Johan
0:01:26
Good day everyone. So today I'm here with Dr. Niall McCann. Niall McCann, a friend of mine that we actually met because the plane was delayed coming back from the UK. I went to the UK for a Nuffield Scholarship. We went to what they call the Contemporary Scholars Conference where they took 140 of us from 15 different countries and two years worth of scholarships because of COVID. And our plane got delayed on the way back and very fortuitously met Niall because he was also delayed in coming to Africa. So Niall, I've been really excited to chat to you on this podcast. When you said you were going to come visit here in Zim, but really excited for the opportunity to talk to you. So Niall has dedicated a life to wildlife conservation. He left school and did his PhD in biology or conservation biology. Do you want to share that and just give us some background?
Niall
0:02:13
Sure. I was in the really fortunate position of growing up in a family that's loved wildlife. My grandfather was a geographer and he spent his life and his career in the Canadian Arctic. Gave birth to my mother who was a biologist as well. She's worked in East Africa and Central America and many, many places in between. She met my dad who had been working in Antarctica, studying seals and all over the world as well as a biologist and became a biology teacher. So I grew up in a family that valued nature, loved nature, sought nature out all the time.
And so it was just natural for me to go through school and always know that I was going to be a biologist. Yeah, that was a risk you didn't take. Yeah, absolutely. That was the route I was going to take. And then I eventually decided that the best step for me was to do a PhD. I felt that would be a necessary qualification or a very useful qualification in trying to build a career in biology. Did that.
Niall
0:03:02
But when you're doing a PhD, you're in that academic world. You're surrounded by career academics. And during my PhD, I realized that that wasn't really my strength or necessarily my passion. My passion was trying to stop animals going extinct.
Johan
0:03:16
Yeah.
Niall
0:03:17
What you do as a biologist is you record animals as they go extinct.
Johan
0:03:20
That's not helping anything.
Niall
0:03:22
That's not helping anything, or at least in my case, I wasn't. I didn't feel that I was helping anything.
Johan
0:03:25
Yeah.
Niall
0:03:26
So during my PhD, which was in Honduras in Central America, on an obscure looking animal called a tapir, a bared tapir.
Johan
0:03:34
Yeah, yeah. Looks like an elephant, I think.
Niall
0:03:38
Well, half pig, half-elephant. Closest relative of the rhino, as it turns out. Separated a long, long time back. So 56 million years they separated. Horse pieces of tapir, the ones I was working in are endangered. And in Honduras, there's probably about 500 of them total
in the entire country. And I realized that in the area that I was working, they were sliding towards extinction. I actually calculated, I published a paper that demonstrated they would be extinct in 10 years in that part of the country unless something was done. As a PhD student, you can't do anything. You've come up with a paper, I can write about it, but you're not doing anything. So, towards the end of my PhD, I got some funding to hire four local rangers to patrol that national park and try and keep it safe from poachers, because poachers were coming in and they were hunting tapirs and other...
Johan
0:04:24
Tapirs for meat or? Yeah, okay.
Niall
0:04:26
Three or four hundred kilo animal.
Andrew
0:04:27
Oh wow.
Niall
0:04:28
Really good tasting meats. You can bathe them with dogs and then shoot them. They're really elusive but dogs will find them. When they bathe, they tend to bathe in water. So they go into water and bathe. So you can just come in and shoot them close. Yeah. A lot of meats for a local hunter.
And so that was 2012. And I had predicted they would be extinct by 2022 and in December 2022 I got a photograph sent to me by one of these Rangers of a tapir saying they're still around and it's because of you. And that was one of those absolutely wonderful wonderful moments.
Johan
0:05:05
Yeah, I have a feeling that you made an impact.
Niall
0:05:09
Yeah, and it justified me leaving academia and doing that instead.
