WEBVTT 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 My story begins in Zimbabwe, with a brave park ranger named Orpheus and an injured buffalo. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And Orpheus looked at the buffalo on the ground, and he looked at me, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and as our eyes met there was an unspoken grief between the three of us. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 She was a beautifully wild and innocent creature and Orpheus lifted the muzzle of his rifle to her ear [gunshot]. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 At that moment, she started to give birth. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 As life slipped from the premature calf, we examined the injuries. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Her back leg had been caught in an 8-strand wire snare. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 She had fought for freedom so hard and for so long that she had ripped he pelvis in half. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Well, she was finally free. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Ladies and gentlemen, today I feel a great sense of responsibility in speaking to you 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 on behalf of those who never could. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Their suffering is my grief. Is my motivation. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Martin Luther King best summarizes my call to arms here today. He said: 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 'There comes a time when one must take a position that's neither safe, nor politic, nor popular. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But he must take that position because his conscience tells him that it's right.' 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Because his conscience tells him it is right. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 At the end of this talk I'm going to ask you all a question. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 That question is the only reason I travelled here today all the way from the African savannah. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 That question for me has cleansed my soul. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 How you answer that question will always be yours. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I remember watching the movie The Wizard of Oz as a kid, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and I was never scared of the witch or the flying monkeys. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 My greatest fear was that I'd grow up like the lion, without courage. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And I grew up always asking myself if I thought I'd be brave? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Well, years after Dorothy had made her way back to Kansas, and the lion had found his courage, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I walked into a tattoo parlour and had the words 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 'Seek and Destroy' tattooed across my chest. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And I thought that'd make me big and brave. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But it would take me almost a decade to grow into those words. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 By the age of 20 I'd become a clearance diver in the navy. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 By 25, as a special operations sniper, I knew how many clicks of elevation I needed on the scope of my rifle 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to take a headshot on a moving target from 700 metres away. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I knew exactly how many grams of high explosives it takes to blast through a steel plate door from only 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 a few metres away without blowing myself, or my team up behind me. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and I knew Baghdad was a shitty place, and when things go bang, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 well, people die. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Back then, I had no idea what a conservationist did, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 other than hug trees and piss off large corporations. [audience laughter] 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I knew they had dreadlocks. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I knew they smoked dope. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I didn't really give a shit about the environment. And why should I? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I was the idiot who used to speed up in his car just trying to hit birds on the road. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 My life was a world away from conservation. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I'd just spent nine years doing things in real life that most people 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 wouldn't dream of trying on a playstation. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Well, after 12 tours to Iraq as a so-called 'mercenary', the skills I had were good for one thing: 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I was programmed to destroy. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Looking back now, on everything I've done and the places I've been, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 in my heart I've only ever performed one true act of bravery. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And that was a simple choice of deciding 'Yes' or deciding 'No'. But it was that one act 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 which defines me completely and ensures 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 there'll never be separation between who I am, and what I do. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 When I finally left Iraq behind me I was lost. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Yeah, I felt...ahh...I just had no idea where i was going in life 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 or where I was meant to be and I arrived in Africa at the beginning of 2009. I was aged 29 at the time. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Somehow, I always knew I'd find a purpose amongst chaos, and that's exactly what happened. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I'd no idea though, I'd find it in a remote part of the Zimbabwe bush. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We were patrolling along, and the vultures circled in the air 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and as we got closer the stench of death hung there, like a thick, dark veil 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and sucked the oxygen out of your lungs. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 As we got closer there was a great bull elephant, resting on its side, with its face cut away. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And the world around me stopped. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I was consumed by a deep and overwhelming sadness. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Seeing innocent creatures killed like this hit me in a way like nothing before. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I'd actually poached as a teenager and they're memories I'll take to the grave. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Time had changed me though; 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 something inside wasn't the same. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And it's never gonna be again. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I asked myself: 'Does that elephant need its face 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 more than some guy in asia needs a tusk on his desk?' 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Well of course it bloody does, that was irrelevant. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 all that mattered there and then was: 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 'Would I be brave enough to give up everything in my life to try and stop the suffering of animals?' 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 This was the one true defining moment of my life. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Yes? Or No? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I contacted my family the next day and began selling all my houses. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 These are assets a well-advised mercenary quickly acquires with the proceeds of war. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 My life savings have since been used to found and grow the International Anti-Poaching Foundation. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The IAPF is a direct-action, law-enforcement organisation. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 From drone technology to an international qualification for rangers, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 we're battling each and every day to bring military solutions 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to conservation's thin green line. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Now my story may be slightly unique, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 but I'm not going to use it to talk to you today about the organisation I run. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 In what could have been a pretty good fund-raiser. [audience laughter] 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Remember, today is about the question I'm going to ask you at the end. