The rhino’s best and last hope: You
TV’s Safari Vet, Dr Will Fowlds, is fighting to save the rhino from extinction. And he needs your help
South Africa has been gripped by a massive surge in rhino poaching in recent years. In 2007, 13 rhinos were poached. In 2013 it is estimated that 900 rhinos will be poached with almost three rhinos being killed every day.
Dr William Fowlds, a South African veterinarian and star of ITV1’s Safari Vet School, has made it his mission in life to try and save them. He was in London recently to raise awareness of the horrors facing this endangered species and spoke to Peter Moore about what can – and must – be done to save them.
You’re best known through your TV show about being a wildlife vet. Did you start as a ‘normal’ vet and move across to wildlife or were you always involved with wildlife?
My passion for wildlife started when I was a student at university. But my wildlife professor advised me that the opportunities in medicine and surgery in that field are quite limited. On his advice, I went to the UK to work for five years, working on dogs and cats and hamsters.
How was that?
I was always desperate to get back to South Africa. But funnily enough, my stint in the UK helped to fund the conservation project that I live on. So I killed two birds with one stone there.
Where is the conservation project?
It’s in Eastern Cape in South Africa. It’s a program that brought all our neighbours together to create a reserve called Amakhala Game Reserve. The catalyst we needed to bring those properties together was the piece of land we bought that was funded from the UK. So it turned out to be a significant five years.
