The Harland Highway - 878 - IMPORTANT PODCAST - What you can do to help save the animals

Episode Date: June 15, 2017

Harland shares an incredibly inspiring presentation from the CEO of the INTERNATIONAL ANTI POACHING FEDERATION. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Oh boy, what a podcast I have for you today. It's not comedy lace. Today's is very, very serious, but it's almost like a destiny podcast. This podcast comes to me because I kind of threw out there a segment a few weeks ago about endangered species. And I kind of asked the question, how can the average person help stop the slaughter of innocent animals? How do we stop species from becoming endangered? And lo and behold, I end up at a benefit for anti-poaching just a few weeks later. And today I'm going to play you the speech, the presentation that the founder, the CEO of the International Anti-Poaching Foundation gave.

And man, I'm going to tell you right now, it's moving, it's riveting. I think it's going to inspire you. and I asked that you listen to the whole thing. It's about 20 minutes long, and I think you're going to like it, and it's going to give you some answers and some direction. And then he also did a question and answer period at the end of his lecture, and I'm going to put that up for the premium members. I'll tell you more about that at the end of the show.

But please listen to this whole show. Please take it in, absorb it, and I think we'll all benefit from you listening to it. So here we go. This says the Harlan Highway Sit down, strap in, and tighten your diaper. Come here, baby. You're about to go down the Harlan Highway.

No! I didn't bargain for this. Oh, yes, you did it. Chick-a-chic-cha, chick-chic-a-ch-chall. Oh, Maine, baby. And the creature, run on us, baby. Please don't stop. I got to feed it.

Ugly face. Magnificent performance. This is the Harland Highway. I hate you. Well, that's the way it goes. What do you say? We get down to business. Yeah.

All right. Here we go. Okay. Wow. Really interesting, cool show today. You know, it's sometimes life is funny how you put questions out there to the universe, and you don't think you have the answers, but you throw them out there, and somehow answers manifest.

And this is really cool. I really, I hope you listen to this whole show. It's a very important show, and let me tell you why. A few podcasts back, you know, maybe four or five, I did a segment about endangered species. I talked about how many species of animals are disappearing from our planet at a rapid rate, and many of those species are large mammals.

Okay, not that they're more important than any other species. There's also insects and fish and, amphibians and reptiles, but large mammals are some of the more obvious ones, and they are very often some of the ones that we connect with the most because we can see them, we identify with them, et cetera, et cetera. And I did kind of a shocking segment a little while back about how many of our animals are vanishing and disappearing and have been for the last century and last decade. and last decades, and we've actually lost certain species.

We've had species that are no longer with us. And it's really scary and it's frightening, but I also commented on despite how sad and tragic it is, and it breaks my heart because I'm a nature animal lover. I talked about when I mentioned about all the vanishing species, I was kind of like I felt, like my hands were tied it's like what do we do how do we help how do we stop it what can what can an accountant at merrill lynch and a janitor at a high school and a a guy like me doing stand-up

comedy and and uh someone who's uh works at j c penny how how do we all help and i threw that question out there and it was it was very um disheartening because i knew that uh you know i there wasn't a plain and simple answer answer. And I encouraged everyone to try and find ways to help and do things to help, but I didn't necessarily have any answers. Well, guess what? This show, to my delight, is I guess maybe the universe reached out to me to help me with this dilemma and help all of us. And it sent me an answer. It pointed me in a direction that I'm going to share with you today. And I I hope it helps all of us.

But more than that, in the end, I hope it helps all the animals that we love in the world. So let me tell you what happened, you know, a few weeks after I did the Endangered Species Podcast, just out of the blue, a friend of mine, Kelly called me up and said, hey, I'm attending this benefit down in Santa Monica, California. And it's about, you know, anti-poaching. support for anti-poaching in Africa. It's about poaching elephants and rhinoceroses and all the big game. And would you like to come down and show some support?

And I was like, what time and where? So I went down to this event. And I'd like to say there was hundreds of thousands of people there. Sadly, after being at it, there was probably only maybe, I don't know, 60 or 70. maybe 80 filtered through the whole night, but nonetheless, the important thing, people were there. And if there's people there, then things can happen, and things can make a difference. And so, at this benefit, I met the guy who started a society called the International Anti-Poaching Foundation. This was a guy named Damien Mandur.

and he's Australian, and he used to be in the Australian Navy SEALs as a sniper. Very interesting story. You're going to hear from him in a few minutes. I'm going to try and keep this short so you can hear what he has to say. And I hope you'll listen right to the end because there is some very powerful and moving stuff in the short little 20-minute talk that he gives. I really hope you'll stay with it until the end. I think it will move you.

