Helen Turnbull is CEO of the Cape Leopard Trust and her job is to navigate the organisation that helps to protect the province's wild and free-roaming leopards. Over coffee she explained how she came to be a leopard protector.

Helen Turnbull has a sunny warmth that would gain a leopard's trust or charm a farmer itching to shoot one. There's an urgent need for that second skill, especially on farms where dumb domestic animals are easy meat.

She wants to talk about snaring, but I need to first know about the road that led to Helen heading up a highly successful conservation NGO. It turns out to be a long and winding one.

Helen explains that she went to an Afrikaans school in the small Northern Cape town of Kathu, which is surprising given her plummy BBC accent, then casually drops in that as a child, she and her father, with a bunch of volunteers, renovated a steam engine. It seemed to her a natural progression to enjoy tinkering with cars. And from there to learn to work with and occasionally fly aeroplanes.

Helen: I guess I learnt to do more boy things when I was small. When I started to drive, I was curious to understand the car's engine and how to fix it.

Don: What did your father do that had him renovating trains?

Helen: My father was always passionate about trains. He started his career at...