Damien served
as a Clearance Diver in the Royal Australian Navy before
transferring to a Special Operations unit within the Australian
Army. Following the completion of military service he was employed
by a Private Military Organisation tasked with retraining the
future police of Iraq.
Damien
eventually moved to the position of Project Manager, overseeing
daily operations of the Iraq Special Police Training Academy in
Baghdad. He returned home to Australia from Iraq in 2008 after
three years service.
Arriving in
Africa at the beginning of 2009, the intention was to apply his
background skills to wildlife protection and conservation. After
traveling the southern half of the continent he came to rest in
Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe.
It was in
Zimbabwe that he received a first-hand look at the devestation
poaching was having on the wildlife population. Incensed by the
lack of resources made available to combat the problem he founded
the ‘International Anti Poaching Foundation’ (IAPF), designed to
counteract the bloodshed through assertive action and specialist
training.
Damien, a hard-muscled former Australian Special Forces sniper with
an imposing menagerie of tattoos, including "Seek & Destroy" in
gothic lettering across his chest, swiveled his head, trying to
place the direction of the shot. "There, near the eastern
boundary," he pointed into the blackness. "Sounded like a .223," he
said, identifying the position and caliber, a habit left over from
12 tours in Iraq. He and his rangers grabbed shotguns, radios, and
medical kits and piled into two Land Cruisers. They roared into the
night, hoping to cut off the shooter. The rangers rolled down their
windows and listened for a second shot, which would likely signal
Basta's calf was taken as well.
It was an ideal poacher's setup: half-moon, almost no wind. The
human tracks were especially ominous. Poaching crews often pay
trackers to find the rhinos, follow them until dusk, then radio
their position to a shooter with a high-powered rifle. After the
animal is down, the two horns on its snout are hacked off in
minutes, and the massive carcass is left to hyenas and vultures.
Nearly always the horns are fenced to an Asian buyer; an
enterprising crew might also cut out Basta's fetus and the eyes of
the mother and calf to sell to black magic
or muti practitioners. If this gang was well
organized, a group of heavily armed men would be covering the
escape route, ready to ambush the rangers.
As the Land Cruiser bucked over rutted tracks, Damien did a quick
calculation—between his vehicles he had two antiquated shotguns
with about a dozen shells. Based on the sound of the shot, the
poachers held an advantage in firepower. If the rangers did pick up
a trail and followed on foot, they would have to contend with
lions, leopards, and hyenas out hunting in the dark.
In the backseat of one of the speeding Land Cruisers, Benzene, a
Zimbabwean ranger who had spent nearly a year watching over Basta
and her calf and knew the pair intimately, loaded three shells into
his shotgun, flicked on the safety, and chambered a round. As we
bounced into the night, he said, "It is better for the poachers if
they meet a lion than if they meet us."