Johan
0:05:11
You got away with it. Yeah, and now like I kind of learned about you as as the friendship developed I mean I was driving with you Back from a rugby game the one day you came over to zoom and we went to watch some schoolboy rugby Because you're clearly a very big sports fan I love a repeat telling us about how gutted you were when when Island lost in the World Cup I that was still grieving you're still grieving and you you like well You're very humble by nature you then mentioned that you had been a presenter for animal planet I was like what and so you start unpacking the personality And I find that fascinating because I love wildlife, I love animals, I love the bush. And when you said that, I thought, instantly, okay, there's a connection because this is someone I can talk to. And I saw recently on your Instagram pictures, you're putting a few throwbacks and there's a picture of you holding a four and a half meter anaconda.
Niall
0:05:55
Five and a half meter.
Johan:
0:05:57
Five and a half meter anaconda.
Niall
0:05:58
It was the biggest snake I've ever seen. I'm always slightly reticent to put stuff on about my TV career in the past as well because I don't like showing off about things.
Johan
0:06:08
Yeah, clearly.
Niall
0:06:08
But there's just been this announcement that anacondas have been separated into two species now. So what was thought to be one species, the green anaconda, has now been categorically proven is two. Yeah. And the one that lives further north in Amazonia is the big one. And that's the one that I've been manhandling a few years ago. So I've caught two that are over five and a half meters long. Measured, take measure, both of them. 69 centimeter girth around the belly, which is insane.
Johan
0:06:40
It's monstrous, 69 centimeters. Well, the picture, the picture's like it almost looks like from the movie, and I kind of photoshopped it almost.
Niall
0:06:48
No, it was real.
Johan
0:06:49
No, it was real.
Niall
0:06:50
It was real.
Niall
0:06:51
No, I couldn't believe it. It was very real. So we had a – I didn't tell you the story yet. Right here, we're sitting in a garden here. The previous people who lived in this house, his wife is quite a short lady, was walking to the gate to close the gate and lock the gate up at night and she was hit by a python. And I don't know how tall she is. She's probably one foot by five foot.
She's not a very tall woman at all. This was a three-meter python. So initially when I heard she'd been struck by a python, I thought, no, it must have mistaken one of the Jack Russells for her. They sent the picture of the snake hanging in a tree next to her. It was a three-meter-long python that went for her. It was three times her length. Funny story, the husband was watching rugby in the lounge and thought it was one of the bush babies getting taken out by something and screaming. Turned the volume of the TV up while the wife dragged herself to the kitchen of the python wrapped around her.
Johan
0:07:39
Wow
Niall
0:07:40
you know they managed to rescue her and that right yeah like you're incredible yeah some of the guys I've worked with on and with anacondas have some pretty harrowing tales of when they choose to see a human being as a legitimate source of food yeah like really thereafter capybara and iguanas and stuff but sometimes once once you get a snake that's approaching for four meters long people start coming onto their radar as being prey.
Johan
0:08:06
I heard a story where a guy had a pet python and every night he'd find the python at the length of his bed.
Niall
0:08:11
Lying next to it.
Johan
0:08:12
Just measuring to see if he had bit.
Niall
0:08:14
Whether that's apocryphal or real, it's a great story.
Johan
0:08:18
Sorry for anyone with snake phobias on this.
Niall
0:08:21
This won't help. We should award you. You remember one of the stories I was told about an anaconda? So this was back 2003, I was working in Bolivia on giant otters, so it's like a six foot long otter. And we were going out in these little dugout canoes. And one of our guides, local guide, was talking to us about a time that he'd been out fishing in one of these tiny little dugout canoes in an octopus lake at night. It's him and his cousin. They were paddling out pitch black just moonlight and he heard the splash an anaconda come out of the water grabbed his cousin pulled him over the side of his boat and he disappeared into the blackness of the night never seen again. No way. Yeah so I remember having that story going through my mind when I was first sizing up an anaconda and deciding whether or not we could try and legitimately cast this thin.
Johan
0:09:10
No way. Okay so yeah guys if you do have a spaghettophobia we weren't gonna go down the street, but there's some cool stories to tell.
Niall
0:09:16
That's where we went.
Johan
0:09:17
That's where we went. No, but your history and your work, I personally find it incredibly fascinating. And you've just done this expedition. I don't wanna get it right, it's Sub-Arctic Expedition. And I think we'd like to hear about that, but I just got a comment on that. You're really influencing people positively, and you do some motivational speaking. You've got some background prior to the expedition again of a really bad injury that you managed to pull through. So we'd love to hear the background of the injury and then the reason you know why you guys went on this expedition.
