Having your head in the mouth of a lion that is trying to kill you and getting your ear bitten off in the process is an experience that would put most people off a continuing a career in conserving the animals of Africa. But for Tony Fitzjohn, who has died of a brain tumour aged 76, it was a challenge. His close encounters with lions, leopards, rhinos and African wild dogs became his way of life. His mission was to help save these majestic species and create national parks for them so that humans and wild animals could happily coexist.
His mentor, and the man who fought off the lion to save his life was George Adamson, warden of the Kora national reserve in Kenya. Adamson’s wife, Joy, in her 1960 book Born Free, about returning a cub to the wild (later made into a film), had already made his mission to save lions famous.
The two men worked together at the Kora reserve for 18 years before Fitzjohn was offered a job in neighbouring Tanzania in 1989, to rehabilitate a national game reserve of 1,350 square miles. To give some idea how tough this was, the name of the reserve was Mkomazi, which means no water. Restoring Mkomazi became Fitzjohn’s mission for the rest of his life.
By the time he landed this daunting job he was in his 40s and an experienced wildlife manager, fluent in Swahili, with a range of mechanical and engineering skills that enabled him to repair vehicles, build dams and organise anti-poaching patrols. But it was the force of his personality, his enthusiasm and sense of humour, and his ability as an ambassador for conservation that raised the awareness, and ultimately the funds, to make Mkomazi an outstanding success.
By 2020, when the stewardship was passed back to the Tanzanian authorities, Fitzjohn had transformed the area that before he took charge had been heavily poached and degraded. What had almost become desert now has migrating herds of elephants, and the endangered African wild dog and the black rhino have a sanctuary.
But in Tanzania he was famed not just for his work with wild animals and restoring their precious habitat. He knew that, to succeed, the park needed the approval of the local people too. Fitzjohn worked to provide them with clean water supplies, medical facilities and vocational training for youngsters.
He concentrated on education, especially of the young, bringing them to the park, and is credited with building a secondary school for 320 children and upgrading classrooms for 13 junior and 22 secondary schools. He also travelled extensively internationally, raising funds, giving lectures and being an ambassador for wildlife.
It was an extraordinary career for a man who had begun life in the suburbs of London. He was given up for adoption to the Church of England Children’s Society at the age of seven months by his unmarried mother. She had been deserted after an affair with a married man and could not any longer bear the stigma her situation brought her. He never met his biological mother or knew who his father was.
He was fortunate in being adopted by Leslie and Hilda Fitzjohn when less than a year old. Leslie worked in a bank in Cockfosters, north London, and Hilda volunteered for much charitable work – a conventional lifestyle Tony found unsuited to his character. According to his own account he was a wild child.
It was a book that changed his life. Having been confined to bed with typhus after drinking water from a puddle, Tony read and repeatedly reread the Edgar Rice Burroughs adventure story Tarzan of the Apes, and decided his future lay in Africa.
Being sent to the independent Mill Hill school on a scholarship, his fees paid for by Middlesex county council, gave him the start he needed. There he became a scout and began to acquire skills he said were eventually useful in the African bush.
After school he was unable to settle down to a job and took a steamer to South Africa. Again unable to find a role, he hitchhiked to Kenya where, although the bush country was nothing like the book he had read as a child, he finally thought that he had found his spiritual home. Indeed, in early photographs of him with lions, with his lean good looks and long hair, he looks remarkably like the Hollywood version of Tarzan. He also had a natural affinity with animals – and had found a mentor in Adamson, whom he credited with much of his success.
Fitzjohn admitted he had always been wild himself, but his meeting Lucy Mellotte, when she was on an adventure holiday and he was embarking on his Tanzanian adventure, changed his life. According to friends their meeting and subsequent marriage in 1997 transformed and reformed him. He became a family man in the middle of the bush, working with his wife on the restoration of the national park. Despite the risks of living among wild animals and poisonous snakes, many miles from medical help, the couple had four children, Alexander and Jemima, and twins, Imogen and Tilly.
His success drew royalty and many celebrities, conservationists and old friends to his camp in Mkomazi. In recognition of his work he was appointed OBE in 2006, and received the Prince Bernhard Order of the Golden Ark, the North of England Zoological Society’s gold medal and the Hanno Ellenbogen award.
The George Adamson Wildlife Preservation Trust, which was formed in 1979, supports the conservation work in both Kora and Mkomazi national parks, drawing contributions from many foundations and individuals in Europe and America aiming to continue the work of Adamson and Fitzjohn.
Fitzjohn is survived by Lucy and their children.
• Anthony Fitzjohn, wildlife conservationist, born 7 July 1945; died 20 May 2022
