This series examines the big league of wildlife vets - the men and women whose work takes them to far corners of Africa to deal with some of the world's wildest creatures. The everyday routine of small dogs, domestic tabby cats and caged rabbits is a far cry from this work, where gored rhinos, savage wild cats and fifteen feet long crocodiles are the regular customers. The wildlife vets are tough, resilient and utterly dedicated to saving beautiful and often endangered species. This series celebrates their demanding work with dramatic footage and stunning photography.

In Natal Kwa-Zulu on the eastern side of South Africa, vet Dave Cooper is responsible for forty-eight game parks. He can travel hundreds of miles to each individual job. Dave has to heal a rhino injured in a fight, deal with a bad outbreak of TB in a valuable buffalo herd and try to revive a dying wildebeest by mouth-to-mouth resuscitation! Every job can be interrupted by an emergency – his important work on testing new drugs on antelope has to stop when a young dog is savaged by a baboon. Over the border in Zimbabwe, we watch as a wildlife vet perches on an elephant to capture a rhino calf. All over Africa vets and conservation experts are struggling – and making a great success of it – to save rhinos and rebuild their numbers. In the case of white rhinos, the world’s stock had fallen to just fourteen animals, all in one game park in Zululand.

It’s a world where wild fighting cats need as much attention as their more vulnerable domestic sisters. In just a single day Clare Speedy, one of the very few women wildlife vets, has to help a dentist cope with a lion who has toothache, set the leg on a snarling, frantic cat and then sort out an eye infection troubling a beautiful baby cheetah. To cure your animals, you have to get hold of them first!  Professor Woody Meltzer, South Africa’s best known veterinary expert, runs a hands-on course in the Kruger Game Park – teaching aspiring young vets how to capture wild animals without endangering the lives of either man or animal.