Richard Leakey never looked like he was going to mellow much with age. For the past 40 years he has been one of the most vital, energetic, tenacious and inflammatory figures on the African scene. When barely out of his teens, he made his name as an archaeological prodigy — a sort of Mozart of Lake Rudolph — and in the process very nearly beat his parents, Louis and Mary, at their own game. When he ran the Kenya Wildlife Service in the late 1980s he famously torched a 12-tonne pile of poached ivory. It was a typically unsubtle but effective gesture. The images were beamed out on network TV; the world sat up and paid attention; poaching, for a while, was stopped in its tracks. In the mid-1990s he formed an opposition party in Kenya; four years later the president, Daniel arap Moi, appointed him head of the civil service.
Steve King
African wildlife is newly endangered
A rare interview with the conservationist Richard Leakey
issue 12 May 2007
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