Linda Tucker

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Linda Maskew Tucker (born 23 February 1963) is a South African conservationist and author, whose work focuses on ensuring the protection and survival of White Lions, a rare variant of the African Lion (Panthera leo krugeri) which has been artificially removed from the wild for a documented period of 6 decades. Linda has founded two organisations (The Global White Lion Protection Trust; The Linda Tucker Foundation), published three books (Mystery of the White Lions; Saving the White Lions; LionHearted Leadership™: The 13 Laws); and has presented at many international conferences, including TED (conference). She is the subject of numerous documentary features, including National Geographic’s Return of the White Lions.

Linda Tucker is regularly invited as a special guest speaker at international congresses, public events, and TV interviews, and has presented at South African Parliament and British Parliament, calling for the protection of the White Lions as a global heritage and the prohibition of lion trophies at ports in the UK and USA. In 2009, indigenous leaders, including Dene High Chief Francois Paulette Caveat and Unangan (Aleut) elder Ilarion Merculieff joined Linda Tucker in having a Resolution passed calling upon all governments and appropriate bodies to protect the White Lions and other climate indicator species under national and international law.

Early life and education

Linda Tucker was born in South Africa in 1963, where she completed an Honours degree at the University of Cape Town and her Masters in English Literature focusing on cross-cultural symbolism at University of Cambridge, England, and worked as a marketing executive in the UK and Europe until the mid-1990s. She was then introduced to indigenous initiatory knowledge systems by African lion shamans who identified her as “Keeper of the White Lions.”

Conservation career

On 10 November 1991, Tucker was rescued by a Tsonga medicine woman from a life-threatening encounter with a pride of lions in the middle of the Timbavati wilderness. As a consequence of this event, she subsequently gave up her career in international marketing, and was introduced into a lineage of lion shamanism by the indigenous medicine woman, Maria Khosa, known as Lion Queen of Timbavati. Through Maria Khosa, Linda Tucker was introduced to other indigenous African lion shamans of different tribal origins, who identified Linda Tucker as “Keeper of the White Lions”, and, in 2002, Maria Khosa handed over her own mantle to Linda Tucker. Linda Tucker went on to pioneer an understanding of White Lions’ connection to Ancient Egypt, and uncovered the importance of their geographic birthplace in alignment with Giza and Great Zimbabwe on the Nilotic Meridian, coining the term: "Golden Nile Meridian".

Founded by Linda Tucker in 2002, the Global White Lion Protection Trust has established itself as a world expert on White Lions and has protected them within their natural endemic territories, while establishing a strong track record of creating mutual benefits for "Lions, Land, and People", with a particular focus on indigenous peoples and their living heritage.

Linda Tucker has hosted and helped convene cross-cultural gatherings and conferences in the heart of White Lion ancestral territories in UNESCO’s Kruger to Canyons Biosphere, including the Global Alliance for Big Cat Conservation of scientists and indigenous elders from five different continents, and the ASSEGAIA Alliance of scientists, environmentalists, indigenous elders and environmental lawyers, who formalized the ASSEGAIA Declaration for the protection of Sacred Natural Sites and delivered it in Davos on 21 January 2020 during the World Economic Forum. In 2020, the site of the White Lions’ origins was recognized as a Sacred Natural Site according to the ASSEGAIA Declaration.

Linda Tucker has campaigned for the protection of lions against the legalized malpractices in South Africa’s lion trophy hunting industry and cross-border lion bone trade since the early 1990s. In this endeavor, she has presented as a guest speaker at numerous international congresses, public events, TV and news interviews, and has presented in the South African Parliament and British Parliaments. In 2017, she refused the invitation to attend the meeting of “primary stakeholders” called by the South African government in a bid to formalize the international lion bone trade, and instead delivered a letter read out to the assembly, condemning the proceedings.

In 2014 and 2015, she helped coordinate a Global March for Lions, which took place in multiple cities around the globe, calling for the prohibition of canned lion hunting, and received the support of Archbishop Desmond Tutu through a Global Prayer for the White Lions. However, when the American dentist Walter Palmer (hunter) killed Cecil the lion, sparking global outrage, Linda Tucker invited the crossbow hunter to her sensitive project in South Africa, stating “the killing has to stop”.

