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Legends of the Wild, A Field And Stream Production | Hunting, Fishing and the Outdoors
Episode 5 - Cheetah Relocation, Conservation Grit, and Rewriting Hunting’s Public Narrative
01:15:51
What does it take to move wild cheetahs across Africa, carrying on after unthinkable loss—and win over the world in the process?
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- [00:02]
A
This is Legends of the Wild presented by Field and Stream. Let's get into it. Robbie Kroger, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Legends of the Wild podcast.
- [00:19]
B
Man. I actually, when I. When the calendar invite came across and it said Legends of the Wild, I was like, oh, doesn't seem like me.
- [00:30]
A
To be totally honest. I felt the same way when I hosted the first one. I was like, well, let's. We're going to see how this goes. I'm going to try to live up to this name.
- [00:37]
B
Well, I appreciate it. I'm humbled to be here and appreciate being, you know, one of the first on this amazing podcast. It's Field and Stream podcast, right? It's Field and Stream's first podcast.
- [00:48]
C
Yeah.
- [00:48]
A
Yeah. So honored to be, you know, kind of kicking this whole network off with this one. And we're gonna have a lot of really cool people on, you included.
- [00:56]
B
100.
- [00:58]
C
Yeah.
- [00:58]
A
I'm just. I'm excited to be able to go and just get to be the guy that gets to be curious and ask all the questions, you know that. On behalf of everybody who's listening to this. So, yeah, just, you know, can't thank you enough for being one of the first people to hop on this thing.
- [01:13]
B
No, thank you, man. Again, honored. Humbled. You know, when I very. I still still remember where I met you.
- [01:22]
A
Same.
- [01:22]
B
And I was at ata, and I think it was the year. It was the year. It was my first year at ata. I didn't know what I was doing. I think it was 2018. And I was like, I had this idea and so I got to ATA and I could. I'd been watching the Outdoor Channel, I'd been watching Sportsman's Channel. So I knew people, right. I knew people. And my strategy was I could. I would. I could see the person that I recognized.
- [01:48]
C
Yep.
- [01:49]
B
And then I would do laps around, like the. The booths.
- [01:53]
C
Yep.
- [01:54]
B
Until they got free. And then I'd go in and do my two minute. Two minute spiel anyway. And got to meet. He had obviously heard about us already. Jake, the Tondras. And we were sitting in. I was sitting with Jake. I was not sitting. I was standing with Jake talking in between the two halls of ATA in Indianapolis. And you walked by and Jake said hello to you. You know, Jake. And Jake introduced me to you. And here we are, you know, seven years later, and we're on a rocket ship of rocket ships. And I can barely hold on with my left hand.
- [02:31]
C
Yeah.
- [02:32]
A
Isn't that the truth, man? I just remember I was gonna bring that up the first time I met you because it was clear from day one the amount of passion you had behind like whatever trajectory this thing was going to take. Like the, the tenacity and the passion behind it was very clear. And since then, like, you know, have watched you go through the films and the podcasts and like, just like building this snowball that has continually gathered momentum and now, like, I mean, doing stuff all over the world and talking to conservationists and people who are kind of in this space or even like on the outskirts of this space, working on conservation stuff that doesn't directly affect hunting, but it's like it at, you know, it's all part of it because it's, you know, the whole ecosystem, that kind of thing. It's been, it has been very fun to watch from a distance.
- [03:25]
B
Yeah, it's funny. I woke up, I woke up in. Earlier this year. I was in deep Zululand, which is. I was in a place called Bakuzi Falls. Zululand is this area in KwaZulu NTL Kul Natal is a province in South Africa and Zulu land is named after Shaka Zulu, who was this like amazing warrior back in the Zulu nation. If you haven't watched the films tied to Shakazulu, do yourself a favor, just watch all of the CDs. There's like a 20 episode piece on him. And the guy that plays Shakazulu is incredible. And so we're, we're on like his home territory. And I was, I got ticked by fever from that. This year I've had a terrible year in terms of like, I recovered from malaria six weeks ago, but I was sitting there and we were going through the doldrums. It was like we'd come off of a film shoot in the Eastern Cape, which is all about how a family had invested in education of the community and had cherry picked these people to like, say, yes, we're going to invest in you. And we were filming this guy, the first guy that went through the program who was an ultra successful architect today. And he just. And the piece is going to be called titled In My Footsteps. And because he was ultra successful, because he's so humble, because he's so grateful, all of the participants leading up from him have made the program successful. If he wasn't successful, if he was a bomb, if he failed out, the program would never have existed. But it did. And that shoot went flawlessly. Yeah, like nothing went wrong. Weather was beautiful, we finished early. We got to hunt. It was just like, huh, beautiful.
- [05:22]
A
Don't you wish they all went like that.
- [05:23]
B
Let's go north. And we should have known because we took a single flight. Port Elizabeth, Durban, four of us. And one of the bags didn't arrive right then and there. I should have been like, what, What's. And we had to wait then the whole day for the next flight to come in. We arrived in Zululand, in camp, and we've got like an eight day shoot and. And four days into an eight day shoot, we have yet to record a single minute of footage because it's been pouring cats and dogs. Oh, and I just see dollar signs because I've got three cameramen in camp and they're the best of the best, so they cost a pretty penny, right? And I'm just like. I woke up in the morning and I was in the doldrums of doldrums. And I woke up to a text message from a mutual friend of ours, Ben o'. Brien. And he was like, dude, I don't know what's going on, but you are kicking it into, like, a next gear that I didn't think you had. And I just want to say how. How proud I am of you. And I've sent the links to Joe Rogan, so just FYI. And I was like, okay, I'm not in the doldrums anymore.
- [06:38]
A
Sometimes it just takes that one little, you know, like, reminder, like, that what you're doing is the right.
- [06:45]
B
So, yeah, we are super humbled, man. I'm honored to be in the position I'm in. I'm super humbled to be able to do what I do and now get paid to do it.
- [06:56]
A
I remember seven years ago when you were.
- [06:58]
C
You.
- [06:58]
A
You had an iPad and you were showing me these different film projects you were working on, and you were going and more or less identifying, like, single hunters and people that were, you know, doing cool things in the space, but it was just like telling that person's story. Um, and I remember you saying, I don't. I don't remember how you phrase it, but you were like, I've got six months to prove to my wife that this is a thing that I can make work, or I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna be done with this. And clearly, you know, here we are seven years later, so why don't you give people like a, you know, obviously the. Everyone's like, give me the elevator pitch, but just give us like a little bit of a background on how this thing has evolved, where it's come from. From when I. When we met at Ata like to now like and how much, I mean, I was watching a bunch of YouTube stuff that you've done this morning, you know, and you're, you know, 130,000 subs on YouTube and like just the film projects and the quality and the, all that stuff is, I mean like you are setting the bar when it comes to putting out content surrounding all of these different topics. So just take us through that. Cause I'm honestly curious about how it all unfolded.
