Danny E. Martindale/Getty ImagesIs Prince George destined to be the King of England or King of the Jungle? It's too soon to tell, Prince William jokingly implied while speaking to guests during the inaugural Tusk Conservation Awards at the Royal Society in London on Thursday, Sept. 12. Making his first joint red carpet appearance with Kate Middleton since their son's birth, the first-time father joked about his 7-week-old's loud lungs.
"As you might have gathered, Catherine and I have recently become proud parents—of a baby who has a voice to match any lion's roar!" the prince said. "This is actually our first evening out without him, so please excuse us if you see us nervously casting cheeky glances at our mobile phone to check all is well back home."
"Like any new parents," William continued, "our thoughts inevitably turn to the world that our child will inherit. It is unfathomable to imagine a world in which children who have been born in the past couple of months may grow up in a world in which rhinoceros have ceased to live in the wild."
William, who has been a patron of the organization since 2005, then revealed that 35,000 elephants were killed for their ivory in the last year alone.
"The possibility of extinction is bad enough for one of our children growing up here in the West, who will never experience the magic of seeing a rhino on a new television documentary; or even for my own little George, who Catherine and I very much hope to introduce to east Africa—a place we know and love—in the fullness of time," said the 31-year-old, who just announced he's leaving the armed forces. "But for a child growing up in Africa and whose birth-right and economic inheritance these creatures are, it is nothing more than immoral that he or she may never experience what his parents and grandparents knew and treasured."