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Lawrence Anthony (born 1950, Johannesburg) and raised in rural Rhodesia (now called Zimbabwe), Zambia, and Malawi, is an international conservationist, environmentalist, explorer, and bestselling author.

Anthony is the long standing head of conservation at the Thula Thula game reserve in Zululand South Africa and the Founder of The Earth Organization, a privately registered, independent, international conservation and environmental group with a strong scientific orientation. He is an international member of the esteemed Explorers Club of New York and a member of the National Council of the South African Association for the Advancement of Science, South Africa’s oldest scientific association.

Anthony, has a reputation for bold conservation initiatives, including the rescue of the Baghdad zoo at the height of the US lead Coalition 2003 invasion of Iraq, and negotiations with the infamous Lord's Resistance Army rebel army in Southern Sudan, to raise awareness of the environment and protect endangered species, including the last of the Northern White Rhinoceros

Details of his conservation activities have appeared regularly in regional and international media including CNN, CBS, BBC, Al Jazeera and Sky TV and featured in magazine's and journals such as Readers Digest, the Smithsonian, the Explorers Journal, Africa Geographic, Men's Journal, Shape magazine, Elle Magazine and others.

Anthony is married to Francoise and lives on the Thula Thula game reserve in Zululand. He has two sons and two grandsons.

Baghdad Zoo was the biggest zoo in the Middle East; however, by 8 days after the 2003 invasion, when Anthony reached the zoo on a private rescue initiative, out of the original 650 to 700 animals in the Baghdad Zoo only 35 survived owing to bombing of the zoo, looting of the animals for food, and starvation of the caged animals without food and water. Anthony could not get to the zoo any earlier at the height of the war owing the safety, transport and bureaucracy issues. The animals that survived tended to be the larger animals, including bears, hyenas, lions and tigers. In the chaos of the war, Anthony used mercenaries to help protect the zoo, and with some of the zoo keepers looked after the zoo animals, and fed the carnivores by buying donkeys on the streets of Baghdad. US Army soldiers, Iraqi civilians and various other volunteers including former Republican Guard soldiers came to assist. Eventually, Bremer, supported the zoo and American engineers helped to reopen the zoo. Anthony has written a book about the wartime rescue of the Baghdad Zoo, and the movie rights have been acquired by a major Hollywood production company.

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Lawrence Anthony", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0