- [08:02]
B
Yeah, so in the beginning, we were hyper focused on one thing. I was hyper focused on one thing which is telling the heart of a hunter story. That's it. That's all I wanted to do. And we had no money and I had no idea what this industry was. I had no idea about marketing, I had no idea about brand recognition, yada yada yada. I was oblivious to that shit. I'm a scientist with a creative brain. And I just was like, I want to tell a story like this. And so we did. You know, from 2017 through the end of 2019, I, I did what everyone else did. I asked Kuyu for money, I asked brand X, brand Y, brand Z for money, thinking that they would see what I was trying to do, which is change the perception of hunting and hunters to the non hunting majority space. But I didn't know that in order to get money then I had to do some sort of like, hey, this is the best gun in the world. Hey, this is the best bino in the world. Hey, I'm going to wear all the camo and my people that I'm interviewing are going to wear the same camo. Well, I wasn't willing to sacrifice that. And So I spent 80, $90,000 of my own money building this thing. And in 2019, you remember correctly, my wife said to me, you have one year. At the end of this year, you have to be sustainable. And if you're not, this is it, you're done. It's like, okay. And so I've crossed the integrity line, you know, not to say that like an individual came to me and said, pay me, I'll pay you $50,000 to tell your story. To tell my story. I would never have done that. And we still never will do that. Even to the point where if somebody reaches out to me and DMs me and says, I've got an interesting story, you should tell my story. Honestly, right away, you're blacklisted because you're being selfish. If that same individual had said to me, hey, you should tell Sam, soholt's story. Now I'm interested because all of a sudden you're not being selfish, you're being selfless.
- [10:34]
C
Right?
- [10:35]
B
So what I did was I sold two films, one to the Weatherby foundation and one to Pop and Young about them. And those two films made me break even in 2019. And so I was allowed to continue. But at that time, I had great conversations with with two very close individuals to Blood Origins. One guy is probably one of the most accomplished bow hunters that nobody has heard about. His name's Ricardo Longoria in Texas. And another one, a guy in South Texas called Jay Leidendecker. And Long Ricardo said, why don't you. Well, Jay started by saying, what kind of business model do you have? And I said, well, I don't really have a business model. I'm just using my, my savings account right now. And Ricardo said, because at the time, in the beginning of 2020, now you gotta remember 2020 is covert. So the beginning of 2020, I started flexing a little bit out of the hunter narrative lane. That was what we had done for three years. Every month you got an episode of an individual five to eight minute episode. We try to do as best of a cinematography job as we possibly can. Our quality was good to start with and then increased as we grew. And I started speaking out about issues. I started breaking down topics. And I remember like the first one was elk issue out of, I think it was California or something like that. I can't remember. And I showed it to some folks and they're like, you need to post that. You articulate it so well. You break it down so well post it. And so I started doing those. And so Ricardo said, you're getting into the advocacy education lane. Why don't you turn yourself into a 501C3? I was like, okay, I'll do it. I've got nothing else to lose. And so we submitted our application in February of that year and of June of 2020 or June, July of 2020. We're five years now down the road. It's our anniversary five years down the road. I remember the day I sat in bed and I announced through Instagram that we were a 501C3. 50 people gave me money.
- [12:59]
C
Wow.
- [13:01]
B
And we didn't know we had like a PayPal with the PayPal was connected to me. It wasn't even connected to the 501C3. I was doing everything wrong.
- [13:07]
C
Yep.
- [13:08]
A
Believe me, I've been there.
- [13:09]
B
And I was like, holy smokes, this is going to work. This is going to work. And we just, just started building the airplane as we were flying it. And I'm still building the airplane as we fly it, right. It's now five years later. And so in that timeframe then I realized that once I was a 501C3, now I could start expanding my thought process around things that additionally mattered to hunting. It wasn't just the narrative of the hunter's heart, but it was now. What is the rhetoric that we keep hearing over and over and over again? Oh, hunting does nothing for wildlife. Oh, hunting does nothing for people. Oh, hunting does nothing for economies. Hunting does nothing for communities. We're going to propose this bill because of X. We're going to propose this regulation because of Y. I was like, I know all those answers and so I can start communicating those answers in various forms of content, including feature length documentaries and all the rest of it. And so we just started, you know, slotting different pieces of content, different lines of content into our repertoire, into our playbook. And honestly, you know, that's really where we are today is that. And I think because we're such a small, nimble, non bureaucratic nonprofit, we have a board of six members and everyone goes, you can't have six. That's even numbers. What if they, they all three disagree with the other three? You're stuck. And I was like, okay, we've never had that happen yet, so I don't think it will happen. But we are, we recognize. I recognize. And you've already said it. If you look at Blood Origins 2017, you look at Blood Origins 2020, you look at Blood Origins 2025, there is a constant evolution in who we are, our message, how we craft message, how we move message, how we pitch message. And that's going to continue because our social media sphere constantly evolves. We have to constantly evolve with it. And so that's, that's sort of the, dare I say, 11 minute elevator pitch that you were not looking for.
- [15:29]
A
But no, that's exactly what I was looking for because it goes to show you, like, what it takes. So at your core you're still telling the same stories, right? Like it. But it's just not a specific story about the hunter's heart. It's not like how they're connected to the land because of hunting. It's everything encompassing hunting, outdoors, conservation, communities, it's all the same story. It's just being shown on a much broader scale. And I, the one thing that I think that you really have going for you is you grew up in South Africa, correct? And you didn't grow up a hunter, but you were around it. And so you have a unique perspective on the world that most of us that have grown up in the States and have never, like, I've never been to Africa, never hunted in Africa, haven't experienced that culture. But because you have traveled around the world and seen these different communities, you have a unique perspective when it comes to talking about conservation, because you've been able to see, like, this works in Namibia, and this works in this country, and this works in the United States. And you can kind of speak to all of those different, like, avenues that countries and communities are using for these different tactics that most people will never have the ability to, like, speak clearly on that type of stuff. So it's. I mean, the evolution is just something that comes with the way our culture is changing, where we're way more digitally connected. We're way everything, social media, everything, you know, and you have to, like, you know, kind of dive into those algorithms to fit that model a little bit, but you're still able to do it the way you want to do it and tell the proper stories to get the message across. So it's been. That's a very cool avenue that you've been able to kind of, like, navigate because of where you grew up.
- [17:15]
B
Yeah. And I think, you know, I certainly understand the uniqueness of me and what we've done. You know, I have a PhD, so I have the acumen, I have the education to back up what we say and how we say it. I have an accent. I totally get. It certainly helps. Blood Origins would not be Blood Origins if I had a deep Mississippi redneck accent. And so. And I have the. This perspective. Right. I have this perspective. I grew up in a different country. I didn't grow up in America. I understand. What if you didn't have what you have? I know what that's like, because I didn't have it.
- [17:56]
A
Right.
- [17:57]
B
And, you know, it's. Again, I told you before we jumped on the air, so it's fortuitous that we're talking today, and it's fortuitous that we started this conversation about where we've come from and where we're where we are right now and where we're going, because we, as I said, we're constantly evolving, and we're constantly thinking, like, you know, what do we need to be and what is our mission and who are we? And really strengthen that position that we're in. And we're only five years old. Right. We're a very Very, very young, nimble non profit that arguably has the biggest digital voice for hunting in the world right now.
- [18:31]
C
Yeah.
- [18:31]
B
And so the board and I have been doing some, some major thinking. The, the major thinking is tied to the mission. And our mission hasn't changed. Our mission is very simple. We educate. And I'm not going to even say the non hunting majority anymore. I'm going to say we're going to educate the uninformed and misinformed about the truth. And here's where we evolve around sustainable use of wildlife, not just hunting.
