Lioness at Borehole, South Africa, 1996
Photograph by Chris Johns
A lioness drinks from a rock-ringed borehole in Kalahari-Gemsbok National Park, a 3,700-square-mile (9,600-square-kilometer) slice of desert in South Africa's Northern Cape Province. Lions had all but disappeared from South Africa by the turn of the 20th century due to unbridled hunting, but the seeds of a remarkable comeback were planted in the 1890s with the country's first game reserves.
