In 1976, following another passion, he walked 1,000 miles across Oregon, Idaho and Wyoming to help raise awareness of conservation issues for the World Wildlife Fund.
[1] On this journey his photographs, radio and television interviews were his introduction to a world of media co-operation that would steer his next thirty years in environmental activism.
With Jennifer Lonsdale, another Greenpeace veteran, they carried out undercover work in the Norwegian port of Vado, posing as journalists to gain entry to whaling factories.
They were able to truthfully insist they were not working for Greenpeace as the factory workers feared, but knew it was unwise to state they were on an independent environmental activist ship.
[1] They believed there was room for an organisation that gathered documentary evidence of issues which would form the basis of a campaign as well as provide materials for the media.
He was awarded the Albert Schweitzer Medal by the Animal Welfare Institute with Allan Thornton in 1990 for their work protecting elephants and dolphins.
[1] From 1987 to 1989 he was undercover in Dubai and Ajman (UAE), Tanzania, Kenya, Singapore and Hong Kong posing as a journalist, photographer, tourist or ivory dealer.
In 1987 he was famously hoisted, with cameraman Clive Lonsdale, on a forklift truck crane to the top shelf of a warehouse in Dubai to photograph the neighbouring unit.
In his role for EIA he has attended the International Whaling Commission (IWC) meetings as a delegate, had his photographs published widely and written numerous reports.
[18] In 1989 Currey, using his considerable first-hand knowledge of the international ivory trade, took Desmond Hamill, senior foreign correspondent with Independent Television News (ITN), to Tanzania and the UAE.
This was the perfect launch to EIA's campaign for an ivory ban achieved later the same year after the release of an explosive report, by Currey and Thornton, packed with evidence of the international ivory trade: naming names, describing routes, quoting dealers from hidden recordings and blowing apart many of the pro-trade arguments with documented evidence.
A hand-written note on 4 January 1989 from Capt Nleya to his wife, photographed by Currey as evidence, alleged he had been "collected by Special Investigations Branch and Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) members.... Foul play is expected.... " On 12 March his decomposed body was found under a tree behind Hwange army barracks.
[20] Currey has represented EIA as a delegate at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES) on a number of occasions.
[21] He has investigated the trade in wild-caught birds for pets in Argentina, Bolivia, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Guyana, and Senegal.
EIA's provision of evidence and startling photographs and film footage, and his personal experience in the field, gave him an important role with these much larger organisations.
[23] In November 1991 to promote the bird campaign and shoot new material for a National Geographic documentary, he led a three-person team to Argentina.
Co-operating with the Ghanain authorities they tracked grey parrots caught illegally in Ghana being moved to neighbouring Côte d'Ivoire where they were "legalised" by corrupt officials for export.
This investigation became part of a television documentary shown all over the world and additionally resulted in the arrest, set up by Currey and his team, of a Ghanain parrot dealer in the capital Accra.
[27] Currey carried out an in depth research trip to India in 1995, meeting conservationists, government officials, villagers and assessing if EIA could have a useful role in tiger conservation.
[28] "The Political Wilderness" report re-emerged in the media in different ways for over a year and helped revitalise discussion on tiger conservation in India.
[30] Currey's photographic skills documented the plight of Kaziranga National Park and illustrated the problems faced in Assam in a hard-hitting article in the UK's Daily Telegraph Magazine.
He visited both places, helped film and photograph illegal logging, as well as undercover work in Kalimantan to identify the head of the timber mafia.
Currey oversaw the rescue mission devoting tens of thousands of dollars of campaign funds to get them safely out of Kalimantan.
Currey and his team had been important catalysts to this change in international direction and although most governments did not live up to their agreement it provided a springboard to unilateral action in the US, the UK, Japan, the European Union and exporting countries such as Indonesia.
[40] Currey helped his team build strong and close relationships with local NGOs by securing grants for their participation from the UK's Department for International Development and the EU.
This includes marine turtle conservation in Sri Lanka, a ban on ozone-depleting substances, the environmental threats to whales and dolphins and a campaign to stop the use of rhinoceros horn in Taiwan.
[44] In his role as EIA's spokesperson for two decades Currey has fronted dozens of press conferences and been interviewed hundreds of times on television, radio and for newspapers.
They were two National Geographic Voyager series films Dead on Arrival[25] and Wildlife Detectives[54] and a BBC Nature Special Whale Wars.
This book, translated into Japanese, German and Russian, was described as "A savage indictment of an obscene trade" by BBC Wildlife Magazine[67] He has recently set up a publishing imprint, Wild Press,[68] with his long-term (since 1978) civil partner Gary Hodges.