- [19:06]
C
Yeah.
- [19:07]
B
And that's our mission. That is what we do best. And we do it in every form of content you can think of, including the implementation of conservation projects, humanitarian projects, education projects. So the board said to me, if that is your mission, Robbie. I said, yes, it is. They said, well, then our name doesn't fit our mission. Because if somebody's misinformed and uninformed, and I hear Blood Origins, sure. They're like, you guys just love to spill blood. And so you're one of the first podcasts that I'm telling everybody this is that we're no longer officially named Blood Origins. We are now the Origins Foundation.
- [19:53]
A
Okay. And I was actually going to ask you about that because I saw that the YouTube channel is called the Origins Foundation. So congratulations on evolving into.
- [20:03]
B
That's the rollout that's happening in the next two to three weeks. And here's how I will say it. The mission hasn't changed. The heart of the mission hasn't changed. The heart of the person that leads the mission hasn't changed. We just got a different name.
- [20:18]
C
Yep, yep.
- [20:19]
B
Absolutely.
- [20:20]
A
And I think it makes sense. I think that's a, like you said, you guys are a nimble organization. I think that's a change that it makes sense on the scale at which you guys are trying to do things. Because if you have a percentage of people that are going to just read Blood Origins and not have any idea what that means or be turned off immediately, like it's worth shifting directions to make sure you can get your message across and educate people on issues that are very important right now.
- [20:47]
B
Yeah. And the Origins foundation just sounds so much fancier.
- [20:50]
A
Sounds great.
- [20:51]
B
Yeah.
- [20:52]
C
Yeah.
- [20:55]
B
So, yeah, that's a big step for us. It's, you know, we've got, I think, a lot of people if, you know, if you look at a number of organizations in our field and ask them, would they change their name, some of them would say yes, but some of them are so indoctrinated and you know, 50 years old, 60 years old, 70 years old. They can't change.
- [21:15]
A
Right.
- [21:16]
B
We're five and we very much are tied in with the mission and we are just brilliant. That excited. I'm just excited about. There's so much now, you know, and again, you talked about this. It's, it's the heart of hunting. But it's all these things around it. Right. Sustainable use of wildlife. Like the leather trade. Right. The leather trade of, of allocators specifically. That may not specifically be a hunting issue, but it's a sustainable usage that has hunting involved in it, that has sustainable use involved with it, that has conservation of wildlife involved with it, some of which with was through hunting.
- [22:02]
C
Yep.
- [22:04]
A
So, yeah, kind of along that line, what are the big projects right now? I watched your what's coming in 2025? Teaser this morning on YouTube. But what are the big projects right now that you guys are working on? I saw some stuff about cheetah relocation. I've seen.
- [22:21]
B
Yeah. So let's talk cheetahs.
- [22:22]
C
Yeah.
- [22:23]
B
And because I told you, I was like, man, I got an update today. Great. That's how this is how current things are. And our cheetah project is, our cheetah project is really putting our flag in the ground to say we feel like there's certain areas that we want to work in in the wildlife space. That would really, again, tying back to the mission. That would really support this education of the uninformed and misinformed. And it's interesting, you know, you never know what things go viral on social media. Right. You have just no idea.
- [22:58]
C
Yep.
- [22:58]
B
We put out a post about wanting a cheetah monitor.
- [23:04]
A
Okay.
- [23:04]
B
It's a picture of a cheetah saying we are hiring a cheetah monitor. That post is like 1.3 million views right now. And you know, it's just, it's, it's. I, I said, are we getting the applications? And you guys. 180 applications for the cheetah monitor position in Mozambique. Anyway, the cheetah project is the biggest thing we've ever undertaken monetarily. Okay. We think it's, it's probably, it's a five year project at its, at its smallest and it's probably half a mil to 3/4 of a million dollars worth of project. And we are raising the money. Origins foundation is raising the money for the project. It's a beautiful project in that cheetahs have sort of a checkered past. They have the genetic bottleneck that happened 10,000 years ago. Small number of individuals have now proliferated to what you see in the cheetah population today. So a cheetah in a sand in the San Diego Zoo, if you pull a blood sample or DNA sample out of that cheetah and you look at it in comparison to a cheetah that came out of the wild in Namibia, the genetics are very, very, very similar.
- [24:19]
A
Okay.
- [24:20]
B
So genetic inbreeding or inbreeding, specifically in these small fenced reserves in South Africa that are doing a yeoman's job for cheetah range expansion, population increase, have to work on moving cheetahs around.
- [24:38]
A
Sure.
- [24:38]
B
They also have to constantly work on finding new places for cheetahs. And obviously the best place to find for, for places for cheetah to go into are historic areas that cheetahs used to be in.
- [24:51]
C
Yeah.
- [24:52]
A
Previous native habitat.
- [24:53]
B
Previous native habitat, but also wild open spaces.
- [24:57]
A
Sure.
- [24:58]
B
And so two years ago, working with a partner of ours in Mozambique Safaris, the Mozambique, they reached out and said, hey, we've got this crazy idea. We just found a cheetah track on our concession. This concession is 210, 220,000 hectares. It's almost half a million acres. And I was like, huh? They said, we think we can bring cheetahs back. That started a 24 month process vetting environmental impact assessments. Where the cheater's gonna come from? Do we have enough cheaters? Does South Africa have enough cheaters? Can we get the import export permits out of South Africa into Mozambique? Two different governments, two different cite cycles and permits and whatnot. And then we decided, look, with, with cheaters, the, the going experience right now is in transport. You lose 20% of your cheetahs and in the first 12 months, you're going to lose 40% of your, of your initial stock of cheaters. And the reason being.
- [26:01]
A
Okay, yeah, go ahead.
- [26:02]
B
They're just a very, they're not a, they're not a robust cat. They're not, they're not a lion. Okay, A lion. You drop a lion somewhere, chances are that lion's gonna live.
- [26:13]
C
Yeah.
- [26:14]
B
As long as it doesn't get poached or it doesn't get snared. That line is a very robust line. And it can survive, you know, a little bit of over stimulation when it comes to aircraft and drugs and bomas and all kinds of things. Cheetahs are just naturally skittish, naturally temperamental. You also have to transport cheetahs awake in crates. Lions transport asleep, not in crates. And then, you know, they tend to get smacked by lions. So if you've got a lion Heavy landscape. Lions will kill cheaters. Lions will chase cheaters off their kills. A very. Lions will kill, move off the kill, come back to the kill. If a cheetah kills and gets run off the kill, they'll never return to the kill. I'll just go and kill something else if they can. So there's just lots of little things that are just like why would you.
- [27:14]
C
Yeah.
