By JT Nisay
Conversationalist” and “wildlife investigator” are some of the tags Ivan Carter used to describe himself on his web site. Listen to him speak about his advocacies and you’re likely to add “passionate.”
Here is a man who grew up in Africa, a native son of Zimbabwe who has devoted his life to save his homeland from poachers and the continent’s exploding population. More important, here is a man who has an important message to share. “We take wildlife for granted but it’s an indicator of the balance of the planet. For me, there’s nothing more important than the preservation of it.”
Carter was in the country recently for the first time to promote his new show, Carter’s W.A.R. (Wildlife Animal Response), an Outdoor Channel original series that premiered on May 26, 9 pm, on Cignal TV’s Outdoor Channel 138, and airs every Thursday thereafter.
“The show is an example of how one man with a message can help change the world in which we live,” Outdoor Sportsman Group Network CEO and President Jim Liberatore said in a statement. “Ivan Carter is one man trying to educate the world about the importance of conservation and how we all can help accomplish that goal globally.”
Clad in a standard-issue safari ensemble of green shirt and khaki pants, Carter sounded every bit the part of a wildlife advocate during a one-on-one interview at the Shangri-La at the Fort. It’s not a stretch when we say you can almost feel the safari’s wind on your face, or the rush blood on your veins when he tells a story.
“One time, we moved 20 rhinos across 2,500 kilometers. Imagine what that takes to first catch them, then put them in vehicles, then safely move them with all the security you can muster, because the most valuable commodity on the planet is rhino horn and the convoy could get held-up,” he said. “Filming all that in real time is a huge pressure on the camera crew because you can’t do a retake. You can’t say, ‘Come drive past again’ or ‘Say this again.’ It’s got to just happen. The filming can never endanger the animal, it can never endanger the situation.”
Aside from dealing with poachers, the show also presents how animals and the culture of African people stand in the way of each other sometimes. Carter then recalled the episode about the Masai tribe.
“Their whole value and whole society revolves around cows. The lions come and eat the cows. If it was you and you didn’t have any bank account and all of your wealth is in your cows, and something started killing it, what are you going to do? But the tourist come to see the lions, and the part of that money goes to the Masai. If they kill all the lions, the tourists will stop coming and they’ll stop getting money.
“Showing the audience how that really works, from the perspective of the Masai, from the perspective of the lions and from perspective of the solution, is what makes our show different.”
This type of action and realness, he said, is what separates his show from other programs about Africa, which are often limited to “wars, starvation, baby cheetahs and elephants playing in the mud.”
He added that, for the message to get across effectively, his team made sure that they deliver the stories in a manner that is “high impact, fast-moving and exciting.”
“Otherwise,” he said, “people would rather be on their phone or clicking through the thousands of cable channels that are out there. That’s why we’re offering as much information as you would see in a documentary, but packaged in this very entertaining format.”
According to the 46-year-old action man, all of this started when he was 19, after a life-altering realization hit him hard. “I was part of a tracking team. We were dehorning rhinos, cutting their horns to make them less appealing to poachers. If you have to change the entire character of an animal to save it, we’re in a problem.”
“That was 25 years ago and the problem still exists. When you’re involved in something like that, you really realize how serious it is. I always say, the biggest threat to the wildlife of the world is the thought that somebody else is going to save it.”
Collecting himself together in his seat, Carter said the objective of his show is clear and simple: “I want to move people.”
“At the end of one of my episodes, I don’t want somebody to flip the channel and go and watch a soap opera and never think about it again. I want to emotionally move the audience so when they go to bed that night, they’re thinking about it. The next day, when they’re having their cup of coffee, they’re still thinking about it. You can’t care about something you don’t know about.”
“If I can teach people, they will care, and if I can teach them enthusiastically enough and passionately enough, they’re going to care enough to want to make a difference—and that’s when we can start making serious conservation.”