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Description

Pursuing a dream instilled by early David Attenborough television adventures, a young man from the industrial northwest of England is advised at school to become a veterinary surgeon as a first step towards a career working with wild animals in Africa.

His misgivings about the values and justification of domestic veterinary practice are contrasted with a passion for wilderness and wildlife conservation. Early experiences in the vivid Uganda of Idi Amin are juxtaposed with life in a grey Pennines veterinary practice.

Eventually arriving as a veterinary officer in newly independent Botswana he finds adventure with wild animals as a veterinarian and later as an ecologist, survey pilot, game capture operator and even a safari hunter, becoming a passionate conservationist… all while starting the first veterinary practice in the country.

Larry Patterson is a wildlife ecologist with a veterinary science degree from Glasgow University, and a master’s degree in Conservation from University College, London. Born in Bolton, he was inspired by David Attenborough to pursue a life in the African bush. Now a wildlife consultant, Larry established Botswana's first veterinary clinic and then a pioneering wildlife capture and translocation company.