My Wild Life

by Simon Cowell

  After we’d seen as much as we could stomach, Jim, who had the larger camera in his backpack and was feeling rebellious, got the equipment out and started filming in full view of everyone. He wanted to provoke a reaction and it worked. Suddenly, as if from nowhere, security guards appeared and started walking towards us. Jim managed five seconds of filming and then we quickly got out of there and beat a hasty retreat. I didn’t look back and reached the ground floor as fast as I could. I thought we were going to end up in the notorious ‘Bangkok Hilton’ jail.

  That evening we went out in the city to film an excerpt about the elephants of Bangkok. In and around the city there are several elephant trainers who charge tourists to ride and feed their animals, which are a common sight wandering around the busy, polluted streets. WFFT had been instrumental in saving many of these animals and rehoming them in a sanctuary in the countryside far away from the grim cityscape.

  Thailand is home to wild Asian elephants but the population is struggling with only around 2,000 left. Historically, these had been captured and domesticated to be used mainly in the logging industry, ironically helping to destroy the very habitat they needed to survive. After a ban on logging, most of these elephants ended up being used for the tourism industry, giving rides in amusement parks or begging on the streets of big cities, walking day and night, and were often involved in horrific traffic accidents. There were no laws to prevent the abuse and mistreatment. To tame an elephant, a trainer has to break its spirit, which is a grotesque process that takes a long time and is worse than any torture I can imagine. The animals are roped together in cages, beaten with poles with 10-centimetre curved spikes on the end and have fire waved in front of them to scare them into eventual submission. Out on the streets of Bangkok it was not hard to find elephants, and tourists petting and riding them. I tried to get interviews with several Westerners who were paying for rides but no one wanted to be on camera, which suggested to me that they knew the practice was wrong and inhumane yet still supported it. What also concerned me was that many of the elephants we saw were too young to have been involved in the logging industry, which meant they had been captured in the wild or smuggled across the border from other countries.

  Finally, we went on another undercover assignment to a notorious attraction. Tiger Temple, or Wat Pha Luang Ta Bua, is a Buddhist temple in western Thailand that was founded in 1994 as a forest temple and sanctuary for wild animals. It claimed to have received its first tigers legitimately in 1999 after they had been rescued from poachers. However, investigations since have suggested that rather than continuing as a rescue centre, the temple operated as a breeding facility and may have been involved in the tiger trade. It is certainly a busy tourist attraction and receives a constant stream of coach parties full of eager visitors who feed cubs and pose for photos with the animals.

  Each day tigers would be put on public display so that tourists could touch and pose with them for a fee. Investigations showed that during these sessions, the tigers were given no shade, and were exposed to three hours of direct sunlight in temperatures which often rose above 40°C. Allegations against the temple were many. It was claimed the animals were mistreated to make them compliant and perform for visitors. In a report by one animal welfare organization it was observed that temple staff dragged tigers into appealing photographic positions by pulling their tails or punching and beating them. Staff also controlled the tigers by squirting tiger urine from a bottle into the animals’ faces, an act of extreme aggression in tiger behaviour.

  Despite the range of claims against the attraction, it was cleared of allegations of animal mistreatment in a 2015 investigation conducted by wildlife officials. Charges were pressed for unlicensed possession of thirty-eight protected birds found on the temple grounds.

  I can only go on what I experienced and can assert that the whole place was vile. The tigers were chained up and, in my opinion, were drugged. I hated every second of the time I spent there. I went posing as a tourist and watched in horror as the monks displayed the tigers for baying tourists. Devoid of the compassion their religion promotes, they shamelessly exploited and tortured the animals for the benefit of tourists. There were scores of tigers – cubs and adults – brought out for the entertainment of the mob.

  It is probably true that the original tigers that were taken to the temple had been rescued from poachers. The monks who accepted them probably did so with the best of intentions. But the endeavour had grown into a business and the tigers were the victims. During our time in Thailand we accompanied Edwin to another rescue at a temple. He had been tipped off about a bear kept in a cage there and when we arrived we discovered it pacing backwards and forwards in a small enclosure. It, too, had been given to the monks after being rescued from poachers and the monks genuinely loved it and had to be persuaded to let it go for a better life. But at the Tiger Temple there had been so much publicity that those in charge could have little doubt that what they were doing was regarded as cruel. It troubled me even more that the place was a temple; that religious element almost gave it moral authority in the view of the ignorant people who traipsed through its doors.

  Thailand left me drained and the things I saw there disturbed me. People like Edwin do a remarkable job but I couldn’t help leaving with an air of pessimism. I found it hard to believe that in the supposedly enlightened twenty-first century people still believe it is okay to go to places like Pata Zoo and Tiger Temple.

  We undertook each trip with careful planning, one element of which involved our own health care. Just before one long-haul flight to an exotic location, Jim, Jason, Phil and I went to the Bupa centre in Gatwick airport for our jabs and the bill was £1,200 each. My arse felt like a pin cushion when I came out. In our bags, in addition to the over-the-counter meds, we carried industrial strength diarrhoea tablets, antibiotics and diazepam, in case I freaked out. We also took our own needles in case we needed an injection when we were away.

