Niall McCann Wild Expeditions: 7 Continents, 30+ Adventures & National Park Rescue

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What happens when a scientist decides that studying extinction isn't enough? 

Dr Niall McCann is a biologist who left the safety of academia to stand on the front lines of the biodiversity crisis. From the thick jungles of Nepal to the vast ice caps of Greenland, Niall’s life has been a series of high-stakes encounters with the world’s most formidable creatures and the people who threaten them.

In this episode, we go inside the heart of an anti-poaching operation in Zimbabwe’s Chizarira National Park. Niall breaks down the "Sables" incentive model—a revolutionary way to fight poaching by investing directly in the health and education of local communities. We also dive into the terrifying reality of tracking armed poachers through the bush and what it’s really like to be charged by a tiger while perched in a tree that’s far too small for comfort.

Beyond the adrenaline, Niall shares the emotional weight of working alongside Sir David Attenborough and the sobering reality of losing 60% of the world’s wildlife in a single lifetime. This is a conversation about the practical, gritty reality of conservation: how to manage risk, how to outmaneuver professional criminals, and why the most powerful tool for saving elephants might actually be a brick house for a single mother.

What You'll Learn:
* Why Cape Buffalo are the most dangerous animals to track in the African bush
* The "Sables" model: How to use school fees as a weapon against poaching
* What it's like to sleep with a rifle in your bed on the Greenland ice cap
* Why 120,000 people a year die from snakebites in India and why it’s a hidden crisis

RESOURCES:
Guest: Dr Niall McCann, Conservation Director
Website: https://www.nationalparkrescue.org
Socials: @NiallMcCann
Charity Mentioned: https://www.millimetrestomountains.org

CHAPTERS:
00:00 Introducing Niall McCann
02:04 Growing up with Adventure — The McCann family legacy
07:25 Biologist vs Conservationist — Why Niall left academia
12:16 Giant Otters of the Amazon — A six-foot-long predator
14:53 Charged by a Tiger in Nepal — A narrow escape
22:33 The Deadly Snake Crisis in India — A public health emergency
31:30 Polar Bears and Arctic tripwires — Surviving Greenland
35:59 Surviving the Atlantic Ocean — 63 days at sea
46:15 Founding National Park Rescue — Saving Zimbabwe’s wilderness
52:23 Tracking Poachers in Zimbabwe — Spears and Cape Buffalo
01:00:42 The Sables Incentive Model — Investing in people to save wildlife
01:09:43 Working with David Attenborough — The titan of natural history
01:13:41 Call to Adventure — The Al Humphreys map challenge

For full show notes and links, visit: adventurediaries.com/go

Transcript

CHRIS: That's us live. Dr Niall McCann, welcome to the Adventure Diaries. How are you?

NIALL: Very well, Chris. Thank you very much for having me. Very nice of you.

CHRIS: Excellent, yeah, very excited for this. I really appreciate your time. You've done some phenomenal work and you're doing some incredible work now, which we'll come on to. For those that may not know who you are, you're a renowned biologist, explorer, and adventurer. You've done some incredible and very diverse expeditions across many terrains: the jungle, the desert, polar exploration, and some oceanic stuff as well. People may be aware of your media involvement with some of the big hitters like Sir David Attenborough. You've also done some fantastic work on Animal Planet with Biggest and Baddest—scaring the life out of my little girl recently with some of those snakes.

NIALL: I haven't shown my daughter yet. I'll have to dig them out sometime to show her. It comes as a bit of a surprise for her whenever I do pop up on a screen. But she's come to public talks that I do and she finds that completely normal now; she actually asks to come to the front with me and stands there pretending to hold a microphone. It's the sweetest little thing.

CHRIS: [CHAPTER: Growing up with Adventure — 02:04]
How did you get involved in a life of adventure and conservation?

NIALL: I guess I was just incredibly lucky to grow up in a family where adventure and exploration were normalised. My mum’s dad was director of the Arctic Institute of North America and has bits of Baffin Island named after him; he was a glaciologist at McGill University. She grew up in an atmosphere of exploration. Then she met my dad, who had spent two and a half years living in Antarctica with the British Antarctic Survey. They were united by a shared kindred spirit for adventure and a deep passion for wildlife. When me and my brothers were born, we were introduced to those things from a really young age. Early holidays were always camping, never in hotels. We were always trying to spot wildlife and keeping little lists of everything we saw. As I grew older, it stopped being something I did with my parents and started being something I did by myself.

CHRIS: Antarctica doesn't get much more adventurous than that. What was that family environment like?

NIALL: Friday night Dad would get the slide projector out and show us images of elephant seals and king penguins. Mum would show us photographs from her adventures across East Africa and South Asia. That was just an average Friday night. It wasn't really until I became an adult that I realised not everyone else was having Friday night slideshows about their parents' adventures. We did not grow up with any kind of financial privilege, but I now recognise extraordinary social privilege in that this seemed normal and attainable. We slipped into having adventurous lives.