Such actions resulted in opinion leader, Andrew Harvey (religious writer), identifying Linda Tucker as an icon of sacred activism along with Jane Goodall and Desmond Tutu.

Tucker’s life has been the subject of more than 35 TV documentaries, and has been covered by Reuters, CBS, BBC, and Forbes magazine, as well as two feature-length documentaries, one by National Geographic. In 2015 she received the Woman of Impact Award by Governor’s citation of Maryland, USA.

Marah

In 2000, a White Lion cub was born in a lion hunting operation outside the town of Bethlehem, South Africa on Christmas Day. This baby lioness was regarded as having great sacred significance by African elders, and was named Marah (meaning ‘Mother of the Sungod’) by pre-eminent African cosmologist, Vusamazulu Credo Mutwa.

Linda Tucker was instructed by the African elders that it was her life-task to ensure the safety and freedom of the White Lions, and to return Marah to the land of her birth right, Timbavati, at the heart of the UNESCO declared Kruger to Canyons Biosphere.

After battling the captive breeding industry as well as bureaucratic and legislative obstructions to Marah’s freedom over a period of 6 years, Linda Tucker and her team finally reintroduced Marah and her three cubs into their wild environment as part of a scientific reintroduction program. Marah challenged all misperceptions about White Lions being unable to hunt and survive in the wild. Not only did she hunt successfully, but she raised her cubs to adulthood under free-roaming conditions and taught them to hunt self-sufficiently within weeks of her release. Her hunting success rate was comparable to the wild-born tawny lionesses observed in the same environment, under the exact same conditions. Studies have since demonstrated that the natural hunting abilities of White Lions in their endemic habitat equal that of tawny lions, thereby dispelling the misinformation that these genetic rarities are unable to survive in the wild of their endemic habitat.

Global White Lion Protection Trust

In 2002, after a decade of primary research on the cultural and conservation importance of the White Lions, Tucker founded the Global White Lion Protection Trust with conservationist Dr Ian Player as its Patron, the primary purpose of which was to ensure the survival of the White Lions as a living heritage. From the period of 2004 to 2010, the non-profit organisation went on to secure approximately 4400 acres of wilderness lands in the epicentre of the UNESCO-declared Kruger to Canyons Biosphere for this purpose.

Leadership

As a global conservation figure with a track record of achievements since the early 1990s, Linda Tucker’s efforts focus on achieving a paradigm shift not only in wildlife management, but also human consciousness. She does so through LionHearted Leadership™ initiatives and training methodologies inspired by the White Lions and all they represent by way of earth stewardship and good governance.

Her pioneering initiatives include the establishment of an Academy for LionHearted Leadership™ which was founded in 2012 to equip adult leaders as agents of change; and the StarLion Eco-Educational program for emerging youth leadership, which was founded in 2005 and presented to Nelson Mandela in 2007. Tucker launched the One United Roar campaign in 2016, a local and global initiative designed to encourage youth to become involved in policy changes around lions. In 2020, Tucker launched her first online form of LionHearted Leadership™ training.

Linda Tucker Foundation

In 2016, Tucker founded the Linda Tucker Foundation, which continues to support the emergence of LionHearted Leadership™ and aims to achieve restoration of ecosystems and human systems for healthy living and a healthy planet.

Bibliography

• Mystery of the White Lions: Children of the Sun God, Linda Tucker (2010) ISBN 1848501609.

• Saving the White Lions: One Woman’s Battle for Africa’s Most Sacred Animal, Linda Tucker (2013) ISBN 1583946209.

• LionHearted Leadership™: The 13 Laws, Linda Tucker (2017) ISBN 9780620749213.
• Shamanic Mysteries of Ancient Africa: Sacred Messengers of the 31^st Meridian, Carlene Mattimore and Linda Star Wolf (2018) ISBN 9781591432913.

• Saving Animals from Ourselves: A Manifesto for Healing the Divine Animal Within, Andrew Harvey, Carolyn Baker (2019) ISBN 9781532074493
• Operation White Lion, Chris McBride (1981) ISBN 0312586809.

References

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