Niall
0:09:53
Yes, so to go right back I guess with my family backgrounds, my grandfather, my mum's dad was an actual explorer. There are bits of the Arctic named after him. There's a peninsula and a mountain named after him in Baffin Island in Arctic Canada. So we always had that growing up in our background, knowing that exploration was possible. And I find with a lot of these things, it's about accessibility. If you grew up in an inner city family where your family have always done stuff in the city, you think about things in the Arctic as being out of reach. Whereas because we grew up with a grandfather that had done this, these things just felt within reach. They felt that we could do it. We had those examples. And then both my parents were very adventurous. And when we finished A-levels, each of my brothers, we were taken on an expedition. So instead of being given cash or some other thing to celebrate the completion of A-levels, we were taken on an expedition.
My first one was to cycle for a month through the Himalayas with my dad and his best mates as a result of finishing A-levels. And so that got things started. Then over the next few years, started to do a few more expeditions, big canoeing expeditions, more biking expeditions, lots of rock climbing, lots of mountaineering. Then I rode across the Atlantic Ocean and that was a big one, two months.
And then got into the mentality of doing polar stuff, so skied across Greenland, which is again, was that 24 days, yeah, along the line of the Arctic Circle, and was starting to build a bit of momentum around doing these long and hard, challenging expeditions, but then got distracted by more immediately exciting activities. So things that deliver their payload, but rapidly and in a big hit. And of the things that we got into, me and my brother, the thing that was most exciting of all was called speed flying. Speed flying is like paragliding. So you launch a parachute, and then you run off a mountain or ski off a mountain. But with paragliding, you float around and you enjoy the view. With speed flying, you plummet down it.
Johan
0:11:51
Because you've got the suit on. I think I've seen this. No, okay, it's different to the squirrel suit or whatever.
Niall
0:11:55
Different to the squirrel suit. You've got a parachute. So when you start sprinting, the parachute comes up above your head. And then when you sprint off a cliff, you then plummet down. So we'd be, my parachute, my speed wing, was rated as about 40 miles an hour straight line speed, and then faster when you turn.
Niall
0:12:13
My brother's was smaller, rated at 50 miles an hour straight line speed, and then faster when he's turned. We got into doing that, and we did an amazing ski mountaineering expedition to Greenland, me and my brother, just the two of us, camped out in the middle of nowhere for 15 days climbing mountains with no names and flying off them It's been six hours climbing up a mountain at two minutes flying back down. It's just just incredible Yeah, love this sport, but I was trying to fly harder than I was capable of yeah
Niall
0:12:39
And on the 6th of May 2016 I flew into the face of Pen Yvain Which is the highest mountain in South Wales? And I was attempting to fly as close to the face as I possibly could, like buzz the rock, and I got it wrong, I made a pilot error, I smashed into the side of this mountain, and I remember, I remember just as I was about to hit the side of the mountain, knowing that I couldn't pull out, I can't avoid the situation I'm in. This is happening, and I remember thinking, so this is how I die? And that's a shame, and then I hit the mountain, and I bounce back, the human body's not meant to bounce. I hit this ridge and I bounce back.
Johan
0:13:18
Some bodies aren't meant to bounce.
Niall
0:13:20
No, mine wasn't meant to bounce. It's weird, I still remember all my forelimbs flew out straight. I remember seeing it, wrapped up in my parachute, my forelimbs like that. So I flipped over and I fell, we subsequently found out, nine meters down into this gully and then hit the ground and then started to tumble. I'm on the side of a super steep mountain. And I know the profile of that mountain very well, and I knew that the only way I was coming out of that was dead in multiple pieces at the bottom. But I got very lucky, and I snagged, or the parachute snagged, something snagged.