CHRIS: [CHAPTER: Biologist vs Conservationist — 07:25]
How did your PhD steer you specifically toward conservation?

NIALL: We always tried to link adventure with nature. It was natural that I did a degree in Zoology and then a PhD. This is where I draw a distinction between being a biologist and being a conservationist. Biologists study things; conservationists save them. I was studying a species called Baird’s tapir—there is an image of one behind me—as it was sliding towards extinction. During my PhD, I realised I didn't want to commit my energies to just studying it as it went extinct. I wanted to stop it. It was a conscious switch. I chose to leave academia and give up my mum's dream of me being a sandal-wearing professor to go into conservation, set up an NGO, and actually try and stop extinction happening.

CHRIS: When did that specific switch happen?

NIALL: My PhD viva was in April 2014. I can thank my examiner for demonstrating that academia was not for me. In my discussion, I talked about setting up a community ranger project in Honduras. I had four rangers patrolling a national park to protect it from poachers and deforestation. My examiner said, "Take all that rubbish out because none of that's analytical. It’s just an anecdote about you setting up this little ranger thing." For me, that was the only part of my PhD that mattered. So, I took his advice; I took it out of the PhD and I also took myself out of academia.

CHRIS: [CHAPTER: Giant Otters of the Amazon — 12:16]
Of all the work you've done, what stands out as the most memorable trip?

NIALL: Everyone remembers their first. The first big one I organised was an expedition to collect information on giant otters in Bolivia in 2003. It’s a massive species that lives in the Amazon and the Pantanal. At the time, they were thought to be endangered, but people didn't really know the numbers. Me and three friends pulled together the funding and logistics. It turns out they weren't as endangered as feared, which was nice. That was critical; it made me realise these things are possible to do off your own back.

CHRIS: When you say giant otters, how giant are we talking?

NIALL: A six-foot-long otter. Way more than a heavy dog—about 45 to 50 kilos. They are highly intelligent and quite aggressive. They like going around and beating up caiman, which are South American alligators. I remember sitting in my camp hearing high-pitched whining and then a smack and splash. A beaten-up caiman would sprint out of the trees and disappear, and a few minutes later, the otters would snuck along the river to find another caiman to beat the crap out of as well.

CHRIS: [CHAPTER: Charged by a Tiger in Nepal — 14:53]
What’s the scariest thing you’ve come across?

NIALL: Being charged by a tiger is quite intimidating, though I didn't feel that scared in the moment because it felt like it would turn around—and it did. The one time I was genuinely unnerved was when I was up a tree in Nepal filming the largest elephant in the country, which is about 11 feet at the shoulder. He figured out I was there and charged forward, screaming. He stopped maybe 20 metres in front of me, raising his trunk. I was up this really quite small tree, hoping he wouldn't notice me, because he had the strength to rip that tree out of the ground. He was obviously furious. It took him a couple of minutes to relax and have a long pee. At that moment, I shimmied down and absolutely legged it.

CHRIS: [CHAPTER: The Deadly Snake Crisis in India — 22:33]
There was an episode that stood out for me involving a massive snake. Was that in Nepal or India?

NIALL: We had anacondas in Venezuela—the biggest was 18 feet, two inches long. In Nepal, we had an encounter with a Burmese python. I was riding with some park rangers on an elephant named Sara Shottie. She smelled the python and wasn't happy. I spotted its head in the thick grass and jumped down to grab it behind the jaws. The head was the size of both my hands together. Suddenly, I looked to my side and another snake was coming straight at me. She must have been fraternising with a male, and he was about 11 or 12 feet long. He was coming at me as if to say, "Get off my girl." I had to grab him as well. I had her in one hand and him in the other until the guys could help. She was 4.5 metres long with a girth of 72 centimetres. When I went back to the elephant, she stopped me with her trunk and sniffed me from head to toe because I stank of snake. Then she gestured for me to get back up. They are so intelligent.

CHRIS: That is a big snake. Do they pose a danger to the villages there?

NIALL: In the Terai Plain where we were, they don't pose much threat, but in India, there is a genuine public health crisis. An estimated 100,000 to 120,000 people die from snake bites in India every year. It’s insane. It's usually people working in the agricultural sector, in bare feet at night, where rodents attract venomous snakes. In any other situation, it would be treated as a crisis with significant resources, but for some reason, it hasn't received that level of attention.

CHRIS: Have you ever been bitten yourself?

NIALL: Of course. Eventually, one’s going to nail you. I’ve been bitten twice, both times when I was unable to pick it up safely but had to for scientific recording. It’s just like a bunch of little pins going into your hand. You don't want to get bitten by a big constrictor though; they have backwards-facing teeth riddled with bacteria.

CHRIS: [CHAPTER: Polar Bears and Arctic tripwires — 31:30]
Can you tell us about your polar expeditions?

