The rhino. An icon - almost extinct.
Kevin Pietersen. A maverick cricketer who never backs down. He says he'll save them.
But poachers are never far away - and time is running out.
<... moreBy BBC Radio 5 Live
The rhino. An icon - almost extinct.
Kevin Pietersen. A maverick cricketer who never backs down. He says he'll save them.
But poachers are never far away - and time is running out.
<... more4.9
88 ratings
The podcast currently has 11 episodes available.
Saving rhinos is fraught with contradictions. To save them from extinction, will we have to be cruel to be kind? Something KP also knows about in his closest friendships. In this final episode KP opens up about his relationships - and the dark solution that may yet save the rhino from extinction. Do we even have time?
The war to save the rhino has brought a father and daughter to the very edges of love and hate. Kevin meets the father figure of the rangers in this part of South Africa - Don English - a man who has had to kill to save the lives of the rhinos. But the effect on his daughter has been immense. Will he ever stop?
After meeting the trophy hunter, KP is convinced the law needs to be changed to stop it. He takes his fight to the UK Government - for an encounter with Environment Secretary Michael Gove amid the chaos of Brexit. But that's not the only place his influence reaches. Over champagne and canapes, Kevin tells the brutal truth to the rich - and hears it from a dragon.
Trophy hunters have become the villains of the media. Their photos cause outrage, and sorrow for their prey. Kevin Pietersen thinks they're 'scumbags'. But what will happen when he meets one?
Vietnam is the reason for the current surge of rhino killing. It's where their horns are prized, for traditional medicine and status. It's taken at elite parties: and Kevin hears exactly how from an inside source.
When the mission is critical - there has to be trust. In the war to save the rhino however, trust has gone. The rangers have been infiltrated.
The African bushland is like a garden of Eden. But the beauty can't mask the grinding poverty within it. So who exactly is it that turns to killing rhinos for cash - dirt poor villagers ... or sophisticated gangsters?
When the baby rhinos are orphaned - their parents killed for horns - they have a saviour. Petronel is a warrior woman. A former police captain now devoting her life in a hidden compound to saving and rearing these precious animals. But the poachers have come to her door - and brought this war straight to her family.
A tight knit family of special people are sworn to protect the rhino – these are the Rangers. Their job used to be a peaceful life at one with the animals and the land. Nowadays they are soldiers – with automatic guns and battledress.
They trust Kevin. Which means that when the call comes about a downed rhino, he’s able to join the helicopter sprint to get there.
The awful outcome is vivid – a sad end to a majestic life.
Kevin Pietersen spent years as a glamorous and divisive superstar of English cricket. But he was always South African at heart - and that was part of his downfall.
With that now all in the past, he’s relaxed in his African dream home. He tells the truth about the end of his career – and how the rhino has changed him in the years since.
It's beautiful out here… until a dark text message changes everything.
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The podcast currently has 11 episodes available.
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