  Soon after our trip to Thailand, we went back to South-east Asia to film in Vietnam, specifically to highlight the bear bile trade over there and the measures being taken by devoted campaigners to stamp it out.

  Bear bile is used in traditional Chinese medicine and is believed to have a range of healing properties. Studies have shown that a compound contained within it, ursodeoxycholic acid, can be effective against some ailments, such as certain liver diseases. Traditional practitioners prescribe bear bile for much more, including everything from a sore throat to epilepsy. The liquid is extracted in one of the most inhumane processes on the planet. Bears are locked in medieval full-metal jackets and catheters are inserted into their stomachs to drain the bile. Most farmed bears are Asiatic black bears, commonly called moon bears because of the white crescents on their chests. They are listed as endangered by the Convention on International Trade of Exotic Species (CITES). They suffer incredible cruelty and spend their considerably long lives immobile, in agony, never seeing daylight. Depressingly, even though ursodeoxycholic acid can be cheaply synthesized in a lab, traditionalists still prefer bile milked from animals, which is often so full of impurities from infections that it is practically carcinogenic.

  The practice takes place widely in Vietnam and China, and for many years one British woman has been instrumental in raising awareness and changing attitudes towards it. Jill Robinson has devoted her life to saving the bears and runs a charity called Animals Asia Foundation that rescues farmed bears and cares for them in sanctuaries. We flew to meet her in Vietnam where she was having great success getting politicians on board with her message.

  Given the sensitivities of the subject and the political situation in Vietnam, which is a communist country, we were only allowed to film with a government minder in tow and were met by him in Hanoi. He was a low-ranking government official and a nice guy. I’m not sure how much he understood about our mission or who we were because one night he offered to take us to a place where the menu featured pangolin, an endangered type of scaly mammal that h
ad been hunted to near extinction by idiots who believed it was a delicacy and that its scales had medicinal properties. We gracefully declined his offer.

  From the airport he took us to the hotel that had been selected for us; I took one look and explained that I was not staying there. I didn’t want to offend our guide but the place was in a dodgy part of town where I genuinely suspected that our equipment would get stolen. Thankfully, he understood and said he knew someone at the Sheraton who could get us rooms.

  We took a trip out to Jill’s sanctuary and filmed the work she was doing there and did some undercover work in Hanoi, covertly filming in several shops where bear bile products were on sale. Animals Asia has had the most amazing effect on the bile farming industry and has educated populations in China and Vietnam that the bile from farmed bears is more dangerous than the conditions it is supposed to treat.

  With the help of Animals Asia, which is well respected, filming went without a hitch. Our minder played along and we took him out for meals and treated him as one of the crew. You have to get along because, as much as you don’t agree with the ethics of what they are doing, they hold the key to getting the right footage. He loved it and had a great time.

  After we had filmed at one of the sanctuaries in the countryside outside the city, one of Animals Asia’s volunteers invited Jim and Jason to go swimming in a nearby waterfall. I think he liked them and they went off and climbed for hours to get to this place. When they realized they didn’t have swimming stuff with them, the volunteer persuaded them to go skinny dipping. He took them to a natural rock slide and they all went down it butt naked. When they got out they were covered in leeches and the volunteer helped the boys to remove the ones that were hard to reach – all part of the service.

  Jim and Jason shared a room in the hotel. One morning before we left Jason got in the shower and Jim took everything out the bedroom: the sheets, the clothes, even the phone. He brought it all to my room and left just one small face flannel. Laughing, we went downstairs to wait and see what Jason did. He came down holding the flannel over his front while his other hand covered his modesty at the back.

  Both our trips to South-east Asia were a success and I felt we had filmed some strong, important footage. Sadly, things were changing at Discovery. While we continued to push to get the gritty stuff shown, the TV company showed little of it. It was clear that they weren’t that interested in hard-hitting investigative reports. When it was eventually shown, I felt they had watered it down and it didn’t do the animal victims justice.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  It Shouldn’t

  Happen to a Wildlife

  Presenter

  ON THE WHOLE, the people we met in centres abroad were wonderful. They were all slightly bonkers in their own way but they knew exactly what they were doing. They made my life much easier and they filled me with enough confidence to help them rescue animals I’d never encountered before. There was only one time when we were unlucky, which was when we went out to Florida. The trip started badly because heavy snow in the UK delayed our departure and diverted us to New York and then Atlanta, from where we had to drive seven hours, all of which ate into our filming schedule. When we arrived in Florida I fell ill and was taken to a private doctor who filled me with drugs and injections and made my arse feel like a pin cushion once again. At least this allowed me to get to work within twenty-four hours. We were due to spend time there with a woman who ran an animal rescue centre and who had been great on the phone. She rescued a range of wildlife, from alligators to pelicans. After seeing her, we were scheduled to film segments on manatees and then fly down to Belize to meet a couple who rescued crocodiles.