- [27:14]
B
But we did so with the, with the statistics in mind. Vincent van der Mewer, who was the Cheetah Meta Population initiative like Driver said we should, we should initially move the most cheetahs that anybody has ever moved. I was like, yeah, I want to, I want to make history. Of course I do. But that means we have to raise a lot, a lot more money. Yep, okay, we'll do it. And what I've started realizing, we started moving cheetahs in October of last year and we finished in June of this year is that you can sort of predict things that could go wrong. We got stuck in the Kalahari. Three vehicles bogged down in heavy sand. None of us had four wheel drive. There was no cell phone signal with pissed off cheaters in the back at 1:30 in the morning to be delivered by 4 in the morning because the chopper was. Oh to be delivered at 2 in the morning. We had already got stuck because the chopper's coming at 6:30 the next morning to catch more cheaters in which we finally got out of that mess and arrived into camp at 4:45 to then get an hour's worth of sleep, to then pick up a chopper, to then, to then having cheaters. The first batch of cheaters that moved instead of it being a 24 hour move turned into a 56 hour move because all the rains was supposed to have gone so we could fly it into the air strip. Well, late rains soaked the airstrip so no plane can land. So a convoy of 12 four by fours took on a road that was supposed to take 10 hours. That turned into 24 hours on that road in which at 5 o' clock in the morning one of the vehicle drivers was, was following too close to another vehicle and didn't have enough time to react when the vehicle in front of him put the brakes on and smashed into the back of that vehicle. Completely totaling the vehicle with cheetahs on the back. Yeah, that then we had to move those cheetahs and put them on the recovery vehicle to then keep going.
- [29:40]
A
And remember these cheetahs are awake.
- [29:41]
B
They're all awake.
- [29:43]
A
Right.
- [29:43]
B
So you're to then be placed onto A pontoon to cross the Zambezi river to then be put onto a macoral canoe to cross the Panayame river, then get put onto a tractor to move into Lyboma. And in this whole move, we've only lost one cheetah.
- [29:59]
C
Wow.
- [29:59]
B
Which is less than. Is like four and a half percent right. To date, we haven't lost a single cheetah in release.
- [30:08]
C
Amazing.
- [30:09]
B
So we are already beating the 40%.
- [30:11]
C
Yeah.
- [30:14]
B
And so the other thing that happened was we moved them in two batches because you, you didn't. We couldn't have. Couldn't find a plane big enough to move 17 cheetah, so we moved 12 and then we were going to move another five. And so as we're getting gearing up to move the ne. The, the next five, I get a, a text message from my vet to say, hey, I think one of the Amakala males has broken its leg in the boma. I said, how did it break its leg? Oh, the female next to it is probably in heat and it doesn't. There's no surface injury, but we think the leg's broken. Well, $5,000 later, the tibia amphibia clean snapped. That cheetah now has a plate in its leg with screws and could not come on the journey with us. So then we're scrambling for another, another cheetah to, to replace it and to change the import export terms just too much. So we just said, forget it, we'll just leave that cheater.
- [31:29]
C
Yeah.
- [31:31]
B
Well, I'm gearing up to leave on the Sunday and I get a wake up on Wednesday previous to the Sunday to multiple missed calls from my vet and from my lead in Mozambique. And I'm like, what's going on? Like, what other drama am I about to like, get into? We're five days away. Well, Vincent Van der Mewer, the my cheetah guy at the Meta Population Initiative, had committed suicide.
- [32:08]
A
Oh my gosh.
- [32:09]
B
In Saudi Arabia. And I was like, I was like, you gotta. You. This is unbelievable.
- [32:18]
C
Yeah.
- [32:19]
B
Like, what the hell's going on? Like what, why are we even doing this now? Like what, what the hell?
- [32:24]
C
Yeah.
- [32:25]
B
Anyway, the show must go on, essentially. And so I leave on Friday to go to San Antonio for a fundraising event and I take a video. And we had literally just gotten the video. I'd literally just gotten the video on Tuesday, which is this teaser. And you probably, if you go onto the website, you on, onto YouTube, you could probably see the teaser of the initiative of the med of the cheetah project. And if you watch that video, it's only like, It's, I think, 2 minutes and 15 seconds or something. Again, at the middle part of that video, my vet, he's a ginger head guy. Andy Fraser bear hugs Vince. Vince is in the video. And in that moment, because we had had the car get stuck, we had had so many things go wrong. We had been on the road for 19 hours. That morning, the chopper arrived to catch cheetahs. We couldn't find the cheetahs, the pings, the cheetahs didn't come in. We were in the doldrums. We were like, we're going home. Yeah, forget these cheetah. Well, the guy said, let's just try one more time this afternoon. And the ping came through on the cheetahs. The chopper went up, the vet went in, and the vet darted three cheetah in 48 minutes. Boom, boom, boom.
- [33:42]
C
Yeah.
- [33:43]
B
And we were all just, like, elated. The anxiety had left the room, had left everybody. We were so excited. We were all so happy. And that excitement and happiness was captured in that snippet, the way that Andy and Vince bear hugged for sure. And so I, I, I present the project at this fundraiser. I play the video. And the other thing, when I watched the video for the first time after knowing the, the news of Vince, that bear hug scene, like, broke me, really broke me. And so when I came, when the video finished, I'm in San Antonio at this fundraiser and I'm crying. And I have to tell everybody in the audience why I'm crying, right? And I said to them, I said, you know, you're bidding on an auction item here for you to come and be with the cheaters. I don't care if it's two of you or eight of you. I don't care if it's three days or five days at the end of it. I just want you to be a part of this project and I want you to help us. And now we've got a bigger mission because we need to do it for Vince, right? And here's how amazing the hunting community is. We started at a thousand dollars. It went to $20,000 very quickly between two individuals and one individual's guy called Ben Wolf, and the other lady was Shannon Rolster. And so Shannon's looking over it gets to 23,000, 24,000. And Shannon says to the spotter, something. The spotter shouts to the auctioneer, 50,000. So I'm like, geez. And so the auctioneer goes back to Ben, are you in? Are you not. And Ben looks at Shannon, goes, 51, 52, 53, 54. Shannon at 54 says something to the auction, to the spotter. The spotter shouts at the auctioneer, hundred thousand. And I'm just like, oh, my God, I can't believe this. And obviously, you got to remember I'm coming off this, like, massive emotional roller coaster that I've just done in the last five minutes.
- [36:08]
C
Yeah.
- [36:09]
B
Auctioneer goes back to. To. To Ben Wolf. Are you in? Ben was like, nope, I'm not in. Then Shannon says to the spotter, something else. And the spotter turns to auctioneer and goes, 200,000. That's how amazing this woman is. And so auction finishes. Obviously, I'm just in tears. I'm just like, this is. This is the money that we needed to, like, make the next two and a half years work, right?
- [36:43]
C
Yeah.
- [36:45]
B
So I go and say thank you to her. The auction continues to happen. I'm standing at the back of the room, and a friend of mine, Todd Glocker, comes up to me, and he introduces me to Ben Wolf. He goes, I want to introduce you to Ben. Ben was the one bidding against Shannon. I was like, oh, pleasure to meet you, Ben. And Ben goes, man, I'm so impressed with what you do. I'm so impressed with who you are. I'm going to give you my other. I'm going to give you the 50,000.
- [37:11]
A
A quarter million. Just like that.
- [37:13]
B
Just like that, man. Okay. And here's the. Here's the absolute kicker. I've. I've, I've since interacted with Ben, and he's. He's an advisory board member of ours now. And I said to Ben afterwards, two, three, five weeks later, I said, ben, you came up to me that night and you said, man, I'm so impressed with what you've done. How long have you been following us? And Blood Origins?
- [37:43]
C
Yeah.
- [37:44]
B
He said, robbie, I didn't know you from a bar of soap. I met you that night.
- [37:50]
A
That is awesome. I mean, talk about a cool experience. That forever is going to change the way that you guys have done things or are doing things.