NIALL: I’ve done three proper ones. In 2009, I skied across Greenland along the Arctic Circle. In 2014, my brother and I did ski mountaineering and speed flying in the Caledonian Alps of East Greenland. Then this year, I skied across the Vatnajökull ice cap in Iceland with two guys who have spinal cord injuries.

CHRIS: Did you see much wildlife out there?

NIALL: You cross polar bear tracks quite a lot. In Greenland, you aren't allowed on the ice cap without a rifle and a flare gun. You go to sleep with the rifle in bed and set a tripwire around the tent. You have to set the wire at the right height—too low and an Arctic fox sets it off, too high and the bear sneaks under. It’s three poles with spring-loaded cartridges. If a bear hits the thread, it sets off a shotgun blank. It makes a really loud bang, which hopefully scares the bear away, though the concern is that you might just end up with a very pissed-off bear right next to your tent.

CHRIS: [CHAPTER: Surviving the Atlantic Ocean — 35:59]
You also rowed the Atlantic Ocean. How was that?

NIALL: That was 2007. I was 26. I rowed across with my friend James Burge and it took 63 days. We had very little sailing experience, but you pick things up quickly. We were burning 8,000 to 10,000 calories a day and eating 7,000. Sometimes the conditions were flat calm, which feels like rowing through treacle. Other times we were in massive storms which were terrifying. But then you see five or six rainbows at once, or dolphins kicking off bioluminescence in the water. We nearly got sunk by a four-metre wave that rolled us and filled the boat with water. We had to dive into the cabin and batten down the hatches. Finishing in Antigua was the first time in 63 days we were 100% sure we were going to be okay. It was a wonderful sense of euphoria.

CHRIS: [CHAPTER: Founding National Park Rescue — 46:15]
Let's talk about National Park Rescue. You're a founder and director there?

NIALL: Yes. After my PhD, I was introduced to Mark Hiley, who wanted to do something similar to my Honduras project but at a much larger scale in Malawi. We were introduced by James Honeyborne, David Attenborough’s producer. We eventually set up National Park Rescue to identify national parks at risk of failure and help save them. We focus on parks that are under-invested in and suffering from poaching or corruption. Our first big project was Chizarira National Park in Zimbabwe. In 2017, it only had three international visitors all year and had lost 2,000 elephants in a decade. Five years later, elephant poaching is down by 94% and lion numbers are up 30%. We now have 42 staff living and working in that park.

CHRIS: [CHAPTER: Tracking Poachers in Zimbabwe — 52:23]
What are the primary threats? Have you had brushes with poachers?

NIALL: Poaching is the massive threat. Every elephant is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to the country’s GDP through ecotourism. People killing them for tusks are literally robbing the country. In July, I was in the field and we found fresh footprints of five poachers and a pack of dogs chasing a buffalo. We tracked them for an hour and a quarter. All your senses are on when you’re tracking humans you know are armed. We spotted them butchering the buffalo. They fled when the dogs smelled us. There were shots fired during the chase, but they managed to escape—they were like five times Mo Farah. They had hiked 40 kilometres carrying heavy spears and axes. We recovered the gear and $3,000 worth of meat.

CHRIS: [CHAPTER: The Sables Incentive Model — 01:00:42]
How do you engage the community to stop this cycle?

NIALL: The best way is to impact their back pockets. We’ve become the largest employer in the region. We also have an incentive programme called "Sables." Sables are tokens earned for high performance, like an arrest. If you want cash, the token is worth 50 cents. If you want building materials, it's worth a dollar. If you use it for school fees or medical bills, we double the value to two dollars and pay the school or clinic directly. It avoids the cycle of cash being spent poorly and incentivises long-term well-being. Seeing our female rangers building brick houses for their families is even more rewarding than seeing the elephants relax. You protect the environment by investing in people.

CHRIS: [CHAPTER: Working with David Attenborough — 01:09:43]
What was it like working with Sir David Attenborough?

NIALL: He is the titan. There’s only one. He’s the most significant natural history figure in the modern age. It’s been interesting watching his career trajectory; in the last decade, he has moved from showing the beauty of the world to showing how it is at risk. He’s deeply moved by what has happened. We’ve lost 60% of wildlife populations during his lifetime. On a personal level, he’s just very nice and very funny. He’s a wonderful icon.

CHRIS: We have two closing traditions. The first is the Call to Adventure.

NIALL: Adventure starts at home. Get to know the places around you. Al Humphreys did something great where he got an Ordnance Survey map with his house in the middle and spent a year visiting every square kilometre on that map. My four-year-old daughter and I have explored most of the kilometres north of our house. It’s a lovely thing to do.

CHRIS: And finally, the Pay It Forward suggestion.

NIALL: I’ll suggest a charity called Millimetres to Mountains, set up by my friend Ed Jackson. They take people who have suffered mental or physical trauma and use adventure in the outdoors to help them recover. I find it totally uplifting and inspiring.

CHRIS: Thank you, Niall. What a phenomenal conversation. Very inspiring.

NIALL: Thank you for having me. Nice to chat.