Meru National Park and Joy Adamson raised Elsa the Lioness made famous in the best selling book and award winning movie "Born Free". Elsa the Lioness is buried in this park and part of Joy's ashes were scattered on her gravesite. Between the years 2000 and 2005, the Kenya Wildlife Service, helped by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), restored Meru National Park from near ruin to one of the most promising tourist destinations in Eastern Africa, solving the parks poaching problem. IFAW donated $1.25 million to this major restoration project, and with this money aided in improving the basic infrastructure and
Joy Adamson her grandmother. In her autobiography "The Searching Spirit", Adamson wrote about her grandmother, saying, "It is to her I owe anything that may be good in me". She grew up on an estate near Vienna, was educated in Vienna earning a music degree before studying sculpting and medicine. As a young adult, Adamson considered careers as a concert pianist, and in medicine. Joy Adamson married three times in the span of ten years. Her first marriage was to Viktor von Klarwill (aka Ziebel; 1902-1985). She went to Kenya in 1937 where she met and married in 1938 the botanist Peter