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The Barbary is the largest subspecies of lion.  This male has a distinctive black mane that reaches back along the belly, though that alone does not make a lion a genuine Barbary.


This is how their home once looked.  In the Atlas Mountains, only a few stunted sentinels remain of the once great forest.

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Once there was a wonderful place which lay between the depths of the Mediterranean and the sands of the Sahara.  It was a lush and green land, crowned with snow-capped mountains.  Red deer ate grass in highland meadows and cool, moist winds from the sea fanned the branches of mighty trees which grew untouched by man.  This was the Kingdom of the Barbaries, a land whose span from Egypt to Morocco fell under the watchful gaze of the largest lions on earth.  At sunset, each male would raise his cry: "He inchi ya nani?  Yangu, yangu, yangu!"  It was an ancient claim: "Whose land is this?  It is mine, mine, mine!"  And for uncounted millennia, no wise creature dared to dispute that claim.

The male Barbary was an awesome sight.  He weighed more than 500 pounds and could reach 10 feet from his ears to the tip of his tail.  His mane was large, thick, and very dark, and ran along his chest clear to the belly, the crowning glory of a king.  The female was a mighty huntress whose face was squared and full of character.  She bore her king sons and daughters who grew strong on a diet far richer than cow's milk.  

Day after day, season after season, year after year, down the span of endless centuries, the unhurried rhythms of birth, growth, death, and new life went on according to ancient ways not written in any book, but just as binding.  

What the first Barbary to see a man thought about it, we shall never know.  Was he curious?  Afraid?  Just what was this strange creature who walked upright on two legs?  All too soon he would find out to his sorrow.  Danger had entered the Kingdom of the Barbaries.

The land that was their home is now barren and windswept.  Empty fields stare back where forests used to thrive, and the kings no longer cry their challenge to the sunset.  Only the mountains remain--they never change--and the golden age of the Barbary Kingdom is but a distant memory.  

A new race of kings rules the land.  They gather about their campfires and tell their children about the way things used to be when lions walked among them.  And perhaps you can detect in their hushed reverence a note of respect--and regret--as they think of what might have been.  Read how this came to pass: it is a sad tale, but as you shall see, it is not without hope.
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