Conservationist George Adamson, whose efforts with his wife, Joy, to return lions to the wild were chronicled in her book "Born Free," was shot to death at his camp in a remote nature reserve, officials said Monday.
Adamson, a British citizen in his 80s, was killed Sunday in the Kora National Reserve about 160 miles northwest of the capital, Nairobi, said Robert Denny, a spokesman with the British High Commission.Denny and other officials said they did not know who killed Adamson or the circumstances surrounding his death. The area around Kora is known to be frequented by roving bands of poachers and bandits known as shifta.
A source with close links to Kenya's authorities and to the country's wildlife community said one or more of Adamson's assistants were thought to have died along with him, apparently in a clash with an armed group.
Adamson and his wife, Joy, attained international renown with her book and subsequent movie "Born Free," which detailed their successful effort to return the lionness Elsa to the wild. A sequel, "Living Free," followed the story of Elsa and her cubs.
Joy Adamson was slain at a campsite at the Shaba Game Reserve in northern Kenya on Jan. 3, 1980. A tribesman who had worked briefly for Adamson but was fired after being accused of stealing a small sum of money was charged with her murder.
The couple had separated before Joy was killed - she to pursue work with leopards in Shaba National Reserve and he to live at Kora. Between the film, which was made in 1963, and their separation they spent five years in Meru National Park, which is just west of Kora.
Adamson, who was born in 1906 in India, had lived at Kora since 1970. Under his influence it became a national reserve.
A slim, sunburned man who habitually wore just shorts and sandals when strolling among his wild lions, Adamson often went years without entering East Africa's cities.
His remote home, a collection of earthen-floored huts surrounded by wire mesh that kept out the big cats, was nonetheless frequently visited by admirers.
Adamson had requested that he be buried at Kora beside Boy, a favorite lion he was forced to shoot as it mauled an assistant, said Monty Ruben, a film producer whose involvement with the Adamsons stretches back more than 20 years.
Funeral arrangements were incomplete, Ruben said.