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Because it's impossible for me to get up here and talk about just saving wildlife when I know 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 the problem of animal welfare is much broader throughout society. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 A few years after I saw that elephant I woke up very early one morning. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I already knew the answer to the question I was about to ask myself, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 but it was the first time I had put it into words: 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Does a cow value its life more than I enjoy a barbecue? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 See, I'd been guilty all this time of what is termed 'speciesism'. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Speciesism is very much the same as racism or sexism. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It involves the allocation of a different set of values, rights or special considerations to individuals, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 based solely on who or what they are. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The realisation of the flexible morality I'd used 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to suit my everyday conveniences made me sick in the stomach. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 See, I'd loved blaming parts of Asia for their insatiable demand for ivory and rhino horn, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and the way the region's booming economic growth 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 is dramatically increasing the illegal wildlife trade. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 When I woke up that morning though I realised 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 even though I'd dedicated my life to saving animals, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 in my mind I was no better than a poacher, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 or the guy in Asia with the tusk on his desk. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 As this 'over-consumptive meat-eater' I'd referred to some animals as 'beasts'. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 when in reality I'd been the beast. Destructively obedient, a slave 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to my habits, a cold shoulder to my conscience. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We've all had contact with pets or other animals in our lives. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 we can't deny our understanding of the feelings that each animal has. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The ability to suffer pain or loneliness. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And to fear. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Like us also, each animal has the ability to express contentment, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to build family structures, and a want of satisfying basic instincts and desires. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 For many of us though, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that's as far as we allow our imaginations to explore 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 before the truth inconveniences our habits. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The disconnect that exists between consuming a product 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and the reality it takes to bring that product to market is a phenomenon to itself. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Animals are treated like commodities and referred to as property. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We call it murder to kill a human being yet create legal 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and illegal industries out of what would be regarded as torture 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 if humans were involved. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and we pay people to do things to animals 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that none of us would engage in personally. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 just because we don't see it up close 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 does not mean we are not responsible. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Peter Singer, the man who popularised the term 'speciesism' wrote: 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 'Although there may be differences between animals and humans 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 they each share the ability to suffer. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And we must give equal consideration to that suffering. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Any position that allows similar cases to be treated in a dissimilar fashion 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 fails to qualify as an acceptable moral theory.' 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Around the world this year 65 billion animals will be killed in factory farms. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 How many animals' lives is one human's life worth? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 a meat-eater in this room will consume, on average, 8000 animals in their lifetime. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Ocean pollution, global warming and deforestation are 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 driving us towards the next great mass-extinction 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and the meat industry is the greatest negative factor in all of these phenomenon. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The illegal trafficking of wildlife now ranks as 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 one of the largest criminal industries in the world. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It's up there with drugs, guns and human trafficking. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The ability to stop this devastation 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 lies in the willingness of an international community 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to step in and preserve a dying global treasure. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Experimentation on animals: 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 If animals are so like us that we can substitute using them instead of humans 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 then surely they have the very same attributes that mean they deserve to be protected from harm? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Whether we're talking about factory farming, live export, poaching, the fur trade, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 logically it's all on the same playing field to me. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Suffering is suffering, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and murder is murder. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And the more helpless the victim, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 the more horrific the crime. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Now next time you think an animal lover is too emotional, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 too passionate, or even a little crazy, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 please remember, we see things through a different lens. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So in a few days, my son is going to be born. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I find myself wondering: 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 'What kind of world is he entering?' 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Are we going to be the generation that defines our failure as a species? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I believe our generation will be judged 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 by our moral courage to protect what's right. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And that every worthwhile action 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 requires a level of sacrifice. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Well I now offer myself, without reservation, to animals. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And when I strip away all the material belongings around me, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I see that I too, am an animal. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We're family. Together on one planet. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And of the five million species on that planet, only one 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 has the power to determine what level of suffering is acceptable 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 for all other sentient beings to endure. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Whether it's eating less meat, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 contributing to the fight against poaching, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 or speaking up for the voiceless, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 we all have choices. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And small changes in our lives 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 mean big changes in others. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So now back to the beginning. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 My reason for being here is my question for you: 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Next time you have an opportunity to make a difference for animals, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 will you be brave enough? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Yes or no? Thank you very much.