Niall
0:13:50
I felt, golly, just riddled with rocks. And there was a moment, a very specific moment, that felt like a pressure buildup when I fought to stay alive. And then that pressure released and it was no longer a fight. I was alive. I'd got through that moment and I knew that I was going to be okay. But it felt for a moment that, am I going to get through this and fight like tensing? And then relax, okay, I'm fine. And then- Clearly badly injured though. Yeah, really badly as we subsequently discovered. So what I had done was that I'd broken five vertebrae, one of which had, in the words of the surgeon,
Niall
0:14:30
been obliterated. So it had exploded. If there are any medical people listening, it's a burst fracture of my L1 vertebrae, the first of your lumbar vertebrae, which is the first one below your ribcage. That had exploded. I'd also broken four others, three up in my chest, one of which was unstable so I had to wear a collar for three months and then one which was further down, L2, just below the one that was burst. So I had two major surgeries, see that scar in the second surgery, first one...
Johan
0:15:03
Goodness me, done all length of your back.
Niall
0:15:06
Full length of my back, yeah, second one down underneath my ribcage, they had to chop out one of my ribs to get into the front of my mind. Yeah, yeah, precisely, they didn't bury it, thankfully. God knows what would have come out. Knowing my family, it would have been a snake or something. It's getting biblical. So, yeah, 38 days in hospital, then released into hospital, and I was really unwell for that first few weeks after coming out. slowly getting back to health and 17 weeks after accidents I walked back up to the top of Penavan the mountain where I had my crammy 17 weeks quicker than I should know but it was amazing because the mountain rescue team that had rescued me The guy that the first medic that was on the scene came and joined me on that walk
Niall
0:15:51
The helicopter crew that flew me out flew to the summit of the mountain to meet me on top of the mountain
Johan
0:15:55
Come on, man.
Niall
0:16:00
Yeah, and my brothers they walked up with me too So on the top of the mountain we've got this photograph, helicopter hovering in the background, the winchman from the helicopter, me, my two brothers and Mark Jones from the Mountain Rescue Team all together, like, hugging with the helicopter in the background.
Johan
0:16:12
It's 17 weeks, I mean, to come back from an injury that severe. So we haven't got to the Arctic expedition yet, but that's background to it though, you know, like being able to go on an expedition. And again, I follow Nialll on Instagram. I actually love his social media because he's got a five-year-old daughter that he takes on these many sort of expeditions as well. And I just see so much beauty in teaching the next generation the beauty of nature.
And I think there's so many more lessons that she's being able to get from it, like end resilience and ad being one of that. And definitely she's going to get it. And she's going to look back at those as her fondest memories.
Niall
0:16:49
She knows about my back break as well because I now have permanent injury, permanent damage. Yeah. And she's just completely used to that, so she sees me in the toilet. I go to the toilet differently to you, because I have a spinal cord injury. Yeah. And for her it's just normal. Yeah. So I hope that she will just realize that these things are surpassable.
Johan
0:17:05
Absolutely.
Niall
0:17:06
It's just a speed bump.
Johan
0:17:07
Yeah, yeah.
Niall
0:17:10
In the road, and you can get through these things.
Johan
0:17:09
And we were kind of talking before we started recording the podcast, like, you know, and again, I don't want to keep talking about it hearing the story which it is coming now but you can't always wait for the right situation or the circumstance to be perfect before you do something so for it this podcast is a really good example I don't have any microphones there's no tools there's no equipment we're in the garden you know there's no acoustics and this opportunity came up to start podcasting with with Dr. Casey Bradley you know what, I'm going to do it. I'm not going to wait for the conditions to be perfect, I'm not going to wait to have the right kit.
I've got a phone, it can record, we're going to record podcasts and I think without any comments on that because I really feel like even what you guys did on the Arctic, you can't wait for that condition to be perfect to go into something that remote and that desolate and to do that as three paraplegic, quadriplegic, I don't know what the correct term is.
Niall
0:18:01
Two paraplegic, So I came back from my injury, joined the man from rescue team, starting to get fit again, felt that I could probably do some expeditions, probably, but I needed a reason why. And then I met Darren and Ed. I met these two other chaps. One's a complete paraplegic, cannot feel or move anything below his top two abs. And the other, Ed, is a partial quadriplegic. So he has partial use of all four limbs, but limited.
