Background:
Ron Thomson is an ex-game warden and retired national parks board director. He has 46 years experience in southern African wildlife management affairs including 28 years of full-time service in various national park departments and 3 years working as a professional hunter. He now writes books "to create a better informed public" - better informed, that is, about the realities of wildlife management. One of his books has been prescribed reading for the Higher Diploma in Nature Conservation for the last 15 years - an academic course offered to serving wildlife field officers by the Tshwane University of Technology. For more than 20 years he was a Member of the British Institute of Biology and a Chartered Biologist for the European Union. He has vast experience in both the theoretical AND the practical application of big game management - especially elephant management. Two of his past posts were: (1) The Provincial Game Warden i/c. of what is now Zimbabwe's Hwange National Park - one of Africa's biggest and most prestigious game reserves; and (2) The Director of the Bophuthatswana National Parks Board (in the 1980s).