I think it will inspire you. I think it'll make you feel good that there's people like him on the planet. And he's doing kind of the stuff that I was scratching my head on how to do. And he's inviting us to participate and be involved. And like I said, the universe kind of led me to him, and I in turn am leading him to you. And even though there was only 80 people there, I don't know if he knew it, but one of those 80 people, me, has a podcast that goes out all over the planet

and hopefully reaches, gets through to some of you, hopefully all of you. But anyways, he was a very charismatic guy. He was a husky, athletic-looking guy, just how you'd picture a Navy SEAL. He was the Australian version. And he had lived a pretty tough, rough life, seen and done some things in the service. and somehow his path led him to Africa, and it changed his life. And he interacted with the animals there, and it changed his life. I'm going to let him tell you.

But it's a moving story. There's some riveting moments. It's inspirational, and I hope it moves the needle for all of you listening. Please, please, I urge you. This isn't really a comedy podcast today, but it's a very important podcast that that might help all of us participate in doing something really, really good, not just for ourselves, but for the planet and for the future generations of people that will be here long after we're gone,

your children, your grandchildren, other people's children and grandchildren. So I hope you enjoy this. This is a talk or a little speech that Damien, did in front of the whole room and I thought, you know what, I'm going to record it. This might be valuable. This might be important. And sure enough, it was.

It's very moving. I dare to say it might make some of you a little emotional listening to it. There's some heavy stuff in here. And it's some powerful stuff. And then afterwards, I approached Damien and had a nice chat with him and I informed him. I said, Damien, you know, what you're doing here moved me. It's important.

I admire what you're doing. I'm impressed and proud of what you're doing. I said, I want to help spread the word. Are you okay if I play your little speech on my podcast? I recorded it. And he said, he actually thanked me. He goes, oh, geez, mate. Absolutely.

Thank you. That's bloody marvelous. Thank you, mate. Absolutely. So with his blessing, and without me rambling on anymore, I'm going to let Damien tell you his story, tell you about what you can do as an individual to help move the needle and help save and conserve and preserve wildlife. And as I said, I please urge you to stay right to the end. It's about 19 minutes long.

Here's Damien at the International and International. Anti-poaching Foundation fundraiser just a few nights ago. Take it away, Damien. Hey, everybody. Who wants to have better sex? No? Yes. Yes. The answer is yes. You always want to have better sex. That's what you want it to be better, not worse. Trust me. And Adam and Eve is offering 50% off just about any item plus free shipping. And more than that, Adam and Eve wants to make your life easy. They offer discrete shipping as your privacy is a priority. Plus, 100% free shipping on your entire order. Doesn't matter how much you spend or what you buy, all will be packaged and sent discreetly for free and fast. Don't wait. Better Sex is just a click away. That's 50%

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Yeah, look, it's quite humbling to know the people from around the world, the other side of the world, care about these animals, are willing to come together and try and be a part of the solution. And these are not Africa's animals, they're not Zimbabwe's animals. These are a global asset. It's a global responsibility for us all. look after them. I don't want to sit there and explain to my son why they don't exist anymore.

Now my background, you know, whether we like it or not, the international community is going to become increasingly relying on guys like me with the skills I have to hold on to what we have left because it's a war zone out there. So my background was a Navy clearance diver, it was your version of your seals. After September 11th, it was a specialist unit formed called the Tactical Assault Group. I joined that as a sniper. Subsequently ended up later in Iraq. I did three years over there in Iraq.

Finished up in 2008, trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life. Funnily enough, no job for a sniper in the local newspaper when you get back home. I had a few requests from my mates to take out their mother-in-laws. That was about it. Not a way to make a living. I'd heard about Annie Poaching about a decade before and thought it was like a romantic adventure to go and have in Africa and I thought, yeah, why not?

I'm going to go around and run around Africa and bush and hunt and some poachers for six months because up until that point in my life, everything was about me and trying to fulfill this macho persona that I created for myself. I didn't join the military to serve my country. I did it because it was an adventure. I didn't go to Iraq to try and help the Iraqi people.

