‘Wild Rush’, a video channel launched by an amazing nature survivalist and wildlife rescuer with the objective of creating awareness about indigenous wild species, has become Pakistan’s first youtube verified education channel on wildlife.
“Formed on June 17, 2020, Wild Rush succeeded in becoming `Verified Badge Approved’ channel of YouTube in April 2024,” claims Abdul Rehman, owner of the Wild Rush.
Hailing from Bhawalpure District of Punjab, Abdul Rehman owns a tea stall at a rural settlement in his hometown, but passionate love for nature and wildlife made him as an amazing nature survivalist and wildlife rescuer who along with his team members have saved scores of venomous species including snakes and scorpion in Cholistan desert.
In order to create awareness about wildlife especially indigenous species, Abdul Rehman launched Wild Rush channel and started filming education videos on different species being found in the country.
“Verification on YouTube is an acknowledgement of an account as an official channel,” Rehman explains.
The approval mark lets other users know that the channel is host to an established user or brand. The verification badge is much harder to attain, as it’s only available to channels that have at least 100,000 followers,” he told APP.
According to YouTube, verification badge provides additional credibility and authenticity for a channel. This badge is a grey tick mark, in the form of a music note, and one can find it next to the channel’s name.
The badge acts as more of a mark of authenticity and attaining a verification badge and is extremely beneficial for the social media marketing of a brand or business, due to the legitimacy it provides.
Abdul Rehman gave credit of this achievement to his team mates especially the cameraman, Hafiz Muhammad Sajid whose support is very much meaningful in shooting of videos.
Wild Rush has attained more than 100k subscription by displaying educational videos on more than one hundred wild species including animals, birds, snakes, scorpions, lizards etc.
Each video on Wild Rush is about a separate specie, providing full details about its scientific name, habitat, eating habits, threats, role in food chain etc.
Rehman said he would have attained this verification much earlier, but preparation of videos takes around two to three months as a result of which uploading is apparently sluggish.
For one video filmed on rare flying squirrel in Pakistan, Rehman traveled along with his team to Kashmir from Bhawalpure on his own expense for adventurous trip and spent five days and four nights in dense forest for capturing of a cleaver and tricky nocturnal specie which mostly spend times on trees.
Rehman said it was very difficult to catch the squirrel because the specie became active at night, but his consistent efforts, patience and guidance of locals helped him trap the animal for display in the video and later was released in natural habitat.
Rehman has set a goal of documenting and uploading of informative videos of almost all the wild species being found in Pakistan on his YouTube channel.
He also plans to soon visit Khyber Pakhtunkhwa for preparing an informative film on Russel Viper and on Naja Oxiana snake also known as Central Asian Cobra.
He is not educated on his field and do a lot of hard work for getting information from internet on different species.
“I wake up early in the morning and starts my research work at around 5:00 a.m till 12:00 p.m,” he apprises APP. At around 3:00 p.m, he arrives at his stall and serves tea till late night to eke out living.
For better understanding about habits of different species he also contacts wildlife experts and holds discussion with them for learning.
I hardly earns around Rs. Six to eight hundreds on daily basis and make a saving from meagre earning to hire camera and for meeting the travel expense of visiting different areas along with the team for recording of videos about different species, Reham informed.