Niall
0:18:24
I met them, and I thought, the three of us can do something amazing together Yeah, why don't the three of us respond according to try and do an Arctic expedition? Let's try and ski across the largest ice cap in Europe It's called Vatnajokull is in Iceland. If you look at a map of Iceland the entire southeastern corner is this ice cap It's a almost exactly two years after meeting them both and and sending them an email I've still got a copy of that email saying how do you fancy it? Both came, because again they just they didn't need everything to be perfect they didn't need
Nail
0:18:59
the stars to necessarily line any more than they had they had let's do it yeah they had their reasons and yeah I had mine and so we set off and it was 140 kilometers give or take 11 days, went down to minus 27. So it was me skiing, pulling Darren, who was then hand skiing, and then we also had a polk full of gear attached to him, a sled full of gear attached to him, and then Ed carrying the other two sleds full of gear. Total of 190 kilos worth of gear for the whole trip, and the three of us pulled our way across from west to east.
Johan
0:19:33
That was incredible. The pictures are incredible, almost looks like you're dragging your mate behind you. I know he was good. How it felt. He was definitely working as well, but I'm sure...
Nail
0:19:41
Yeah, he's got some impressive arms on him, but it definitely felt like I was pulling a bit of extra weight there. Yeah, yeah, sure. But he's a strong dude and he's very determined. And on the very last day, we had a very, very long day on the last day, because the weather... We got a weather forecast saying that it was about to close, the weather window was about to close the next day, and we'd actually left ourselves a day and a half of skiing. We were expecting to ski for a day and then half a day and come in and enjoy the rest of the afternoon. And we realized from this weather forecast, we either need to batten down the hatches now or we do a massive day the next day. So we did a 12 hour day. Darren pushed himself to the complete point of exhaustion.
Niall
0:20:17
No blood sugar left in his body, absolutely ruined. As soon as we stopped moving, he fell into hypothermia because he wasn't generating any heat. And then, yeah, just into the tent, he ended up burning himself with some with a hot water bottle on his belly But below the line that he can feel so I say pain you know can't feel so he had Hypothermia and third-degree burns blood vessels exposed and everything and it's just I was a crazy end to the trip Yeah, but he's a man that can push himself to the absolute limits. I there was no blood sick left in his body, and he was still go still go humbly
Johan
0:20:47
But how do you get there you know because I think in life we struggle with things that are somewhat easy. I know everyone gets put into situations where for them at the time they feel hard, but it's the ability to recognize that you can push through, you can pull out of that. And you mentioned just now your why. We spoke about the why earlier,
Johan
0:21:03
and anything anyone ever does with me, they're gonna hear about your why a lot.
Niall
0:021:07
What is that? I guess I was really lucky that, so I've always wanted to get the most out of life, and everyone's definition of that is different. And mine's been about, I guess, an accumulation of experiences, trying to accumulate as many unique and wonderful experiences as I possibly can. And those can be social, those can be physical, they can be intellectual, just trying to accumulate experiences. And I remember a moment when I came out of radiology, they'd just done my CT scans and my x-rays and they came to the bedside, really worried looking doctors, and they said, listen Dr. McCann, you're going to have to be prepared that you may never walk again.
Niall
0:21:47
And I instantly responded without even thinking about it, I said, that's okay, I've led an awesome life. I remember thinking two things, firstly, I have accumulated an amazing store of experiences that I can dine out on in my head for the rest of my life if it comes to it, if I'm never able to walk again. But then secondly, if I do end up in a wheelchair, I'll still do some amazing things in a wheelchair. You see people that have been through way, way worse than how I was feeling right then, that are still doing astonishing things. Guys with no legs climbing Everest. People in wheelchairs doing extraordinary things. Karen Dark, a British lady this year,
she's skied across Greenland in a hand cycle. She's been down in Antarctica this year. She's been up Kilimanjaro, all unbelievable things. So if I do end up in a wheelchair, I'm still going to make the most out of that. I'm still going to accumulate experiences in my life. And yes, maybe my potential to enjoy life would be affected by having a spinal cord injury. But it's not going to stop and you can still do amazing things.