- [37:59]
B
Mike and Alyssa are always trying to outdo each other. When Alyssa got a small water bottle, Mike showed up with a 4 liter jug. When Mike started gardening, Alyssa started beekeeping. Oh, come on. They called a truce for their holiday and used Expedia trip planner to collaborate on all the details of their trip. Once there, Mike still did more laps around the pool. Whatever. You were made to outdo your holidays. We were made to help Organize the competition. Expedia made to travel 100%. And so here's now. Now I'll flip over. I have a PhD in Restoration Ecology. I'm a science geek at heart, so I like sciencey kinds of things. Cheetah open range relocation projects are notoriously difficult because all the cheetahs come from fenced reserves. So when a cheetah roams, they hit the fence and they just turn around and go the other way.
- [38:56]
A
Sure.
- [38:57]
B
I don't think, number one, I don't. There's never been a cheetah relocation project that has an international border on our west and our southern boundaries to our area. There's only two open range projects that have happened before. Mozambique, Qatar 11 with Mark Haldane and I believe in Malawi. And in both projects, the cheetahs bomb. And what they mean is when cheetahs drop, they just start moving around the landscape. And if they decide to go south, there's nothing to stop them going south.
- [39:32]
A
Sure.
- [39:32]
B
And so they'll go south for 60 miles. And you've got to decide, are you going to go get it, bring it back? What are you, You've got. You're sort of a risk. Benefit analysis is constantly in your brain. Okay. So Mark's project at Qatar 11, he obviously wanted his cheetahs within his concession. And so he constantly would fetch the cheetahs and bring them back. Bring them back, bring them back, bring them back. Well, because of our international border, once a cheetah crosses into another country, we can't fly across the border, we can't walk across the border, we can't drive across the border to monitor the cheetahs. We have to get a catch permit from the ecologist of a different country. We have to get permits, we have to get different helicopter crews, we have to. Everything is so much more logistically challenging. So we have taken it upon ourselves to really say, okay, we have to embrace the idea that this is a true cheetah range expansion project. Right. So when you look at where we are in Mozambique, the Zambezi river comes in from Zimbabwe and it forms this dam called Cabora Basa. And there's a section of land that borders Zimbabwe to the west and the south. It is our area. Well, all the way to the west of our area in Zimbabwe is amazing wilderness. 10 million plus acres of amazingness. You've got a place called Gandhi hunting area. You've got Chiwari hunting area. You've got a place called Sapi ecotourism area. Got a place called Reefer hunting area. Then you've got Mana Pools National Park, Famous, famous, famous national park in Zimbabwe. Then you've got Chuwari on the other side and Sharara on the other side and Nakazanya, Nakasanga. You've got this whole linked area of pure awesome wilderness.
- [41:34]
A
Sure.
- [41:35]
B
And so we gotta be comfortable with it. Like if we would be comfortable. The problem is we've spent $210,000 moving these cheetahs. And you want them to be protected. You want them to have the best opportunity to proliferate and create an F2 generation, F3, F4 generation.
- [41:54]
A
Right.
- [41:54]
B
And when they leave your area, you really have no idea what's happening, where they're control.
- [42:01]
A
If, I mean zero control.
- [42:05]
B
All you, all the control you have is when you log into the satellite collars and see where they go. So we've actually had a female go out. So the females are obviously the most important cheaters for us because they're the ones that become mothers. We've got the. That random male cheetah that showed up two years ago that's running around on the landscape. And so we want to make sure that we're protecting the females. Can we. Should we go get the females? Maybe we've already. We fetched one. The other two females we've left and one of the females did a 200 kilometer round trip over 16 days and has come back to Mozambique. It's amazing, dude. It's like literally amazing. And from a science perspective, nobody has allowed them to do this, right?
- [42:55]
C
Yeah.
- [42:56]
A
Because they're constantly just going and just kind of. You're literally herding cats.
- [43:01]
B
Yeah. You want to go get them, bring them back. And I get it. It's all tied to risk.
- [43:05]
C
Yes.
- [43:07]
B
So we've got another female right now that's out, the sister of the one that came back and we're leaving her. We're letting her go. And then we've got this coalition of three males and this coalition of three males. We called them the Kalahari Boys. Kalahari Boys came out of the Northern Cape of South Africa. They came out of a very prestigious game reserve called Swallow. They were roamers, they were agricultural cheaters. They, they would kill goats and whatnot. And they came into Tualu and Tahlo was like, we don't want these cheetahs.
- [43:39]
A
Sure.
- [43:39]
B
So they captured the cheetahs, they put them into Obama. Those cheetahs were in Obama for six months when we came to get them. You would have thought six months in the Boma. Those cheaters are chill. They were the wildest skittish cheetahs we captured, then they sat in our Boma for three and a half months. Then they sat in the Boma in Mozambique for another six weeks. So those guys were in Boma for 11 months. You only want cheetahs in Boma probably for six to eight weeks. Okay, well, they came out of the boma and they did everything that they were supposed to do. So I'm going to show you via the camera. So all of these top. These top. So the red is where the boma was.
- [44:23]
A
Okay.
- [44:24]
B
So those are all the pings that came into Boma.
- [44:27]
A
Sure.
- [44:27]
B
And this is our area. This big white line right here is the international border.
- [44:32]
A
Okay.
- [44:33]
B
Okay. So you can see they moved around a lot. See the numbers? The numbers represent like where they pinged.
- [44:39]
C
Yeah.
- [44:39]
B
Lots of people here.
- [44:40]
C
Yep.
- [44:41]
B
We thought, man, they're going to stick around. They're going to stick around. They're going to stick around. Well then they just went poof, straight south. Okay.
- [44:48]
A
I mean, in cover, in some distance.
- [44:51]
B
So in the last 30 days.
- [44:54]
A
Oh my gosh.
- [44:57]
B
These.
- [44:57]
A
For anybody that's just listening to this, the amount of distance that these cheetahs have covered. I don't, I obviously I don't have a scale on what that map looks like, but that is, that is covering some ground.
- [45:08]
B
268 kilometers in 37 days. Wow. And so now they have officially entered into Mana Pools.
- [45:18]
A
Mana Pools National Park.
- [45:21]
B
And so I looked, I did a bunch of research. Today. The Wild Crew research team out of Oxford did a massive carnivore camera trap survey in Mana Pools. Sapie Nagasanga and reefer, or chirara. Sorry, not reefer. And they only detect the three cheetah in an entire landscape. Somebody said that they saw two male cheetahs May of 2024. A guy two weeks ago saw a female track and a youngster track in there. So it's so cool. Like, yeah. The reason I'm so jazzed is that now we've got three. We know three cheetahs have now moved into a cool part of the landscape, you know, 280 kilometers away from where they're supposed to be. But that's okay. And we have a satellite collar on them so we know exactly where they're going. Are they going to hang out in mana pools? They're going to find prey. Are they going to find a female? They're just going to chill out, settle down, create a home range or they're going to keep moving and then are they going to Come back. I don't know.
- [46:26]
A
And I would imagine that, you know, as the part of the project of this was to create more biodiversity, more DNA diversity among cheetahs. Right. And so I would imagine that by just allowing the cheetahs to actually move, not constantly going and fetching them, you're allowing them to do what they do, and that's create less inbreeding within enclosed, you know, like, even if it's large, not in enclosed structures. And so then you're going to have like DNA from this cheetah over here and start to spread that across the landscape. Like you said, it's actual cheetah expansion program, not just a relocation program.