I went there to make money and I didn't go to Africa looking for a cause. I went looking for a fight But there was a couple of things that happened to me That stuffed up that plan The first one was seeing Seeing Rangers And it was a very Very humbling thing

To see that the work these guys go through And girls And they leave their family behind For up to 11 months of the year And when you leave your family behind for that long What you leave it behind for becomes your family And these Rangers are out there every day In the bush risking their own lives

for a very small salary to protect, not only the animals, but everything they represent, the heart and lungs of the planet. And there was me trying to have an adventure on the back of their hard work. And that started to make me have some really, you know, a tough look at myself and, you know, what I was over there for and what was my actual purpose here with all the training in that, the training I had and the money that I'd saved. And the second thing I saw was animals.

animals. And animals are innocent creatures. They really are. You know, the worst thing an animal can do to stuff your day up is maybe chew up your new pair of runners on your back doorstep or try and defend itself in the wild. Animals don't want a car. They don't want a house. They don't want a paycheck. They don't want a smartphone or a fancy suit. Animals don't have egos. They don't want one thing. Animals want to live and we as a species continually take that away from them. And seeing these animals over there, what was happening to them. I don't know why, but it affected me in a way that I hadn't been affected before. And this is coming from a person who had a shitty background of exploiting animals and being the worst kind of hunter, the kind that did it for fun and not for food. No respect for the environment. But there are some things that I saw over there that made me reach a moral baseline of what I was not willing to walk away from. You know, there's a whole 10 years of my life that was breaking down these barriers that I put up for myself to be able to finally open up my heart and my mind and have some compassion for something that needed

protection, you know, particularly coming from a guy in society, you know, guys should protect, you know, be strong and help protect their vulnerable. And I think animals sit right at the top of that list of vulnerable members of society that deserve protection. That's right. There was a catalyst, you know, there's a few catalyst moments for me. One, you know, the most prominent was seeing, you know, the most powerful, you know, the most powerful and majestic animal, pound for pound in the African bush, and that's a Cape Buffalo. It's a dangerous animal to see up there. And for our rangers, hats off to them, the biggest threat in their lives is not the poachers.

They're trying to stop. It's the animals they're trying to protect. And they come across this buffalo one day on patrol, and the rangers can look at the ground and read the ground like we read the front page of the newspaper, and they can tell how long an animal has been there. And this animal, this buffalo, female buffalo, had caught her back leg in the ground. this snare had been struggling so hard and with so much power for three days, the ranger said, and she'd ripped her pelvis in half. And we had the euthanasia. And I remember the look

in that animal's eye, an animal that at any other time you don't want to see this thing up close because it's so dangerous. And I'll never figure the look in that animal's eye looking up at me. And we shot her and put her out of her misery, which I know she was grateful for. And at that time she gave birth to a stillborn calf in like some crazy spiritual way that was like a rebirth for me so I able to you know I was fortunate to get involved with real estate at a young age and able to contact family in Australia and start liquidating what is a real estate portfolio so it wasn't a lot by Hollywood Hill standards Beverly Hill standards but it was 100% of of what I had to put into starting the International Anti-coaching Foundation so we're eight years on

we now registered in five countries we run currently six of our own major campaigns supported 50 others we've got the likes of Dr Jane Goodall sitting as our patron also sitting on our advisory board just a few weeks ago we were awarded a guide star platinum level of transparency

and that's an independent charity evaluator which assesses how effective we are with the money we get given by donors in fulfilling our mission. And only 0.5% of charities get those states. So we set, thank you, cheers. We set the organisation up to try and, or not to try and do a whole bunch of things,

but just to do something very specific. And that was to go to the front lines of these wildlife wars and be the last line of defence for animals. And we do that by working with local indigenous rangers, predominantly, building them up to make, them believe that their job is the most important job in the world, which I honestly, with all my heart, believe that it is. And give them the basic skills that we had in the military and in Iraq to be able to go out there and defend the natural world. It was frustrating for me coming from

Iraq. And, you know, we had our special operations background. And when shit goes down for us in Baghdad, we hit the emergency buttons in the vehicle. And the next thing, Delta Force is there to come and come and pull us out of the shit. We've got drones bringing us home. safely and all this fancy bit of equipment and you know i get back from our mission and we throw it in a bag and forget about it and you know you sort of realize that these bits of equipment could be a game changer for for rangers on the other side of the world when i got to africa and i saw what these guys had some of them didn't have had boots uniforms medical kids and they were out there walking around in these vast remote areas doing something that you know we should all be grateful for you know

It's, you know, so I don't love the drones that patrol the skies or defense budgets we had. I just love what a fraction of that could do for the natural world and helping to protect it. And so I just wanted to use the two things I had in this world to try and make the world a better place for animals. And that was the money that I had and the skills that I had working with these ranges. We're now eight years into it. You know, we've built up. It hasn't been pretty the whole way. You know, I started off trying to figure out where our place was on the African continent.

