Meru

Declared in 1966, Meru was the real setting of the story of Elsa, the lioness raised by the naturalist Joy Adamson and returned to the wild, told in the book and later the 1966 film Born Free, which did much to make the conservation of Africa's big cats an international cause. After severe poaching in the 1980s and 1990s all but wiped out its large predators, the park has recovered gradually over the past few decades.