Scarface: The Real Lion King

As the sun sets on the reign of the most famous lion ever to walk the Maasai Mara, we look back at the life of a legend – and the winds of change blowing through this iconic grassland

- Jonathan & Angela Scott

The still night air echoed with a faint murmur, a sound resembling a hint of thunder that rolled across the savannah, building to a crescendo as the lion drew closer.

Scarface turned his head to the wind, his right eye staring blindly into the darkness, his magnificent mane of chocolate-brown hair encircling his muscular neck. His flanks heaved with each grunting roar, his barrel chest forcing air from deep within his body to produce an explosion of sound. He stopped, listening intently. Five kilometres away in the Musiara Marsh, he could hear the faint sounds of his pride-mates, as each added their voice to the wind.

This encounter near the Marsh in 2013, as the night closed around us, was just one of many memorable encounters Angie and I have enjoyed with this iconic lion. Scarface, now in his 13th year, is a legend of the Maasai Mara National Reserve. He has been a pride male for eight years, six of them with the same pride of females – a success by any lion’s standards. Throughout his dramatic reign, he has embodied what it is to be a male lion in these grasslands, with a life punctuated by bloody battles, infanticide, and violent conflict with pastoralists. He has also witnessed – as we have – an era of great change in the savannah of his birth.