And we tried a little bit of this, little bit of that. And we just kept refining what we were doing. And what we worked out was that actually we don't need these over-complexed solutions to a lot of the problems in Africa. 90% of what we do with our formulas out there on the front lines is getting ranges up to a point where, one, they have the right training, they have the right skills, they have the right leadership. Most of all, above everything, they have the right motivation.

Because when they have that, they will get up at any hour of any day and they will go out there and patrol in the dark, in the rain, in the hail, in the wind, and they will go looking for tracks of poachers. And when they find those tracks, they start hunting those poachers and trying to get them before they get to the animals that we hold so dear. Now, when you spend all day in the bush looking at these animals and trying to protect them, you learn all the little characteristics, all the little idiosyncrasies that make them individuals. And these animals do become like our children.

and that's how these rangers, that's how they perceive them. So it's a job of passion, a job of purpose, which I know can be sometimes very hard to find in life, true passion or true purpose, but these rangers have it. And the opportunity to be able to support them is something that I'm extremely grateful for, particularly coming from a military background

where, and I can say this in America, because there's 22 US veterans a day that commit suicide for post-traumatic stress, and guys that don't know how to reintegrate back into society. And for a lot of those guys, the war doesn't start until the bullets stop and it's time to go home and trying to remember how to be a husband or how to be a father. And, you know, I got lucky.

Animals found me and they managed to save me. Some of our projects that we're working on and we try to be very strategic in the way that we do things because we have a limited amount of resources. We're not like the military. A conservation industry has limited resources and we need to be as effective as possible in utilising those resources.

We were seven years into a losing war and missing all these rhinos that were being killed and spiraling further and further out of control. There was a 13,000% increase in rhino poaching in southern Africa over a five-year period. Hundreds of millions of dollars were being invested into it, and most of the rhino that were being killed were in Kruger National Park.

It was accounting for most of the 70% of the rhinos that were being nailed on that continent each year. And most of the poachers that were doing that, were coming across the border from Mozambique into South Africa, killing the rhino and then going back. And whilst there was 400 organisations supporting rhino conservation inside South Africa, there wasn't any on the piece of land that separated up to 40% of the world's rhino and most of the world's rhino poaching syndicates.

So we went in there in 2015 and set up a ground-level offensive against an insurgency using ranges, getting that first part of the formula, the first 90% of the formula, right, getting those ranges up to the right standards. And when we got there, we added in canine tracking teams, helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft, analytics, the operation centre, the digital radio network, the informer network. And we started to build this well-oiled machine that was being led by our manager there on the ground and a team of eight young instructors that we put in place

four different departments of the Mozambique government and our own ranges. That led to an immediate 90% reduction over the next six months, which carried into the next 12 months in Rhino, approaching directly to our web, holding off the eastern flank of Kruger National Park allowed Kruger National Park to redeploy their resources to the west and block more poachers from coming in on that angle. In 2010 to 2014 we had an on average increase in rhino poaching in Kruger National Park of around 55% each year. The year that all these entities started working together on the Mozambique side of the border

it plateaued off and there was no increase, no decrease. And then last year, there was a 19.8% decrease in rhino poaching in Kruger National Park. It led to a regional downturn in rhino poaching, which for the first time in a decade, led to a downturn in rhino poaching globally. Wow. Thank you. You know, it's so proud to see the guys on the ground that are doing that work and, you know, work entirely right here, right now.

