Wednesday July 30 at 8.30pm on ABC
There’s a war on animals happening in Africa right now, waged by well-armed poachers and funded by international criminal syndicates. If left unchecked it will mean the extinction of the Black Rhino by 2025.
The war has now even reached our shores with European police naming Australia as a key destination on the rhino horn black market.
Conservationists have decided to fight back using the same military tactics employed by the poachers – and one of the men at the vanguard of this movement is an Australian!
Ex-Commando Damien Mander moved to Zimbabwe in 2009. He found a huge poaching problem and only a handful of rangers, so he started training them using military techniques.
It was highly effective and pretty soon the world’s media caught on. He became known as the ‘Conservation Rambo’.
Sabour heads to Zimbabwe to join Damien and his anti-poaching unit on the frontlines at the Stanley & Livingston Wildlife Reserve. He’s going to live, eat and work with the rangers for a week as they defend the rhino during one of the most dangerous times of the year.
It’s the start of the ‘Full Moon’ cycle, a period of five to ten days where the bush is lit up by the full moon. On the day Sabour arrives, fresh poacher footprints are discovered inside the reserve and Damien believes they are planning an imminent attack on his animals.
The next week is a race against time to find the poacher before they take down a rhino. It’s filled with action, danger and suspense and ends in a battle that pits Damien, Sabour and the rangers against an enemy intent on blood.
