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[Fiktion]

Yao's campaign against shark fin soup has been a great success, so hopefully this will have an effect as well.

The End of the Wild Trailer

Interview

Article

The obsession of some Chinese with possessing rare ornaments or ingredients of questionable medical benefit “is costing lives thousands of kilometers away,” he said.

The film is the latest of Mr. Yao’s projects in partnership with WildAid, a nongovernmental organization devoted to stopping the illegal trade in wildlife. It shows him petting baby rhinos in Ol Pejeta Conservancy outside Nairobi, the Kenyan capital, and examining the mutilated carcasses left behind by poachers in Namunyak, in northern Kenya.

“I believe that people who have seen those pictures will remember it,” Mr. Yao says in the film. In the interview he added, “I saw those dead bodies. And that smell, well, you won’t smell it watching the documentary.”

Mr. Yao said he learned about the human cost of poaching as well. As poachers arm themselves more heavily, law enforcement has struggled to catch up. In the film, a member of the Ol Pejeta Conservancy staff tells Mr. Yao that 24 Ol Pejeta rangers have been killed in the past couple of years.

“There’s a balance in nature that’s vital to all of us,” Mr. Yao said. “If we don’t do something to stop those species from dying out, one day it will be our turn to go.”

Mr. Yao, the 7-foot-6 former Houston Rockets center, has been a spokesman for WildAid’s campaigns in China since 2006, helping secure a broad audience for the organization’s slogan: “When the buying stops, the killing can, too.”

The documentary, which runs 100 minutes, is being aired in China in two parts on CCTV-9, a channel of the state broadcaster. The first part was shown on Monday, and the second is scheduled for 10 p.m. on Sunday. A shorter, international version will be broadcast this fall on Animal Planet.

Peter Knights, WildAid’s executive director, said the group was hoping to reach a broad audience. “We want to have our stories told through Chinese eyes, through Yao Ming,” he said, “so it is not a bunch of Western conservationists saying, ‘Look, this is what’s happening.’ We hope it will open a few eyes.”

 

[Oersted]

Looks good, thanks.

 

[overcast]

Always loved Yao as an NBA player (being a Rockets fan helped of course), but he's such a great individual. That's always been clear.

 

[see5harp]

This dude is good people. Good to see people with money and influence actually do something worthwhile once their careers are over.

 

[rexor0717]

Seeing dead and butchered elephants and rhinos makes me incredibly sad.

 

[AAK]

Was that Yao Ming narrating? I would never have guessed that was a Chinese accent.