The Old Diocesan Issue 13 - Magazine - Page 61
FORCE FOR GOOD
From rural animal clinics to a reality series
on the edge of the Kruger, Greg Simpson
has spent his career at the sharp end of
veterinary practice. Now, at South Africa’s
first wildlife forensic academy, he is
teaching rangers and detectives from
around the world how to build a poaching
case that sticks. By Ian-Malcolm Rijsdijk
I
’m standing on the back
bumper of a bakkie in the
first freezing rain of a Cape
winter while the driver tries
to extricate the vehicle from wet
sand. The driver is Greg Simpson
(1991W), and he’s taken over from
two of his luckless interns, who
have abandoned the bakkie in
the open and are plodding back,
bedraggled, to the shelter of the
Wildlife Forensic Academy building.
“They had it in the wrong gear,”
grumbles Greg, easily reversing
the bakkie back to harder ground.
Not surprising: the interns are
fresh-faced youngsters from
the Netherlands and England,
respectively; their experience with
4x4s and Cape sand tracks is scant.
Greg has invited me to tour the
facilities of the Wildlife Forensic
Academy, an hour’s drive north of
Cape Town, in the Buffelsfontein
Private Nature Reserve opposite
West Coast National Park. The
drive up through the reserve
is bleak today; the harsh West
Coast lives up to its reputation
as everything – including the
trees, it seems – seeks cover
from the cold, wind and rain.
On the rise up ahead of us is
a large, nondescript warehouse
structure. “Here it is,” says Greg in
his unassuming way. He is a man
who speaks only when needed,
and those times are marked by
great efficiency. The droll humour
I remember from our school days
peeks through often, though, like
an observant hippo in a still river.
Walking to the facility, we leave
behind the scrubby strandveld
and enter a compact world of
trees, with a small “poacher’s
house”, a boat and a mezzanine
floor. Running along one side
there is a lab and a mock-up
of a courtroom. And squarely
in front of me is the curiously
distressing shape of a giraffe
corpse.
“Is this real?” I ask incredulously.
I touch the skin tentatively.
“Yeah, all of these are,” replies
Greg, pointing through the trees,
where I make out a dehorned
rhino and a lion. Each one of
these dead, majestic animals
has a story. The rhino, for example,
is one of four shot at a game
reserve, a case with which
Greg is intimately familiar.
THE OLD DIOCESAN | 57
