Project Rhino comes to Ballito
Grant Fowlds delivered a moving message at Simbithi Eco Estate's monthly conservation talk.
“Responding to today’s escalating rhino poaching threats and other wildlife crimes requires a new approach, one that needs us to all work together to save a species that has been with us for more than 50 million years.”
This was the moving message delivered by Grant Fowld’s at Simbithi’s Eco Estate monthly conservation talk last Thursday evening.
Formed in 2011, Project Rhino KZN unites the provincial government body (Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife), well-known conservation NGOs and private rhino owners.
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A total of 24 private game reserves and eight Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife provincial game reserves benefit directly from Project Rhino.
“Protecting an area of more than 330,000 hectares, Project Rhino member reserves are collectively responsible for the protection of the second largest rhino population on the continent.
“Devastatingly, our rhino have become a target for highly organised poaching rings and crime syndicates, fuelled largely by an ongoing and unfounded demand by traditional Eastern medicine,” said Grant, during his moving power point presentation.
“In the last five years, South Africa has lost more than 6,000 rhino, equating to almost three per day. The tipping point, in which more rhinos are being poached than are being born, is approaching for South Africa’s white rhino and black rhino populations.
“If the poaching continues to escalate at the current rate, we will see the demise of the rhino in major national parks with only small handfuls surviving in well protected areas. It could take decades for the populations to recover.”
Grant said the province had a proud history of saving the rhino.
“We did it once and we need to fight to do it again. It is an international wildlife crisis that needs us to all work together to save a species that has been with us for more than 50 million years.”
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