And it doesn't matter what, if we like reading National Geographic magazine, if we like watching the channel, if we like going to Africa, anything to do with the natural world, it really comes down to one group of people, and it's the group of people that defend that natural world with their lives. And that's what's happening right now as we sit here. And it's not, it's not just their job. It's all of our jobs to support them. You know, we don't ask people to pick up an AK-47 and move to Africa and come and put your life on the line every day. We'll do that for you. But what we do need is an extended family around the world that understands that there's important stuff going on to try and stop these things in Asia

and reduce demand. There's important work going on in the communities to try and get these communities to a point where they don't want to poach anymore, but at the moment, the most effective way to protect these animals is to have a good person with a gun standing between that animal and the group of poachers that are coming through with heavy caliber rifles and automatic weapons to kill it. And that's not always an easy pill for the international community to swallow,

but that's the reality on the ground. I go to work every day knowing that what we do is not the ultimate solution our job is to buy time for people that are working at much higher levels but if we don't stop the hemorrhaging

there's going to be nothing left other work that we're doing now is taking the model that's worked in Mozambique where we sent a small group of people into one of the hardest and most heart hit areas on the continent for poaching

they're able to work with local indigenous ranges and basically seal that area off as it's been a huge success we're doubling the amount of people that we sent in there into an instructors course up in Malawi where we're going to be training 16 instructors over a two-year period. It goes to what I perceive to be the biggest gap in the conservation industry and that's leadership. So we've been in the process of training

up the next generation of young leaders that can go out and command and control what is essentially a paramilitary operation run by the heart of a conservationist and that's what we need out there. We can't just have soldiers put out there in the bush. We need people that really believe in what they're doing. Special investigations, that we were actually, the information that we're getting from the poachers out there in the, that we're capturing in the field, getting the information on who they're working for, and actually going up the chain and trying to take out, that's a bad expression, trying to delete that, please, and what happens in the bush stays in the bush. We're trying to basically move up the chain and get the people that

are involved with organised wildlife crime, arrested and in jail. Because these are not poachers that we're dealing with. These are criminals. It's the same people that's involved with child prostitution, guns, drugs, human trafficking. The illegal wildlife trade is the fourth largest criminal industry in the world. Three weeks ago, we followed tracks from a reserve where we operate on in Zimbabwe. Where Ballin came out too. And Pickett was running an operation there.

We followed these tracks, seven miles, these guys' track. over some pretty hard terrain and they got to a garbage dump after hours. And in that garbage dump was a car that was parked and the guys thought it was very suspicious. They went and surrounded the car and they heard a girl screaming and they got a 13-year-old girl out of the back of the car

and arrested the guy. A 13-year-old girl had been abducted two days earlier and had some pretty bad things happen to her. But she was rescued by these guys, these rangers who were not just there to protect wildlife but also to serve the community. But it shows you that cross-up. over there within these criminal syndicates.

These are not poor Africans living in a mud hut. These are bad people that are involved with doing bad things. So our job now is to continue growing the organisation and trying to make it be the size of what it needs to be to deal with the scope of the problem that we're facing out there on the African continent. We're having some big successes, and there's a lot of organisations that are out there,

a lot of people, individuals that are working tirelessly, a lot of people around the world to support those initiatives. For that, I'm truly grateful to be a part of that and that industry and be able to use the skills that I've personally got and the team members that we've got in the team is, you know, it's a good thing to know that there's a place for those skills other than the battlefield in places like Iraq and Afghanistan where you're fighting for resources in the ground or lines on a map,

things that don't always really mean something proper. But animals, animals really do. Yeah. Yeah, so before I go, I just want you to close your eyes and just, I want you to imagine for me a world where forests only exist in the gardens of the concrete jungles we call cities. The plains of Africa only exist in books, animals only live in zoos. And as pets and coral reefs are just grey matter that's been bleached by the short-sightedness of a few generations. Now I want you to imagine yourself or a loved one sitting there explaining to a grandchild how life on earth had come to be like that and how we as humans and as a couple of generations have been responsible for that.

Why these animals don't exist. It's not a conversation I'm willing to have and I'm willing to have. to fight in the name of avoiding it. And our generation is going to be judged by our moral courage to protect what's right. Every worthwhile action is going to have a level of sacrifice. We may not be able to change history, but we can rewrite the future for every animal and every ecosystem that we choose to make a difference for. To me, that's more powerful than any sniper rifle.

Any war machine or any defeatist notion that our individual efforts mean nothing, so why bother? We're the ones we've been waiting for, guys. in her parents is not our children it's us and the time is now thank you very much thank you very much

wow there there you go that is the founder and CEO of International Anti-poaching Foundation okay

Damien Mander and I hope you enjoyed his talk his little presentation, and he said it best. It's kind of the answer I was looking for a few months ago. Each and every one of us can do something to help. And I'm going to give you the information to lead you towards helping.

