When we first started WildLife Partners more than 2 years ago, we never thought we would have Cape Buffalo at all, much less become one of the largest owners in the world outside of Africa. We recently moved all of the Cape Buffalo at our Mountain Home facility down to our Pettus facility where they will have much more room to roam. As you will see in these pictures this is no light undertaking. Our staff did an amazing job with the entire process.
Over the last several weeks, we’ve had numerous visits from both current partners and new ones who have just joined us in one of our breeding partnerships. For some people this is their first visit to our facilities and as all others have experienced, they can’t help but leave with smiles from ear to ear. Over the last month, we’ve had numerous new babies including 3 Grevy Zebra, Black Wildebeest, Bongo, Kudu, Dama Gazelle, Nile Lechwe, Cape Buffalo and many more. And the rains we’ve been getting haven’t been bad either. Pretty rare to see it this green in early September.
Here are a few pics from a Labor Day visit along with some great recent pictures from Dan Verrips.
We were contacted early this year by a producer from ABC’s Nightline television show. They were working on a story about how ranches in Texas were acting as Noah’s Ark and helping save species of wildlife from all over the world from extinction. We feel the coverage did a great job at giving an unbiased look at the multi-faceted industry that exist today in Texas.
A full version of the story can be found here: ABC News NightLine
And actually some rain too. Summer time in South Texas can be very hot and dry at times but we were very fortunate a couple of weeks ago to get 10+ inches of rain over the course of a few days. Along with that rain came a great looking group of babies. Over the last month we’ve had Kudu, Black Wildebeest, Blesbok, White Bearded Wildebeest, Sable, Dama Gazelle, Grants Gazelle, Impala, Arabian Oryx, Cape Buffalo and even our very first Grevy Zebra Born!
The grass is tall, green and filled with little ones running around in it!
I’ve said it numerous times, but I’ll say it again. I love everything about what we are doing and trying to accomplish with WildLife Partners, but the relationships we have built may be my favorite part. My wife and I recently spent 4 days at our breeding facilities with some of our Partners, one who has been with us from the beginning and the others, life time friends of his who just joined us in our current partnership. We split the time between Mountain Home and Pettus and had a great time at each. Kevin “Doctari” Robertson also joined us for some of the good times. Our Cape Buffalo herd even came out of the brush to pose for a few pictures.
Profit from Conservation while having a lot of fun along the way!
May represents the beginning of WildLife Partners’ third year in business. As Brian and I were doing some business planning over the last few months, we reflected back on our journey to date. What started as a hobby has indeed become a substantial and very rewarding business that in some ways may have grown faster than we anticipated despite having and living into some very lofty goals that we had set. As with any business in their first 2 years, there have been ups and downs, expensive lessons learned, hurdles cleared, nay-sayers proved wrong, numerous changes and a lot of hard work. All of these things in total have helped to not only form who we are today but we are headed in the future.
Speaking of the future, we have some very exciting announcements to make. Brian and I recognized late last year that we needed help. Help with financial systems, inventory controls, operations, etc, etc. We both realized we didn’t know what we didn’t know. Well, after months of trying to figure out exactly what and who we needed, God landed that person in our laps on a fateful flight from San Antonio to San Diego.
We are pleased to announce that Joe Gullion is now our new President and COO. Joe’s background is both broad and deep. He’s a former Navy Pilot who spent the vast majority of his years in the Aerospace industry mostly in the role of President, CEO or COO. In the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, Joe was the President of Boeing Airplane Services. He took that division of Boeing from $265MM in annual revenues to more than $3.2B in just 3 years. After his career with Boeing, he went on to multiple other companies with similar results helping all of them implement organizational structure, processes and leadership. To quote Joe, “I’ve retired twice, but I’m not very good at it.” Joe started with WildLife Partners in April and has already made huge strides in identifying the most important items that need to be addressed. We believe his experience with identifying problems and creating long term solutions will be a great benefit to all us.
Brian and I are very pleased to have Joe in the WildLife Partner’s family.
After what seemed to be a Winter that just wouldn’t go away, Spring is finally setting in. We’ve had babies born on what seems like a daily basis and wild flowers are in full bloom. It’s not very often you can say that in the last 30 days you’ve had Cape Buffalo, Bongo, Kudu, Sable, Nile Lechwe, Nyala and Arabian Oryx babies born. And the funny thing is, that’s not even close to the full list but it’s definitely some of the bigger highlights.
As usual , Dan Verrips does some amazing work.
Over the last several weeks, we were contacted by three different media outlets that wanted to hear the WildLife Partners story. However, this isn’t just our story. The hope is this coverage shines a bright light on what Texas is doing to save numerous species from around the world from extinction, including many of which are already extinct in their native lands.
It all started with the fourth article written about WildLife Partners by Sergio Chapa at the San Antonio Business Journal. Throughout the Business Journal’s other articles they’ve not just focused on WildLife Partners but also featured many other who play significant roles in the industry in Texas and beyond.
That was followed by a visit and sit down interview with ABC News Nightline who is doing a story on how Texas ranches are helping save threatened or endangered species.
The last stop was San Antonio’s local ABC affiliate KSAT 12 news.
I’ve attached a PDF version of the SABJ article here. We are not sure when the TV portions will all air, but it should be fairly soon.
I know I’ve said this over and over again since we started on this magical journey 2 years ago, but the relationships built and time spent together with our partners is something I will always cherish about this business. Over the last several weeks, we had visitors from California, New York, South Carolina and many places in Texas. In the coming weeks, we have more visits scheduled with partners from Wyoming, Arizona and Georgia. Each visit has it’s own feel to it. Whether we are spending countless hours sifting dirt for Indian artifacts or hanging out watching giraffe being delivered, the memories are priceless and endless. Here’s just a few pics from the recent visits.
Dan Verrips always knows how to get that perfect shot.