  We had always been careful to make sure that the people with whom we partnered were a good fit with Wildlife Aid and were comfortable on camera, but when we got to our first stop we soon realized that the lady we were shadowing came across as nervy and agitated. It got complicated because her number two was quite good so we filmed both of them, often asking the same questions to both, and made sure all the usable footage came from the deputy. We were only there for a couple of days and by the time we left the tensions were rising because the lady in charge realized what was going on. We then took a chartered seaplane to our next stop to film manatees.

  It had always been one of my ambitions to encounter these incredible aquatic creatures and we visited a colony of them that lived in waters fed by warm springs. Manatees cannot survive in water less than 20°C – any cooler and they get hypothermia. The clear water our manatees lived in was a balmy 22°C; however, given my condition and the fact that I only had a wetsuit 4 mm thick, I was still freezing and shivering.

  We filmed at the only place in the world where people were allowed to interact with manatees. There were very strict rules governing behaviour. It was imperative that the animals initiated the contact and, until they did, humans were required to keep a 3-metre distance. Splashing had to be kept to a minimum so as not to startle the creatures. There were cordoned-off areas all around where people could not go, which meant that the animals could bugger off whenever they wanted. Luckily, they are sociable creatures – like badgers – so they swam up and had a sniff around out of curiosity soon after I got into position. The water was only shallow and I was wearing a face mask and snorkel. A large female slowly swam towards me and all thoughts of cold went as the friendly creature slowly approached. They are beautiful animals and naturally inquisitive, which sadly means that many are injured by boats and nets. One came up to me and rolled over in the water for a scratch. As it did I saw its body was criss-crossed with scars left by jet skis or propellers.

  The manatee encounter was magical but, like many of the animal stories abroad, it was bittersweet. While I was there I learned that the protected habitat in which the animals lived was threatened by development. A building company had been granted a licence to develop vast swathes of the riverfront.

  In Florida, we also filmed a feature on alligators, which the crew assured me would involve a leisurely boat ride but actually resulted in me being filmed alongside one of the huge animals in the boat.

  From Florida we headed to Mexico where we spent time in the jungle trying to film jaguars. We set up static cameras with night vision to try and capture footage of the elusive big cats. All we got on film were wild turkeys.

  Finally, we took a long drive and headed across the border into Belize where all our kit was confiscated by the customs officials, who offered no reason but said it would be impounded for seventy-two hours, which would have completely messed up the schedule. We travelled with an official document called a carnet, which listed all the equipment, where it had been bought and what it did. It was supposed to help clueless customs officials and usually they’d look over it and wave us through. But in Belize they started unpacking everything and made a big show of checking everything off the carnet. Luckily, I travelled with $10,000 in cash on me because I had learned that cash can get you out of tricky situations. I bunged the customs officer $1,000 and miraculously he let us and our seven big cases of kit through.

  From the border we headed to the south of the country and Punta Gorda, which was home to a rescue and conservation charity run by Vince Rose and Cherie Chenot-Rose. Vince is a self-taught rescuer who studied bears in the Rocky Mountains and Saltwater crocodiles in Australia. His wife Cherie is a research biologist and reptile expert. They moved to the tiny Central American nation in 2004 to develop a large sanctuary for two species of crocodiles found in Belize – the American and Morelet’s crocodiles. They built a two-storey octagonal house that rested on stilts and constructed two smaller cottages to house researchers and students. They dug out long canals for the crocodiles they rescued, bought two boats and called the place the American Crocodile Education Sanctuary.

  Their dedication to the local wildlife brought them into conflict with elements of the community around them, especially the indigenous Mayans, most of whom see crocodiles as pests. Mayan children were known
to take tourists to see crocs, which they lured to the riverbanks by feeding them scraps of meat. Over time the crocodiles had naturally grown to see man as a source of food and had lost their fear of humans. They had been known to attack dogs and this dangerous way for children to earn a few dollars had also led to some children being bitten. The natives also often harboured resentment of richer foreigners – which they saw Vince and Cherie as.

  The crocodiles have come into increased contact with people as their habitat has been eroded by development. Often they are shot, trapped, injured and maimed, and Vince and Cherie do their best to protect them and rehabilitate them. In 2010 the tension with the community came to a head after the unrelated disappearance of two children from a town several miles away. According to news reports, a psychic who lived in the town told villagers she’d had a vision that the Roses had abducted the children and fed them to the animals at their sanctuary. This was, of course, absolute mumbo-jumbo (the missing children were safe in Guatemala, where they had been taken by their biological father). However, the superstitious Mayans believed her and a mob of angry villagers from the settlement drove to the sanctuary and torched it. Vince and Cherie, who were away at the time, received a warning from a friend that the mob was on its way and called the police, who told them they couldn’t enter the property because the Roses’ two dogs were barking and would not allow them in.

  The fire destroyed everything they had built and the mob also killed seventeen crocodiles at the centre. I knew how devastating it was to lose everything to fire and was enraged by the senselessness of the actions of the mob.