You know, there's two ways you can help, and this is pretty interesting. There's one way you can go to the website and make a financial donation. you can give as little as $20 and don't feel like, oh, I'm not going to do it because it's only $20. Everything helps. So if you feel you want to give $20, give $20. If you want to give $200, $100, $500,000, do what you have to do. And as he mentioned, they are ranked way up there with the Charity Transparency Society.

So somebody's keeping an eye on everything. everything they do. I know sometimes donating to charities or foundations can be iffy. We're like, I don't know. The guy's probably driving a Mercedes, but apparently he's in a very elite group of charities where they're watched, they're monitored, and the money's going where it's supposed to be going. So there's two ways you can help. You can donate some money, or this is an even more dramatic way. And I'm like, oh, wait a minute. This might be something I'm might want to do, you can actually go physically to Africa and volunteer your time and immerse yourself with the Rangers and be part of their missions and go out on patrol with them.

Now, you're not given a gun, you're not given a sidearm, but you will be immersed with their group, camping with them, traveling with them, tending to the poaching and the big game and any any other thing that they run into. So that could be a game changer. That could be unbelievable. Wouldn't that be an adventure? I'll let you read more about that on the website. The website, by the way, is where you can also make your donation.

I'm going to give you that right now. It is IAPF.org. IAPF.org, the International Anti-Pouching Foundation. and you can see Damien on the site. You can see the work they're doing. You can see where they're doing their work. You can see where you can donate money if you want. You can also read all about becoming part of the Ranger program

if you're much more adventurous and passionate. And I know my friend Anna, who works out in Florida, She works with all the wild animals at Bush Garden. She oversees the cheetahs. She recently gave me a big giant hug when I was doing my show in Tampa. She came to the show, and afterwards she just ran up to me and was like, thank you for doing the episode

about the endangered species. Everything you said is what I was thinking and feeling. And, you know, it's got to be twice as tough for Anna because she works with African animals and to know that sometimes we feel helpless. But I think Anna mentioned that she went over there and participated, or she mentioned she did something where she donated her time. Good for you, Anna. What a great example.

And now here's an opportunity for all of us to find a way. And I know roaming around in the bush in Africa with poachers is probably a little more dangerous and a little more frightening than a lot of you have the aptitude for. But if you're not in that percentage that wants to get out there and do something on foot, please find it in your heart to donate a little money, even if it's $20. I think you'll feel good inside. I think you'll feel that you're doing something good.

And you know what? I would urge you to make it a yearly thing. You know, just don't donate and kind of, okay, I sent $100. Yay, I saved a zebra. Like, you know, think about your paycheck, what you make in a year, whether it's, you know, $40,000, $30,000, a million. Wouldn't it be nice if once a year, kind of like at Christmas, when, you know, sometimes you write a check to your, someone you love? I'm going to give $100 to my nephew or my niece. What about every year you just go on this website and you donate a little something once,

a year, even if it's $20. If you do that for the next 30, 40 years of your life, I mean, that's going to make a difference. And you're going to feel good knowing you made a difference. And so I'm going to vow to do that. I'm going to pledge to do that. And you know what? Some years are different than others.

One year I might donate 20. One year I might donate a thousand. I don't know. You can even donate more if you want. But I think there's, you know, know, I was going to say there's no more cause more important, but the problem with planet Earth and human beings, there's a lot of very important causes on this planet. But this is way up there, man, because once these animals are gone, once the ecosystems of the

world are depleted, we're not far behind, gang. And we don't have the right to deprive future generations of seeing an elephant in the wild, a rhino and this is a guy who's been to africa and has seen it i've seen a black rhino standing out in the plains i've seen i've had elephants charge at me i've had elephants walk right past me i've i've seen this stuff man i've seen the cape buffalo and the and the lions and the crocodiles and everything the giraffes there's nothing more stunning and beautiful and majestic than seeing these animals out in their native environments. And we don't want to lose that.

