Richard Leakey

in Conservation by Araneta&Tan — October 25, 2009 at 9:34 am | 0 comments

Richard Leakey

Richard Leakey is one of the most well-known and controversial conservationists alive today. As well as being a respected conservationist, he is also a palaeo-anthropologist and a politician, living and working in his home country of Kenya. His conservation programmes have been hugely beneficial for animals right across Africa, and he continues to support Africa’s wildlife through new initiatives up to the present day.

Early Years

Richard Leakey is the son of famous archaeologist Louis Leakey. He was born on December 19^th 1944 in Nairobi, Kenya, and grew up during the Mau Mau Rebellion. He did not perform well at school, and as soon as he left at 16 he became an entrepreneur, setting up a trapping business. This later grew into a safari business, and his early love of animals would later prove significant when he moved into conservation.

Fossil Hunter

Leakey had been involved in palaeo-anthropology since birth, mainly as a result of his parents, and this became an important activity for him. As part of his safari business he carried out tours to Olduvai by plane, and it was from his plane that he noticed that Lake Natron could be a prime spot for fossil hunting.

He started to go on fossil-hunting expeditions, including excavations to Omo River in Ethiopia and organising his own expeditions to Allia Bay on Lake Turkana. During this period of 1967 and 1968, he also formed the Kenya Museum Associates and got promoted to the administrative director of the museum.

In 1984 he made perhaps his most important archaeological find in the Turkana Boy. This was a 1.6-million-year-old Homo Erectus boy skeleton, and is one of the most significant finds of recent times.

Richard Leakey

Conservation

His other great passion was conservation, and in 1989 he was made the head of the Wildlife Conservation and Management Department. Poaching of elephants had become a huge problem in Kenya, and the international outcry led President Daniel Arap Moi to appoint Leakey to the role.

It was here that he won a major publicity coup when he organised the burning of 12 tonnes of ivory in Nairobi National Park, sending a clear message to illegal poachers that they would not be tolerated.

A year later the Wildlife Conservation and Management Department was replaced by the Kenya Wildlife Service, of which Leakey became chairman. He took a proactive approach to poaching by setting up special armed units to form a successful deterrent. This had a significant impact on the level of poaching, leading the World Bank to approve loans of $140 million for further work.

Controversy

Despite his conservation achievements, Leakey has never been far from controversy. He has always maintained that the national parks should not be a place where people should watch animals, and that instead the animals should be left alone free from human interference. This did not endear him to many, and he has been known to get on the wrong side of politicians.

In 1993 he was involved in a plane crash where he lost both his legs. There were claims of sabotage due to his unpopularity in some quarters, but nothing has ever been proved.

Wildlife Direct

Leakey established WildlifeDirect in 2004 to overcome the inadequate funding that he believes is at the heart of conservation problems in developing countries. It encourages people to support field conservation projects around the world through making online donations.