Johan
0:22:42
Yeah, I find that fascinating. I really go back to where does that drive come from? Because I'm a firm believer like you can find it and you can have it. Some people have it more naturally than others. Some people just take it as it comes and then other guys, you know, really, not guys but people in general can struggle with seemingly more mundane things. And there's got to be a point where these skills can be learned or found or developed. And I feel very much that you're a natural adventurer. It's in your blood.
Johan
0:23:11
And part of that adventure is being able to go with the punches and go with the thing. So I don't know if that's things that family have passed down like gifts and skills and resilience that you unknowingly imparting on to your daughter. But for people who are listening to this who could potentially be going through a hard time whether it's a financial, whether it's a recession, whether it's a draft year, like where do we dig and where do we go to just wake up another day, push another day, what's around the next corner? I'm sure you found that traversing that as well what's around the next corner, how far you got to go, where do you get to?
Niall
0:23:42
Yes part of it's natural I'm really lucky that I'm naturally of a positive disposition yeah so I tend to be a glass half full kind of guy but then there's also that accumulated resilience from being through tough times yeah and I'm very unfortunate I guess that lots of close friends and family have died. 42 years old, I'm relatively young, but I've had an unusual number of people around me die. And the closest of all was my dad. And when I was, the day that I was getting my, the day that I finished my degree, my first degree, my dad called me to say that he had just been given 11 months to live.
Johan
0:24:22
Oh, I'm sorry, man.
Niall
0:24:22
He had mesothelioma, so asbestos-related cancer. Dad ended up surviving nine and a half years when he was given 11 months and did some unbelievable things in that time, cycling over the Himalayas, climbing El Capitan in Yosemite National Park, all kinds of extraordinary things. And he, I remember him saying to me on that phone call, he'd just told me he was gonna die in 11 months, that he also discovered when he was in hospital that his blood type was B positive and he was going to be positive.
Johan
0:24:51
Oh that's cool.
Niall
0:24:52
So he decided that he was going to live up to his blood type. Any B positives out there? My blood type is A positive so I am a positive guy. I told this story to a friend of mine, he messaged me, he's just had a hernia operation last week and he said he's discovered his blood type is A negative and he's a bit worried about that. Don't worry because you can work through these things. Two negatives make a positive.
Johan
0:25:08
Absolutely.
Niall
0:25:14
and also, if you don't have it naturally, you can develop these things. So what we went through with dad dying, well, his illness and then dying, and then these various other friends that have died, as well as all these challenges I've done since I've been a young lad, really, really hard expeditions where you just have to put one foot in front of the other. I feel that built a stock of resilience that's helped me get through these really, really tough times, like when things really hit rock bottom. So I'm lucky that I'm naturally positive. But even if I didn't have that, I've built up the foundations that I need
Niall
0:25:45
to be ready for whatever's around the corner. I might get hit by something horrendous tomorrow, but I feel that I'm psychologically ready because I've built this stock.
Johan
0:25:55
This resilience tank, we've spoken about it and there's another scholar as well who I can't wait to podcast as well who we shared a lot about a resilience tank and then with Unstoppable and the work we're going to do with Unstoppable and building resilience courses, definitely like a roadmap and you can fill your tank up and you can find spaces to.
Niall
0:26:13
fill your tank up but it's developing the right habits. Sometimes you need tricks. So little thing that I had, the image, the flashback I get of my accident is very unpleasant. Yeah, I'm sure. And there's a few other things I've had as well, over the years, where I also get flashbacks, which are also really unpleasant. And it's very easy to get swamped by that kind of image, especially visual imagery where you're like, really seeing something.
Johan
0:26:39
This is it, yeah.
Niall
0:26:40
And I developed a little trick while I was in hospital. Whenever I had an image, a flashback of that impact, I tried to imagine the happiest thing in the world. And for me, the happiest thing in the world is a golden retriever puppy with his toy in his mouth. So whenever I have this awful, awful image, I imagine golden retriever puppy, in particular my mom's one, coming at me from the left-hand side with her toy Benjamin in her mouth. And she sits in front of me with a little toy, and then she walks off to my right. And as I follow her out with my eyes, the bad image goes with her.
