Big Cat Week

For 30 years, award-winning filmmakers and National Geographic Explorers-in-Residence Dereck and Beverly Joubert have been filming, photographing and documenting the behavior of big cats in Botswana. Witness the Jouberts' journey as they follow lions and leopards through Africa's harshest climatic extremes, gaining unprecedented access and catching some of the most extreme cat sequences ever filmed.

After filming a wild female leopard for 17 years, filmmaker John Varty reveals an extraordinary glimpse into the lives of Africa's most secretive big cats. Leopard Queen follows the life of "Manana," a wild leopard whose territory spans the Londolozi Game Reserve in South Africa. Manana is plagued by other predators that steal her kills, threaten her cubs and hold her hostage in the treetops. Yet despite the hardship of life as a female leopard, she survives for an incredible 17 years, an age few wild leopards live to see, and in the process, provides us with a greater understanding of this extraordinary species.

On the Great Plains below Mt. Kilimanjaro in Kenya, lions attack Maasai cattle, as they have for hundreds of years. And the Maasai warriors have hunted them in return so that now only about 2,000 remain in the country. If their numbers drop any lower, their populations will not be sustainable. Now the Maasai elders and chiefs are recognizing that the threat to the lions is also a threat to their way of life, and have forbidden the warriors to hunt them. National Geographic captures firsthand the struggle of these modern-day warriors, who are reinventing their traditions to help save the lions they once prided themselves on killing.