildlife to move between the park and the adjacent Kitengela plains. Herbivores gather in the park during the dry season. Nairobi National Park is negatively affected by increasing human and livestock populations, changing land use and poaching of wildlife. Despite its proximity to the city and its relative small size, it boasts a large and varied wildlife population, and is one of Kenya's most successful rhinoceros sanctuaries.
Simon Henry King OBE HonFRPS is a British naturalist, author, conservationist, television presenter and cameraman, specialising in nature documentaries. King received an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society in 2011.
Big Cat Diary, also known as Big Cat Week or Big Cat Live, is a long-running nature documentary series on BBC television which followed the lives of African big cats in Kenya's Maasai Mara. The first series, broadcast on BBC One in 1996, was developed and jointly produced by Keith Scholey, who would go on to become Head of the BBC's Natural History Unit. Eight series have followed, most recently Big Cat Live, a live broadcast from the Mara in 2008.
Afghanistan has long been known for diverse wildlife. Many of the larger mammals in the country are categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as globally threatened. These include the snow leopard, Marco Polo sheep, Siberian musk deer, markhor, urial, and the Asiatic black bear. Other species of interest are the ibex, the gray wolf, and the brown bear, striped hyenas, and numerous bird of prey species. Most of the Marco Polo sheep and ibex are being poached for food, whereas wolves, snow leopards and bears are being killed for damage prevention.
Karl Ammann is a Swiss conservationist, wildlife photographer, author and documentary film producer. He initiated a campaign focusing on the African bush meat trade, which gained worldwide attention. As a conservation activist, he has specialized in investigative journalism involving undercover exposés dealing with the illegal wildlife trade. In the process, he has exposed NGOs and international conventions for their lack of effectiveness and the promotion of feel-good tales.
The wildlife of Kenya refers to its fauna. The diversity of Kenya's wildlife has garnered international fame, especially for its populations of large mammals. Mammal species include lion, cheetah hippopotamus, African buffalo, wildebeest (Connochaetes), African bush elephant, zebra (Equus), giraffe (Giraffa), and rhinoceros. Kenya has a very diverse population of birds, including flamingo and common ostrich.
Felidae Conservation Fund (FCF) is a California-based non-profit organization dedicated to preserving wild cats and their habitats. The organization supports and promotes international wild cat research and conservation by collaborating on field research projects, partnering with other environmental organizations, and developing community outreach and education programs.
The Mara Triangle is the southwestern part of the Maasai Mara National Reserve, Kenya, and is managed by the not-for-profit organisation The Mara Conservancy on behalf of Trans-Mara County Council.
Panthera Corporation, or Panthera, is a charitable organization devoted to preserving wild cats and their ecosystems around the globe. Founded in 2006, Panthera is devoted to the conservation of the world’s 40 species of wild cats and the vast ecosystems they inhabit. Their team of biologists, data scientists, law enforcement experts and wild cat advocates studies and protects the seven species of big cats: cheetahs, jaguars, leopards, lions, pumas, snow leopards and tigers. Panthera also creates targeted conservation strategies for the world’s most threatened and overlooked small cats, such as fishing cats, ocelots and Andean cats. The organization has offices in New York City and Europe, as well as offices in Mesoamerica, South America, Africa and Asia.
Paradise Wildlife Park is a family-run wildlife park and charity located in Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, England. Previously known as Broxbourne Zoo, it was renamed Paradise Wildlife Park after it came under the management of Peter & Grace Sampson family in 1984. In 2017, their daughter Lynn Whitnall became CEO and continued the family business. They became Zoological Society of Hertfordshire (ZSH) in 2017, a registered charity (no.1108609) that works alongside Paradise Wildlife Park. The zoo receives no government funding. Since 2017, it has been named Hertfordshire's best outdoor attraction by TripAdvisor.
African Cats is a 2011 nature documentary film about a pride of lions and a family of cheetahs trying to survive in the African savannah directed by Alastair Fothergill and Keith Scholey. The film was released theatrically by Disneynature on Earth Day, April 22, 2011. The film is narrated by Samuel L. Jackson. A portion of the proceeds for the film were donated to the African Wildlife Foundation and their effort to preserve Kenya's Amboseli Wildlife Corridor. The film's initiative with the African Wildlife Foundation is named "See African Cats, Save the Savanna," and as of May 2, 2011, ticket sales translated into 50,000 acres of land saved in Kenya.
The East African cheetah, is a cheetah population in East Africa. It lives in grasslands and savannas of Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Somalia. The cheetah inhabits mainly the Serengeti ecosystem, including Maasai Mara, and the Tsavo landscape.
A pet exotic felid, also called pet wild cat or pet non-domestic cat, is a member of the family Felidae kept as an exotic pet.
Will Burrard-Lucas, is a British wildlife photographer and entrepreneur. He is known for developing devices, such as BeetleCam and camera traps, which enable him to capture close-up photographs of wildlife.
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