Johan
0:27:13
That's amazing. And there's a lot of work on catching negative thoughts and catching, you can, you can train yourself to catch that negativity. And I think imagery works so much better.
Johan
0:27:21
Totally. Yeah, especially because there's a sort of link to the puppy, your mom's dog
Pepper.
Niall
0:27:27
Pepper. So for whatever it is for someone at home, that happy scene, it might be something else. It might be a child playing with a ball. It might be some time down the pub that they remember with their friends. Whatever it is, it's just trying to find and you can find spaces to.
Johan
0:27:37
Not many people remembering times...Maybe not.
Niall
0:27:42
Well, for the teetotalers out there. The times drinking orange juice with your friends. So, whatever it is, just finding an image that is always happy, always positive. And when you feel that first bit of negativity, that first unpleasant image coming into your mind, click a finger and snap yourself into that positive image and focus on that.
Johan
0:28:02
Focus on that. That's cool. That's really cool. Now we've got a couple of minutes left on this podcast, but you're from the UK, you're British-ish?
Niall
0:28:12
British-ish.
Johan
0:28:13
Yeah?
Niall
0:28:13
Yeah, I was born in Canada. Oh good, okay. And I've got Irish, English, Scottish ancestry, and I live in Wales. So I'm a British and Irish lion with some Canadian ancestry stuck to me.
Johan
0:28:24
That's excellent, so can you just share with us what you're doing up in Zimbabwe at the moment? I think it's pretty incredible what you guys are doing and would love to hear more about that.
Niall
0:28:32
Thank you. A few years ago, I set up an organization called National Park Rescue. And the idea of National Park Rescue is to identify national parks in Africa at most risk of failure.
Johan
0:28:44
Yeah.
Nile
0:28:44
And then try to help resuscitate them. And we've been working in Chisawira with Zim Parks for the past six years and through this incredible friendship, relationship, partnership that we've developed with Zimparks, we have turned Chisarera from a failing national park to a thriving national park. Elephant poaching is down by 94%. We've increased employment, we're the largest local employer now, there's 64 people employed by the park. We do all our trade with local communities, so they're engaged in the business. 75% of our staff come from local villages. Arrests have gone up 300%, snare removal is up 300%, lion numbers are up 35%. We've done everything we possibly can over the past six years to take that park to where it is now and now, we want to take it to the next level.
Johan
0:29:28
So that funding from that, is the park able to generate its own sort of cash flow or is this injected funding for now?
Niall
0:29:35
It's injected funding. The park is super remote and it doesn't have lodge accommodations, so the only people that come are self-drive campers and they're simply not going to pay 500 bucks a night to go camping, even though it's spectacular. The most spectacular place to go camping.
Johan
0:29:46
It's beautiful, I know the area.
Niall
0:29:47
It's stunning, but it's never going to generate much income. To give you an idea, in 2017, the park's income for the year was $600. So it's never going to generate that kind of income. So it needs injected cash. And for the time being, that comes from outside that we bring, but in the future that will be carbon and biodiversity and ecosystem services payments. And these are economies that are just starting to take hold or that are reaching maturity.
Johan
0:30:13
Sorry, is that mitigating carbon footprints for other organizations?
Niall
0:30:16
Okay. To begin with, that's what it will be. All right. I think in 10 years time, we'll start seeing ecosystem services payments built into national economies. We're already seeing it in Costa Rica. And we'll start seeing it in other countries before too long, but for the time being, it's offsets.
Johan
0:30:30
That's really cool. Yeah, because everything like this needs to be sustainable. I mean, I don't want to say anything wrong, and this can always be edited out if it's not the right way. But we often see organizations come into Africa. I mean, I'm born and bred. I've lived here my whole life. We see grant funding come in. We see people come in. We see organizations come in, they'll either have amazing rural farming projects or setting up balls and often when that organization leaves within a few years, that idea crumbles because sustainability is never part of it.
