“IMAGINE what the situation with the rhinos would be like if we did nothing.” This was a statement posed by animal activist, Kingsley Holgate, over the weekend. He challenged the public to address the rhino crisis by taking part in the #RhinoShoutOutChallenge.
On Saturday, the Kingsley Holgate Foundation and Project Rhino KZN teamed up with Game stores to set the challenge in motion at Gateway Shopping Centre. The major retailer also donated R20 000 worth of art materials to 80 disadvantaged schools to facilitate education and awareness.
“In the words of the great Dr Ian Player, the greatest rhino conservationist of all time and who was part of a team in Zululand who brought rhinos back from extinction, ‘We must pass the baton of conservation over to the youth’. Today, more than 2 000 children across South Africa and even as far as Vietnam, one of the largest countries where the misconception that rhino horn is a medicine thrives, received awareness about the rhino plight,” said Kingsley.
Sheelagh Antrobus, co-ordinator of Project Rhino KZN, said conservationists are definitely making an impact on the war against poaching. Not only have a number of significant arrests been made, but the United Nations has also passed a wildlife trafficking resolution, calling on wildlife crime to be considered a serious crime, she said.
“The media and the public see the number of poached rhino ever-increasing, but we haven’t lost the war. KwaZulu-Natal has one of the largest rhino populations in the world. If we carry on with this momentum of conservation, we are not going to see the rhinos go extinct,” she said.