- [47:05]
B
Yeah. And here's the, here's the kicker, okay. Because for the most part, a lot of people would have said fetch the cheetahs. And I would have said the same thing. Because you want success for your project.
- [47:18]
A
Yes.
- [47:19]
B
And success in a cheetah relocation project is cubs on the ground. You've got an F2 generation, you're expanding the population, and then that population starts the range expansion.
- [47:32]
A
Sure.
- [47:33]
C
Yep.
- [47:33]
B
You want your initial investment, your initial to stay where they are. Because, let's be honest, I'm going to be a little selfish. I want my cheaters that I've paid for to stay in the place that I'm putting them in.
- [47:44]
C
Yep, yep.
- [47:45]
B
But at the same time, you've got to, you've got to recognize what you're ultimately doing. And if it happens at F1 or F2 or F3, you. You've got to be okay with it.
- [47:56]
C
Yeah.
- [47:56]
B
And, you know, the Kalahari boys moving into mana pools, to me is a success. It is a success that they're still alive. They didn't get snared on the way in there.
- [48:06]
A
Right.
- [48:07]
B
They are super smart cheaters, these three. They've been in these environments before. They've snuck around farms. They know to avoid humans. They're, they're, they're very smart cats. So to me, I like it. Right. I can tell stories about each of our cats and what they're doing and why they're doing it. And it's adding to the volume of science at the end of the day. And we are expanding cheetah, you know, populations across the middle of Zambezi. Would it mean that we're going to have to add another eight or nine cheetahs over the next two to three years from South Africa? Yes, we're going to have to move another eight or nine cheetahs, but that's part and parcel of It. So that at year 50. Year 50. At year five.
- [48:50]
C
Yeah.
- [48:50]
B
We have 50 years. We have 50 cheaters on the landscape.
- [48:53]
A
Okay. Yeah, I was going to ask that what the total number, like the goal was to.
- [48:59]
B
Yeah, I think, I think having. I think we're going to move probably between 25 and 30 cheaters in total.
- [49:07]
A
Sure.
- [49:07]
B
We've moved 17, so we'll see what happens next.
- [49:13]
C
Yeah.
- [49:14]
A
Well, I'm excited to hear the next round of drama that comes from moving cheetahs.
- [49:20]
B
The amount of experience that we have now is unbelievable. So I will not move any cheetahs until I have import and export permits like in my hand. Vince was such. He was a force, man. He was a hurricane. He was the antithesis of me in that I'm a planner. Like, I need everything planned out and in these relocation big conservation project systems, chaos reigns. And you need someone who thrives in chaos. The more chaos, the better they do. And that's what Vince was. He was just like, the crazier it got, the better he was, the better he was in the system. And I was just like faltering. So it was just. Yeah, man, look, we've just got. It's such a cool project and, you know, we're building the documentary out right now that hopefully we can get it in the hands of something, somebody big at a Netflix or something like that that can say, wow, okay. Yeah, we really want a part of this project. And I think the coolest part about this whole thing, again, going back to the mission, this is all funded by hunters.
- [50:37]
C
Yeah.
- [50:38]
B
There's not a single non hunter dollar in this whole business. And we're not hunting cheetahs.
- [50:45]
A
Right.
- [50:46]
B
Ever.
- [50:47]
C
Yep.
- [50:48]
B
It's illegal. You can't do it. Nor do we want to do it. So it's. The question has to be asked, well, why. Why are you doing this? Like, why are you doing such a massive project with so many headaches?
- [51:03]
C
Yeah.
- [51:04]
B
And the. And this. And the answer is simple. It's the right thing to do.
- [51:10]
C
Yeah.
- [51:10]
B
Somebody has to do it.
- [51:12]
C
Yep.
- [51:12]
B
And more often than not, hunters will step up and do it.
- [51:17]
C
Yep.
- [51:18]
A
Well, good on you for. I mean, understanding that it's just something that needed to be done and taking on a project of this scale, you.
- [51:28]
B
Know, because there's so much opportunity still. There's so much opportunity in the cheetah conservation space. So we're going to play a role in the cheetah conservation space. We're going to. This isn't the last project we're going to do. We could see Some gaps, we can see some opportunities. And hey, it's all about fundraising, man. At the end of the day, you raise the money, you can do some epic shit.
- [51:51]
A
Yeah, that's exactly right.
- [51:53]
C
Yep, yep.
- [51:54]
A
The more money you raise, the more money you can spend on that kind of stuff. That's exactly, like through my whole career that's been. The whole thing is just like, how much, how much money can we raise? How much can we donate, you know, to these different causes? Because that's where the fun stuff is. It's like, I don't want to write a hundred dollar check. How do I write a $10,000 check? How do I write a hundred thousand dollar check? Then you can start to make. You don't really move the needle on some stuff. So that's, I mean, again, just applause to you guys for taking that project on. I cannot wait to see the documentary and just how, you know, all of that unfolded because, you know, just the amount of like, like you said, the chaos that goes into that is unbelievable. So, you know, one question I had for you, we've already been talking almost an hour, but one question I had for you is because you have this unique perspective and have traveled around the world and talked to people that are in conservation, doing things in the UK and in Africa and in the States and, you know, all over New Zealand, all over the world. Have you found, and this is kind of a big question, but have you found, like, what's the common thread? What's the consistent message across the board around the globe? You know, because it's easy for us, if you just live in the States, it's very easy to get into, like one specific mindset. But does have you found, like a commonality across the board?
- [53:12]
B
A commonality to what we're fighting against or what?
- [53:15]
A
Yeah, just like, like, what's that common thread that is motivating all of these people who are working on conservation, working on these projects, working on these issues? What's the commonality that ties it all together?
- [53:29]
B
Oh, man, you should have sent me these questions.
- [53:31]
A
Sorry.
- [53:31]
B
No, no, it's a good one. It is a good one. It is a good one. You know, I think I'll start with the. What I was thinking about, which is I think that everybody around the world, whether you're in Argentina, the uk, Tanzania, New Zealand, Australia, the fight that we are in is all the same. It's a fight that stems from a misinformed, uneducated public to what hunting actually does.
- [54:06]
C
Yeah.
- [54:06]
B
Or what it is. Okay. I think that anywhere in the world. Interestingly, anywhere in the world, the hunting community has unfortunately, bad actors. It doesn't matter where you are. They all the same. And those bad actors, you know, rise to the surface. Unfortunately. And here's where I, I, I disagree with a lot of the rhetoric that's in our space. I don't think those bad actors, I don't think those bad actors do much harm to the hunting community space.
- [54:58]
A
Sure.
- [54:59]
B
As much as everyone says they do. Right. Like the trophy shot grin and gripen grins. I really don't think they, they, they do what they, what we, what they, what you think they do.
- [55:12]
A
At least what the media says they do.
- [55:14]
B
Yeah. And so, for instance, like Australia. I'll use Australia as an example. The thing that gets everybody riled up in Australia is when like a wallaby or a cockatoo or something has a target archery arrow in it. That's not hunters being unethical. That's adolescent teenage idiots.
- [55:37]
C
Yep.
- [55:37]
B
You know, doing something for a laugh.
- [55:41]
C
Yep.
