Plant Yourself Podcast 225: Damien Mander
HOWARD: Damien Mander, welcome to the Plant Yourself Podcast! DAMIEN: Howard, mate, thank you very much for having me on today. HOWARD: Yeah. So let’s let folks know where you’re calling in from? Give us some context? DAMIEN: Mate, I am calling in from Victoria Falls in lovely Zimbabwe. I irst got based over here in 2009, and I’ve been moving around the region, but this is where I set up shop now, mate, and as they say, home is where you dig it. HOWARD: [laughs] Right. So let’s begin with the general introduction. I’m guessing that a lot of folks have seen your two TEDx talks, but let’s start with… you founded an international organization, the IAPF, right? DAMIEN: Correct. Yeah. HOWARD: So tell us what that is and what you’re up to. DAMIEN: The IAPF or the International Anti-Poaching Foundation is an organization I set up in 2009 after traveling through the southern half of the continent working with rangers who were stationed down here on the front lines protecting animals and seeing the huge gap that existed between what I experienced as a soldier, a special operations soldier, and spending time in Iraq seeing the budgets that governments were willing to put towards these wars that we were ighting in the Middle East, and you know, it was either ighting for resources in the ground or dotted lines on the map, and I came over here, and I saw these guys ighting for the heart and lungs of the planet and all the animals that inhabit these massive ecosystems. Whereas I had anything I wanted in the military, working within a half-a-trillion-dollar budget at the time as part of the operation over there, and coming over here and seeing… a lot of guys down here didn’t have boots, ammunition to put in the magazines to go out there and face armed insurgents like poachers. They didn’t even have the right uniforms. You know, it was just a huge imbalance. So I don’t love the drones that control the skies in the Middle East, the defense budgets we used to have or all the equipment I had as a soldier. I only love what a fraction of that could do for the people right here on the front lines. The IPAF was set up with the mission of wildlife conservation through direct action. So, we go out there and work with rangers. We help build strategies for these guys working in some of the most hostile areas on the continent, and we give them what they need to hold up the last line of defense for the animals. HOWARD: So you come to this from a background in the military, and your story is so fascinating because you’re such a man of peace, and you’re also born and bred of the military, and you haven’t renounced military tactics and strategies and tools even as you become a man of peace. What got you into the military in the irst place way back in the day? What attracted you?