Just like his mother before him, Prince William is completely enamoured of Africa. The Duke of Cambridge became emotional when talking about wildlife conservation, admitting that becoming a father has reinforced his emotional connection to the continent.

The 31-year-old new father, whose son with wife Kate Middleton, Prince George, was born on July 22, is a patron of the Tusk Trust, a wildlife conservation group. He and Kate will be awarding that group’s first conservation medals in London on Thursday.

He has been an ardent supporter of the cause, having been to Africa since he was a teenager. During his interview for the ITV show “Prince William’s Passion: New Father, New Hope,” which will air in the UK on September 15, William opened up about his passion for wildlife conservation.

“The wildlife is incredibly vulnerable and I feel a real protective instinct, more so now that I am a father, which is why I get emotional about it,” he said in the interview, which can be read in the Radio Times magazine.

“You want to stand up for what is very vulnerable and needs protecting. Elephants, rhinos, and many other animals that are persecuted don’t have a voice.”

And whenever stress gets the better of him, his solution is to mentally go to Africa.

“I do regularly daydream, and Africa is definitely one of the places I go to. I’ve got hundreds of animals on my iPhone, noises and sounds of the bush, so if I’m having a stressful day, I’ll just put a buffalo, a cricket or a newt on and it takes you back instantly to the bush. And it does completely settle me down.”

He credited his mum, the late Princess Diana, for passing onto him her love of wildlife.

“She would come back with all these stories and full of excitement and just passion for what she had been doing,” he said of Diana’s trips in the ‘90s. “And I sort of used to sit there, quite a sort of surprised little boy at the tiem, taking it all in.”

When he was shown a video footage of a rhino bleeding to death because of poaching, he told interviewer Jane Treays that it’s “horrifying.”

“It’s hard to put into words the depth of sadness that I would feel i they became extinct.”

The Duke, the second in line to the throne next to his father Prince Charles, will someday become king and will pass the crown to his son George. But it’s not the title that he wishes George to inherit when the time comes.

“At the moment, the only legacy I want to pass onto him is to sleep more and maybe not to have to change his nappy quite so many times, but as he gets older I’m sure he’ll pick up the bug of conservation.”

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