So I hope this podcast was impactful and meaningful. And I'd really urge you to even share this one with people that you know. As I said, this one wasn't a comedy-driven one. You know, mostly I like to make sure there's comedy in there. but this one was very moving and hard-hitting, and it's very important to all of us. So I'm just going to flat out ask you, and you don't have to,

but I'm going to ask each and every one of you listening to, A, go to the website, IAPF.org, and make a donation. I'm going to ask you to do that. You don't have to, but I'm going to ask you. All I can do is ask. hope you do. And secondly, I'm going to ask you to forward this podcast to a friend. And now I'm going to reach out to the friend that you just sent it to, the friend who's never listened to the Harland Highway before. I'm going to ask you, friend, to pass it on

to another friend and so on and so on. And then somehow I hope this podcast gets all over the world, and millions and millions of people hear it. So that's two things I've asked you to do that will not alter your life well hopefully they do alter your life in a good way but they will not be demeaning or set you back donating and promoting this cause will enhance your life it will give you it will lift your spirit it will fill your spirit up it'll fill your consciousness up it'll fill your awareness up and you have no idea the aid and the help you're going to be giving to a beautiful beast that might otherwise be shot down and destroyed. You know, a giant beautiful black rhinoceros. I don't know if you know this

or not, but here's why they get poached. There are men in Asia, tragically, that believe rhino horn, which is made of the same material, the human fingernails are made. made with. It's just a big pointed cone of keratin or whatever. I don't know. It's just tightly compacted fiber. There are men in Asia that believe if you chop and grind up rhino horn and ingest it, it gives you a big, long, hard erection. Can you believe it? That's not even comedy. That's reality. Can you believe it? There's this beautiful Most rhinos on the planet are teetering on the brink of extinction primarily because of that.

Even with the proliferation of Viagra and erection pills, it's still a rhino horn fetches hundreds of thousands of dollars on the black market. Elephants are killed for making pianos and doing carvings and who knows, you know, making cutlery with ivory handles. And it's just used for decadent, ridiculous reasons. So there you go. Hope you enjoyed it. Make a difference.

Donate. Spread this podcast to your friends and friends of friends and so on and so on. And let's all use this as a moment because I do believe it was sent to me somehow. through the universe, through whatever, let's use it to do good, protect and care for our fellow creatures, and in doing so, protecting care for ourselves. Thank you for listening, and I'll leave it right there. But, you know, of course I'm going to do some announcements.

I'm not, you know, that's the, you know, that's the, you know, that's the, you know, that's the, the meat of the podcast, but I've got to do some announcements, man. If this was a bit too heavy for you and you want to laugh, well, come on out tonight, man. I'll be in Brea, California, which is just outside of Los Angeles, at the Brea Improv, June 15th to 18th. And you can come and see me do stand-up comedy live. And speaking of animals, I'll be taping my very first stand-up

comedy special as Carmel Corn the Pug. Yes, I'm going to be doing a stand-up comedy special as a dog. That's June 22nd at another improv down in Irvine, California, which is south of Los Angeles, Orange County, Irvine Improv. And you can get tickets for all these shows at Harland Williams.com, or you can go directly to theimprove.com, and we would love to see you at, these nutty shows.

Also, don't forget to watch my other show involving animals. Oh, yes, oh yes. Let's not forget Puppy Dog Pals on Disney. It's getting a great reaction. Hopefully I'll have news about whether we do a season two or not. But as of now, all I can say is season one seems to be going great. I'm getting all kinds of feedback from you guys, pictures of your kids and tweets and emails,

and everyone seems to be loving puppy dog pals. So if you have any kids or nieces or nephews in your family, turn them on to Disney Jr.'s puppy dog pals. There's a free app you can download if you want to get the puppy dog pals app, or it's a Disney Jr. app, I guess. Also, get our app for the Harland Highway. We have an app. You can download that at the App Store as well.

Just type in the Harlan Highway. It's totally free And you can get the show The latest 50 episodes of the show On the app And what else can I tell you? Become a premium member Oh, this is exciting

So after Damien gave his little talk He did a question and answer session And so I'm going to save that for the premium members. There's some more cool stuff for the question and answer period. So if you're a premium member, I'm going to put that up for you guys. And I urge you who aren't premium members, for $20 a year, you can become a premium member. And you can listen to that and much more cool stuff just for you. Also at the website, harloweems.com.

Don't forget. Please don't forget. You can write me at harlonewilms.com, or you can phone me and leave a voicemail. 323739-4330. 3-2-3-9-43-3-3-3-3. Wow. Okay, so there you go.

Hope you had a good time. Hope you enjoyed this rather serious podcast and it moved you. gave you some direction, some answers, and gave you a pathway to helping a great cause. So that's it for now. You're a great cause, and we hope we catch up with you next time.

But until then, a great big juicy bowl of poacher-free chicken. Chowman, baby. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.