Richard Leakey - fossil expert, conservationist and politician

The image is from the same source.

Richard Leakey, who died days after celebrating his 77th birthday, was a pugnacious man who achieved remarkable things.

He was an opposition MP, anti-corruption campaigner, economic reformer, and head of the country's civil service when he was born on December 19, 1944, in the capital city of the country.

He lost his legs in a plane crash and was beaten up.

"I think pressure suits me," Leakey once said.

He was studying fossils. Louis and Mary were famous archaeologists and palaeontologists who spent decades searching for the origins of mankind.

In his 20s, Leakey almost overshadowed his parents' work, making his own important finds and writing books.

At a time when the country's Wildlife Service was close to collapse, Leakey took over as head of the organization at a time when rhino and elephant populations were being wiped out.

Energetic, ruthless and seemingly incorruptible, Leakey told his rangers to shoot Poachers on sight and organised the public burning of a huge cache of ivory as a publicity stunt to draw global attention to the threat faced by elephants.

In an interview with the BBC in September 2021, he said that people were shocked that ivory was killing elephants.

The image is from the same source.

The image caption is.

The role that Leakey played was crucial in the fight against the crime.

His combative style earned him many enemies. It was a pattern that would be repeated many times.

Many people thought that the single-engine plane he was flying was sabotage when it crashed in 1993. He had both of his legs removed.

In 1994 Leakey left the KWS to join the equally ruthless world of Kenyan politics and help form an opposition party called Safina to campaign for multi-party democracy.

The political side of his life was the most rewarding part of it, he said.

It was not an easy ride.

He was whipped by hired criminals. He was described as a racist, an unbeliever and a foreigner by President Moi.

In 1999 President Moi shocked the country by appointing Leakey as head of the civil service, and of a so-called dream team of reformers who were hired to rescue a country branded one of the world's most corrupt.

The image is from the same source.

The image caption is.

The work of Leakey was well-known.

Supporters said that Leakey was the only man who could pull Kenya out of its troubles, but wondered if he would last long enough to do any good.

Critics said the appointment of a white man with no university education was an insult to the people of the country and that it was orchestrated by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Leakey helped to improve relations between the international lending institutions and the country. His appointment may have been crucial in getting the International Monetary Fund to lend the government money again.

For a while, Leakey was the most popular person in the country as his dream team started to reform the country's bloated, corrupt, nepotistic bureaucracy.

As usual, Leakey ran into trouble. Some people complained about his ability to make enemies. His anti-corruption drive was threatening the interests of many powerful figures. In 2001 Leakey stepped down without giving a reason.

He said he would retire from politics. He wanted to grow grapes on his farm.

He was appointed as the chairman of the board of the KWS by the current President in 2015. He brokered a controversial deal that allowed a Chinese funded railway line to be built.

"We cannot tell the people of the country that the railway won't come through the park for five years," he was quoted as saying.

Climate change was the biggest environmental threat that he had focused on recently.

He said that they had created a terrible mess.

The image is from the AFP.

The image caption is.

Climate change is now a bigger threat to wildlife than was previously thought.

He was worried that the national parks in Africa would be washed out one day.

I think we can deal with it. "I don't see anything being done in Africa to address habitat loss and human expansion to intrude on water systems and forests."

He wanted to build a museum on the edge of the Rift Valley to celebrate evolution and the history of Africa that is unfulfilled.

He wants to build a cathedral with no God.

He said that they are all in the same house, and that they came out of Lake Turkana three million years ago.

He said that greater investment in Africa would allow the continent to "leap ahead".

Africa has to be given a little bit of a lift because we have the human resources.

You can listen to the full interview with Leakey on the radio on Wednesday.