- [55:42]
B
But unfortunately it's, it gets put on us as the hunting community. I do believe that the, the hunting message when it comes to food is pretty global. I do believe that there are certain places in this world where the food narrative is really the key to changing hearts and minds more than anything else when it comes to hunting. Australia, for instance, and New Zealand, for instance, two specific countries in which most of the mammals that are in that country, or not mammals, most of the game species that are in those countries are feral.
- [56:22]
C
Yep.
- [56:23]
B
And are invasive. And as such there's already a connotation around those animals. And so from a hunter, if you can champion a narrative of sustainable utilization of the resource.
- [56:36]
A
Sure.
- [56:37]
B
Which is what's happening in one of our projects called Hunters for Hope in Christchurch. Hunters for the Hungry program in New Zealand. They're kicking off and pulling all of these red stags off these big estates that trophy hunters are coming in to shoot and utilizing the meat for the good of the people and needy people and whatnot. Just your typical Hunters for the Hungry program. And it's getting massive kudos because again, counter to it, in Australia you have helicopter gunships that go in to control deer populations and leave all of the deer on the side of the hill to rot.
- [57:09]
A
Right.
- [57:10]
C
Yep.
- [57:11]
B
So I know that was a long answer and a long answer to your question, but. And I don't know if I even answered it or not. I think we are facing the same enemy regardless of where you are in this world.
- [57:27]
C
Yeah.
- [57:27]
B
And I think that there are things that we can champion that are the same everywhere in this world. Certain things like food and the use of meat are going to be stronger in those areas like Australia, New Zealand, because of the feral, invasive animal element of it that just seems to not have, you know, it softens the. The management of that species. The hunting of that species.
- [57:57]
C
Yeah, you don't have.
- [57:58]
A
I think that's on all of us. Right. And what I mean by that is I have said this really since I got into being a content creator, photography, video in the hunting space. I've said that it is on all of us to shed hunting, fishing, outdoors, mostly hunting, but in a positive light. Because you have organizations like Origins foundation, who is doing these massive conservation projects. It doesn't always need to be these huge documentary films. It's the small choices every day of what you post about your time in the woods, time with family, the food that you're sharing. And it's really showing every step of the process. Because I think that's where the disconnect is, where when people only see a grip and grin, or they only see you out enjoying a sunrise in a tree stand or in a duck blind or whatever it is, they don't get to see all of the little auxiliary things that happen around that. And as hunters, if you have any sort of social media presence, whether it be the 15 people in your family that follow you and, like, your photos, or a hundred thousand people that follow you and, like, are looking up to you, you need to be putting a message out there that continually sheds hunting in a positive light. Like you said, there's bad actors and those tend to rise to the surface when it comes to big media headlines. But it's all of the small details across millions of accounts where we're saying, like, hey, you know, like, I had a fantastic morning in duck blind and now I've got three fat Mallard breasts searing in a cast iron pan right now. Like, that is a, you know, no pun intended. That is a digestible post for people to see and be like, oh, well, they're not just out there making piles and taking photos or they're not just out there just killing stuff. It's everything else that goes into it. I just, I think it's on all of us to continually perpetuate that positive message.
- [59:59]
B
Yeah. And one of the things that we're working on in the background is if we Google. If you Google, I'm gonna do it in front of you. If you Google trophy hunting and I hit the images button, unfortunately, you're never changing any of those photos.
- [60:19]
C
Right, Yep.
- [60:20]
A
That's what it's going to be.
- [60:21]
B
They are already there. Okay.
- [60:23]
C
Yep.
- [60:23]
B
And that's what happens when a journalist. Google's trophy hunting, edited Google's trophy hunting. So one of the things that we're working on is how do we change what Google shows people? It's just marketing, guys. It's just SEO stuff. But it requires someone in our space to say, I recognize our problem, I recognize our problem, I recognize an opportunity to change it. So here, for instance, is a sponsored ad from blood origins that says trophy hunting is conservation. So if you Google trophy hunting and you leave it on that pop, that's going to pop up, which is now a change in the narrative around trophy hunting. Now, similarly for images, we're starting to put tags. And look, I'm, I'm starting to sway right out of the lane that I am not, shouldn't be talking in.
- [61:22]
A
But listen, dive into this. It just means that they're like, the hunting industry needs an SEO specialist. And it seems like you guys are working on it.
- [61:30]
B
All the SEO around different pictures. For instance, meat, cat, you know, duck breasts, mallet breasts in a cast iron cooker that goes on your website, tag it for trophy hunting.
- [61:44]
A
Right.
- [61:45]
B
And SEO the crap out of it. And so all of a sudden, what my plan is, in, in three years time when we Google trophy hunting, one of our images is popping up at the top.
- [61:58]
A
Right. I like that. I love that.
- [62:00]
B
So it's a little, you know, counter sort of subterfuge, you know, playing their game, but playing our game at the same time, to change again that narrative, which is again, part of the mission of what we do is we are, we want to own the narrative.
- [62:19]
C
Yeah.
- [62:19]
A
And that's what it's going to take is thinking on that bigger scale, you know, rather than just, you know, complaining about it to your buddies in the garage or, you know, on. And it's going to be looking at it from a technological standpoint and starting to shift that message because like you said, it's just marketing. It's figuring out how to take back our message, how to take back like the actual process and put that in front of people. And so you're. So you are educating the uninformed or the misinformed.
- [62:47]
B
That's all we do.
- [62:49]
C
Yeah, I love it.
- [62:50]
B
That's all we do. Yeah. Like our marketing strategy. I told a friend of mine, I was like, man, our marketing strategy is shooting us both, shooting ourselves in the kneecaps on both sides. But again, that's part of our mission. If you go to Facebook and you see all the sponsored ads to buy jacket A or.
- [63:08]
C
Yep.
- [63:09]
B
You know, blanket B or whatever creatine gummy that you're interested in. See? Yeah, we also sponsor ads, but our ads are. Watch this documentary on elephant hunting. Watch this person's story about this. Here's a short truth question about why it's not unethical to elephant hunt.
- [63:32]
C
Yep.
- [63:33]
B
And all we're doing from a marketing perspective is planting seeds into the misinformed and uninformed general public with no return on our investment. Right. We don't have a return on investment. Nobody's buying us something. Nobody's supporting us. Like, these guys aren't coming across and saying, oh, we're going to give a donation to you. No, we're doing it for us and the narrative and owning the narrative and changing the narrative because we don't know what that person's going to do the next time a post about elephant hunting comes up or a post about public lands comes up, or when a vote is put to the ballot, or a vote just generally comes up around hunting or sustainable use, or you name it, we hope that we've planted seeds in enough places to protect what we love to do.
- [64:27]
C
Yeah, yeah.
- [64:28]
A
And it, you know, at the, at the very least, hopefully it leads to just a little bit of curiosity for people to go and research, at least look up, you know, certain different things and kind of dive into a little bit more, take a little bit more ownership of that, because that's really what it takes. It's like you, you, you come at it from a high level. You explain, you know, you try to educate a little bit about big topics and you give people enough fuel to want to go and light that fire and understand it just a little bit more. Because it really doesn't take a lot of extra education to understand how money flows through conservation, how things get funded, how habitat gets funded, how access gets funded, and when people can have these tools in their toolbox where they actually understand these things. Even at a surface level, when somebody brings up the topic, they can have a conversation about it and explain why it's a good thing to be funding these things. So that's, I mean, I mean, more power to you. The beauty of coming at it from a, from a foundation standpoint, to be able to place those ads is awesome.
