Through her Melbourne-based not-for-profit charity, Nature Needs More, Dr Johnson is working to raise the profile of animal poaching in an effort to halt the trade before it is too late for threatened wildlife. 

Dr Johnson began looking into the illegal wildlife trade six years ago when her work allowed her to donate some time to something she was passionate about. 

“I started looking into the illegal wildlife trade and what was motivating people to buy things like ivory, rhino horn and pangolin,” she said. “There is not a huge amount of people thinking about wildlife conservation. There is a lot of outrage on social media, but it’s not necessarily useful outrage.”

Through sifting through American statistics, because they are easy to access, Dr Johnson said she looked at who was donating to wildlife conservation. Shockingly, she found that only 0.3 per cent of non-government donations were made to wildlife conservation causes. 

Dr Johnson said she started to think about how the other 99.7 per cent of people could be engaged in wildlife causes before she came up with the game changing idea of the beloved Australian pastime, sport. 

Dr Johnson said one of the issues was that people perceived poaching of wildlife as being far away from them, therefore not being entirely relevant. 

“We are losing our link to the natural world. In Australia, we see those horrible stories about people running over emus and poisoning 450 wedgetailed eagles,” she said. 

“In fact, Australia is a transit country and ivory and rhino horn are being smuggled into this country to sell locally at auction rooms and antique shops. And there is no burden of proof that it is not actually old or post-ban.

“We know that ivory from recently poached animals is being laundered into the Australian marketplace and that’s why we want to close it down here. So that’s one of the reasons I thought that if I could create the World Games For Wildlife through something Australians are so passionate about, sport, then it would be a way to get the message out that it’s not happening a long way away, it is happening here too.”

So, this year, between November 5 and 21, people all over the globe will join forces to do something active for the inaugural World Games For Wildlife. 

The event has a number of high profile sport stars acting as ambassadors, including swimming star Libby Trickett, paralympic runner Danny Crates, Australian cricket legend Jason Gillespie and rugby union scrum half Nic Stirzaker.

By participating in this event and fundraising for wildlife, people will help to raise funds to go towards the publishing of a highly targeted demand reduction campaign aimed at the key users of rhino horn.

Dr Johnson said the funds raised during the inaugural games would go towards the rhino demand reduction campaign in Vietnam, which targets the main users of rhino horn who are driving the current poaching of animals in Africa. 

“There are a lot of studies which indicate the wildlife traffickers are just manufacturing demand. That’s what has happened in Vietnam, which I have done a lot of research into.”

She said there had been next to no poaching in South Africa for 20 years, before it took off again in 2007.

“The current crisis is due to Vietnamese businessmen using rhino horn to negotiate business deals and gain favours,” she said. “Let’s say you want to get all of the permits to build your multi-million dollar property, you might give rhino horn to your local government official to get all the permits and negotiate your bank loan.”

Through her extensive research and interviews with these men, Dr Johnson said she had discovered another show of power using rhino horn, called the “millionaire’s detox drink” which involves grinding rhino horn into rice wine.

“It says they are someone to do business with because they have power, status and connections. It’s a power and status symbol.”

She said their demand reduction campaigns, which see full page advertising in business magazines like Forbes Vietnam and other Vietnamese business magazines, had been designed around an in-depth understanding of what the wealthy buyers were looking for through purchasing rhino horn, and what would motivate them to stop.

“We know these men don’t empathise with the plight of the rhino and they are not worried about being prosecuted because they feel they are above the law,” she said. “The only thing these buyers told me would stop them from buying rhino horn was if it had a negative impact on their health, brand or reputation. So all of our campaigns have focused on the idea that if you have to use rhino horn to seal a business deal, you’re a pretty mediocre businessman.”

The steep decline of animals living in the wild is shocking. As of 2018, Dr Johnson said 36 per cent of all mammals left on the planet are human, 60 per cent are stock and and four per cent are wild. 

“So they make up a very small per cent of the animals inhabiting the earth.”

Currently, Dr Johnson said the rate of African savannah elephants is estimated to be declining at a rate of one every 15 minutes due to poaching, while the numbers of Asian elephants living in the wild has also declined from around 100,000 at the start of the 20^th century, to about 30,000 today. 

She said studies show that the wild tiger population has decreased from an estimate of around 100,000 to as few as 3000 today. During the past 100 years, tiger species including the Balinese, Javan and Caspian tiger have all become extinct. Additionally, there are less than 27,000 rhinos, 20,000 lions and 800 mountain gorillas living in their natural habitats. 

The time for action is now.