A truly great man: In loving memory of conservationist David Back

David Back was an insatiable conservationist, a passionate businessman, a skilful photographer. He had an incredible eye for detail, he was the perfect host, a brilliant raconteur, a networker extraordinaire and a true family man.

His eye for wildlife and conservation originated from family visits to London Zoo as a youngster, and in the early 1980s he worked as a safari guide in Zambia’s Luangwa Valley. His enthusiasm for wildlife and his affable way found favour with everyone he took on safari. In Zambia, and Luangwa particularly, he made numerous friends and it was a place that became his second home.

By profession, David was a highly-regarded architect in central London, but he had an extraordinary ability to mix his architectural work with wildlife, conservation, travel, and his family life - all the things he loved so much. As the result of his enthusiasm for absolutely everything, he had an ability to make it seem effortless.

David was a skilled and enterprising photographer, whose carefully crafted wildlife images were amongst the very first to showcase Zambian safaris to the world. While guiding in Zambia in the 1980s, he created a series of wildlife postcards and a map of the Luangwa safari area which were sold by all the tourist lodges in the Luangwa Valley for many years. No-one had had the forethought to do this before. And his wildlife images, along with his words, often graced the pages of the Zambia Airways inflight magazine.

Years later, David was a photographic host at the Festival of Wildlife in the Galápagos, India, western Canada, Madagascar and Tanzania, where everyone loved his relaxed, imaginative and unique style. And in David’s case, photography was often best enjoyed with a beer in hand!

David was an ideas man - they were all BIG ideas - and some of them at first glance appeared simply impossible to achieve.

The last black rhinos in the Luangwa Valley were poached in the late 1980s and David had been the last person to photograph one alive. At their peak, they numbered around 4,500 animals in the valley, but by 1990 there were none left.

David was horrified by their demise and was determined to do something about it and established a charitable fund which he called ‘Horny@50’ (a mischievous reference to his age), the purpose of which was to raise enough money to translocate black rhinos from South Africa to the Luangwa Valley to create a seed population of his favourite mammals in his much-beloved Luangwa.

With translocation costs at the time of around £10,000 per rhino, and a plan to translocate eight, it was an almost impossible task. Needless to say through hard graft, and with the help of his many city contacts, he did it. And now North Luangwa has a growing population of one of the most endangered mammals on the planet.

In 2014, David came up with the idea of a football league for wildlife conservation in the Luangwa Valley. His idea was that each village in the league would name their team after a local animal and become so attached to that mammal as their ‘mascot’ that they would ensure its preservation for all time. This is now a highly successful and well-run football league that all of the villagers are very proud to be a part of - and its conservation message goes far beyond the preservation of a single species per village.

In 2016, he proposed that for every men’s team there should also be a women’s team. It was a huge leap for these rural people to accept that women could play the same sport as men - particularly football. Ladies in this part of the world would not normally expose their legs at all, and to begin with they wore tights under their football gear or a sarong to cover their ankles.

Now, these girls and young women play in shorts - and unsurprisingly, some of them are very good indeed. And this liberation was instigated by David Back. There is now a men’s league of eight teams and a women league of eight teams to match.

In later years, David and his wife Karen moved to a quiet and picturesque part of the Isle of Wight which David felt was about as close in atmosphere to Africa as you could get in the UK - and with some interesting wildlife. In fact, the local wildlife, whether badgers, red squirrels, buzzards, reptiles or insects became as much of interest to him as anything he saw and photographed overseas, and nothing gave him greater pleasure than sharing it with friends and family.

Despite being diagnosed in 2015 with a life-changing illness, PSP, he remained upbeat and with a passion to be involved with anything to do with wildlife and conservation.

David Back was a larger than life character whose drive, energy, enthusiasm, passion and laughter will be missed by the very many people whose lives he touched.

David Back: A true inspiration
by Wanderlust editor-in-chief Lyn Hughes

I first met David Back in the Galápagos in 2005, when he was the photography expert on a Festival of Wildlife trip. His energy was infectious and I knew straight away that we were destined to be friends.

Over the years, I was a guest at his family home in the Isle of Wight, participated in some of his fundraising activities, and attended the various events that he put on to inspire an interest in conservation and the environment.

As a former guide himself, David was passionate about the Wanderlust World Guide Awards, was part of the judging panel on several occasions, and always attended the awards ceremony at the Royal Geographical Society. Many Wanderlust readers got to know him, either through the awards, his travels or his photography.

David was a huge inspiration; not only was he fun but you would come away from his company wanting to do more for this planet. He’s going to be very sadly missed.

In loving memory of David Back
27 June 1959 - 12 April 2019