- [65:27]
B
Well, you're nailing it. And it's not just the ads, but it's also, you know, every comment we make, every post we make, we're writing it in such a way we're communicating it in such a way that somebody reads it, hunters will read it, some non hunters will read it and they will take away information. And specifically for the hunting community, I want you to have more confidence in now talking about a subject. And again, I use elephants a lot because elephants are super controversial and nobody wants to ever talk about elephants. But if you hear me talk about elephants and you hear me give you the information about elephants and say elephants are, you know, you hear in a dinner conversation, oh, I can't believe somebody would actually ever hunt elephants. They're super endangered. You have the confidence to speak up and go, actually, that's not quite true. IACN has classified them as actually vulnerable. And when you start looking at the populations in South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, there's actually too many elephants. So really they're not endangered. And if you want more information, go look at the Origins Foundation.
- [66:38]
A
Right, right, exactly. I mean, because if you don't, if you're not armed with those educational, educational pieces, with the information about that stuff, whether it's elephants or whether it's public lands or whether it's, you name it, that doesn't matter the subject. If you're not armed with the information, it's just, it's easy to get angry at somebody who disagrees with you instead of feeling confident to have a conversation and show them a different, like, show them the information. So then go, oh, I actually had no idea about that because otherwise you just ruined dinner party by being like, well, you're wrong.
- [67:09]
B
No, exactly. And there's also an element of sort of our character that comes through and we've been called gentlemanly. And, you know, some people in the industry have hate that about us. They're like, no, you shouldn't have to apologize and you shouldn't have to do all these things. And why are you, why are you saying harvest instead of kill? And I'm saying, I'm saying harvest because I'm not speaking to someone who understands kill.
- [67:39]
A
Right.
- [67:39]
B
And that's marketing 101. If I want to convince someone to listen to me, to believe what I'm going to say, to come over to my side, I'm not selling an item, I'm selling this change in ideology. And I feel that using harvest helps me do that. Yep, I'm going to use harvest.
- [68:05]
C
Yep.
- [68:05]
A
It opens up a lane of communication, like just being, you know, you have to play the political game a little bit and that's, that's what it takes. What we're trying to do is constantly have Bigger conversations about this stuff. And if you do things in a certain way that are abrasive, you shut that person's any sort of opening into them, changing their mind about anything. And so you have to be tactical about it. You have to understand that you can't just, you know, be really rough sandpaper when you're going and having these conversations with somebody. So you said it exactly right. If it allows you to have a bigger conversation by using the word, simply using the word harvest, you're going to use the word harvest. And it doesn't. Again, it doesn't matter the subject you're trying to talk about. It's just opening those lanes to educate.
- [68:53]
B
Again, it falls right into the mission of what we are built for, what, why we exist. And, you know, I'll talk about killing with the right people and I'll talk about harvesting with the other people that I need to talk about. So.
- [69:08]
C
Yeah.
- [69:09]
B
Yeah, man.
- [69:10]
C
Yeah.
- [69:11]
A
Well, I think thanks for diving into everything that you've done. Why don't you just let's, you know, before we wrap this up, what are things coming up on the horizon here in the next six, eight, ten months and then just tell people where they can find you and then we'll, we'll sign off and we'll get you back on another point just to follow up on the cheetah stuff and everything.
- [69:30]
B
Yeah, yeah, 100%. We've got a number of big things that we're working on both stateside and around the world. We just got involved in the wild horse issue.
- [69:41]
C
Yeah.
- [69:41]
B
We started doing a documentary out of Arizona. We've come back into Colorado as well with the ballot box initiative that was to vote for wolves into the landscape. We want to show the truth of the consequence of ballot box biology. And Colorado is a great place to do it. So we're working on that as well. We're working on. We've already finished a documentary which is. We're quite excited about for France next year, which is called Savon Bambi, which is saving Bambi. The original, the original piece of content that was against hunting. Yes, Bambi. Yet there is such an amazing effort that happens every year from the middle of May to the middle of June of hunting organizations from France, Austria, Belgium, Germany, Sweden, Finland that go and pick up baby roe deer out of hay fields before they get absolutely decimated by hay cutters.
- [70:37]
A
Okay.
- [70:38]
B
They find them with thermal drones in the morning, they pick them up. It is so cool.
- [70:43]
C
Yeah.
- [70:43]
B
Such a cool.
- [70:43]
A
I saw that in your teaser for what's coming in 2025.
- [70:46]
B
So cool. Yeah, so cool. And we've got, you know, we're going to get involved with, with rhinos pretty hot and heavy because again, sustainable use of wildlife. Rhino horn trade is something that has been banned for almost 50 years now. 1977 to 2027. Namibia is proposing two delistings of rhino for rhino horn trademark at the upcoming COP in Uzbekistan in November. Okay, we will see what happens there. But we will be, we will be building a hub of information, a hub of content around rhino horn trade at the end of 2025, leading all the way through 2026 into 2027.
- [71:34]
A
Sure.
- [71:36]
B
Y'. All. We've just got a lot of stuff happening, man, and a lot of growth happening. And I was just on a call with some of my team earlier and I was listing all the things out and at one point I was like, I think that's it. And then I opened up a folder, I was like, oh, no, no, no. There's this one and this one and this one. And they all laughed because they were like, why? I said, why are you laughing? They're like, robbie, you don't even know half the things that you've got going right now. So. Which is a good, it's a good.
- [72:02]
A
Place to many fires type stuff.
- [72:04]
B
That's it. That's it.
- [72:05]
A
So if people want to follow along and then help out, um, how do they, you know, how do I follow along with the foundation and everything?
- [72:11]
B
Yeah, we got a brand new website that is super slick. Um, you, Obviously, we're a 501C3, so we are, we are a nonprofit. We need your support to continue to live, to continue to keep the lights on, to compete, continue to do what we do, or we ask from specifically individuals like yourself. Uh, the cost of a cup of coffee a month. That's all we asked for. Five bucks a month. It's less than what you pay at Starbucks for a cup of coffee.
- [72:40]
C
Yep.
- [72:40]
B
Um, and we enter you into a bunch of different giveaways on a monthly basis, including hunts that you can win all around the world. Um, if you are a company and you're interested in helping out, we have a corporate conservation club that we'd love to have you involved with. Um, we obviously have a lot of eyeballs that comes with a little bit of marketing tied to us being very grateful and thankful to, to you and what you do. But yeah, you can reach out to, you can, you know, DM us. You can email us@infoloodorigins.com we're going to change all of our emails over right here in the next three weeks. But that doesn't matter. You could still email us right there. We'll still get the email. Yeah. We're not hard to find. So if you want to reach out and you've got an idea, you've got a project, you've got a story, you've got a million dollar check that you want to cut, find us.
- [73:34]
C
Yep. Yeah.
- [73:35]
A
Well, thanks again for just hopping on and just diving into all that stuff. I appreciate, constantly appreciate the passion and the tenacity that you and your team are doing all this stuff on. So thanks for being one of the first guests of Legends of the Wild and just can't wait to see what comes next.
- [73:50]
B
Thank you, dude. I'm humbled. Thank you so much.