Niall
0:31:02
They perish you in and they perish you out.
Johan
0:31:04
Yeah.
Niall
0:31:05
Parish comes back
Johan
0:31:08
So, and that would be really nice to know that you guys are part of this. You're already six years down the track with Chizurira. Those numbers are phenomenal, you know, and I know the lion populations were hit the hardest because they do go out of the parks, eat the local cattle and livestock.
Niel
0:31:18
2017, there are a hundred and sixty-seven goats killed in the local communities, loads of cattle, people were getting really worried. We haven't had a single livestock incident with lions in the past five years.
Johan
0:31:27
Yeah, and I mean many years ago, I'm talking this is good, 18 years ago, I was involved in problem animal control with the Campfire Project community, communal area management program for indigenous resources and my job was to terminate lions, elephants, buffalo, anything that were coming out of the parks into the rural communities. And those are discussions which can be unpacked a lot as well. I mean, you could see very poor communities, the devastation. One herd of elephants would wreak on entire communities.
Johan
0:31:53
I don't hunt anymore, but it was a lifetime ago. But again, those animals would come out because there wasn't sustenance within the park for themselves. So what did they do? They go to the next area and then put themselves in danger with the whole human wildlife conflict.
Niel
0:32:10
Reducing that predator conflict with people has been one of the biggest successes, I think, of the lot.
Johan
0:32:14
And how do you do that? Do you inject more game into the area?
Nile
0:32:16
We reduce the poaching to an extent where the game could...
Johan
0:32:19
Oh, okay, okay, cop fools.
Niel
0:32:21
So the impala are now breeding like rabbits.
Johan
0:32:25
Yeah. Or whatever they do.
Nile
0:32:26
They do what they do.
Johan
0:32:27
Yeah, impala breed.
Nile
0:32:28
And we see them everywhere now. And so the lions, we don't need to go out to get their food. So they're hammering the waterbuck, they're hammering the cuda, they're hammering the impala, because all those species are breeding really well now because we've got the poaching more under control. It's still challenging, there's still poaching happening. And on a year like this, when it's gonna be dry, the crops will fail, people will start poaching a lot more.
Johan
0:32:48
So you're gonna have pressure.
Nile
0:32:49
We'll have a lot of pressure, so we'll need to try and control that, while also trying to encourage those communities to find sustainability. We will provide extra employment, we will provide extra commerce with these communities. We try to inject back so that they thrive, but this is going to be a big drought year and there's going to be a lot of pressure.
Johan
0:33:04
It already is a drought year. I mean, we've got big trouble coming with the fell crop. It's already fell. We are supposed to be towards the end of our only season now. May should be looking amazing now. It's all dried off. It's a tough year for Zimbabwe, I think for the southern African region, but Zim has been hit particularly hard. And then you can't get away from the mischief of an elephant too. Elephants love the taste of corn or maize, so you're dealing with that too because they are going to go out of the parks at night and they are going to go eat and steal maize and they know they shouldn't be. I mean, I know from experience, we used to hunt these elephant at night and put the spotlights on and that elephant knew it had to turn and run back to the park. He knew he's not supposed to be, he knew he's not supposed to be eating the maize.
Nile
0:33:40
A few years ago I was working in Nepal and they had a problem with elephants raiding their communal areas. What they were after was rice wine, really high quality alcohol, rice wine and marijuana. So anyone that was growing marijuana in their little homestead or had rice wine in their kitchen, the elephants were absolutely hammering them. So you've got high and stoned and drunk elephants wandering around the communities in the Nepal. Amazing.
Johan
0:34:10
And you can see it because the elephants here love a good fermented amarylla fruit as well. So yeah, just that's so interesting. No thanks, I think that's pretty much our time up on the podcast. Thanks so much for taking the time and talking. Yeah, I've really enjoyed sharing as well the vision for Unstoppable and really feel motivated that you can be sharing or a part of it and hopefully see you again in the future either at a talk or a conference. Really looking forward to that.
Nile
0:34:35
I look forward to it too. I look forward to it too.
Johan
0:34:36
Thanks now.
Transcribed with Cockatoo
