Rangers gain veteran

LIKE many South Africans with dual nationality, Paul Brodrick left his home in South Africa to join the British military and saw service in Iraq and Afghanistan with the Royal Marines, but now he’s back home and passing on the military experience he learned abroad to the war on poaching.

Brodrick, 36, from the southern suburbs, Cape Town, is a volunteer with not-for-profit organisation Veterans For Wildlife.

He will travel to a reserve in the Greater Kruger Park this month for two weeks to train members of an antipoaching unit.

Veterans For Wildlife chief executive Wesley Thomson, a South African expatriate living in the UK who also served with the British Royal Marines, said Brodrick brought a range of critical skills and up-to-date experience to the job.

“Paul will train the Ntomeni Rangers in first aid, drawing on his experience in the military and his civilian career,” Thomson said. Veterans For Wildlife volunteers offer specialist training, mentoring and advice; the organisation’s former military members are not involved in armed anti-poaching activities.

Brodrick served with the Royal Marines in the Middle East in a fighting role, but after leaving the military trained as a paramedic.

These days, he splits his time between his home in Cape Town and Iraq, where he works as a civilian personal protection officer and team medic for a private security company servicing the oil and gas industry. A lover of the bush, Brodrick, like many South Africans, wanted to find a way to do something to help Africa’s endangered wildlife – that chance came through the UK-based Veterans For Wildlife.

“I’d like to do my bit and to empower the people who are tasked with trying to curb poaching,” he said. “These men and women are ultimately in a similar role to what people like me have done in Iraq and Afghanistan – they are put in harm’s way as the line between the animals they’re trying to protect and those who are trying kill them.”

Brodrick said that while his job would be to teach the anti-poaching rangers basic first aid, he was also hoping to learn from them: ““They not only face the risk of poachers’ bullets, but also being gored by a buffalo, stung by insects or bitten by snakes, and I’m sure they can teach me a thing or two!” Andrew Crichton Chief operating officer at Veterans For Wildlife