SPOILER ALERT: This story has an unbelievably happy ending. It’s a fairytale in every sense — one of persistence and teamwork, complete with a cast of heroes (and a few villains).

Our story starts two days ago, when a young man herding goats discovered a small lion cub alone in thick bush, only 400 meters from a village.

He told his friends, but they had one fate in mind for the potential future cattle-killer: they wanted it dead. In a moment of extraordinary courage, the young man — a former Big Life scholarship student — stood up for the cub, saving it from certain death from dogs and spears, and called Big Life for help.

No one knew where the cub had come from, but our partners at Lion Guardians suspected a nearby lioness who had recently lost one of her four cubs. The team caught the cub and tracked the suspected mother until dark, with no luck.

The hungry little lioness was delivered to Big Life’s HQ, where she was given a nest in one of our tracker dog transport crates and devoured her first meal in days.

The next day, tracking teams followed the lioness’s trail to the edge of a thickly wooded gulley — too dangerous to enter. Big Life’s new drone unit stepped in, safely locating the lioness from above. But terrain made the reunion impossible before nightfall, meaning another night apart.

At dawn, the teams resumed their search, knowing that failure meant the cub was headed to an orphanage. After a heroic, all-day tracking effort, they finally located the lioness and her three remaining cubs in Kimana Sanctuary — 10 miles from where she’d been seen the night before.

The cub was wrapped in a blanket to mask human scent and placed just 25 feet from her mother. Everyone watched in silence. The lioness hesitated only briefly before walking over to her lost cub, who called out desperately. They were reunited at last.

Moments like these affirm everything we do — the value of scholarships, quick ranger response, advanced drone technology, and the power of partnership.

This little cub isn’t out of the woods yet, still weak from days without milk. But she’s feisty — and with her mother again, she has a fighting chance.