#Protectthelastrhinos

It is essential we provide tangible benefits and employment opportunities for community members. Offering meaningful incentives to local people to protect their wildlife heritage will help to alleviate poverty and eliminate poaching. 

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Critical Facts

In May this year, we reported on a UN report, which highlighted the devastating impact humans have on the Earth's ecosystems and habitats. The report revealed that one million plant and animal species are now at risk of extinction. This poses a serious threat to ecosystems that people all over the world depend on for their livelihood and survival. It is therefore essential that we continue to educate future generations about our world and how to live in it sustainably.

Poverty is still a very real problem in areas where rhinos are found in their natural habitat. Offering meaningful incentives to local people to protect their wildlife heritage will help to alleviate poverty and eliminate poaching.

Teaching children from a very young age about the importance of caring for the environment is an important step to ensuring future generations are conservation aware and motivated to protect their environment. 

Conservation education is about empowerment. It enables people to understand the importance of the natural resources around them and work towards sustaining these resources so that their futures are economically stable and healthy.

It is essential we provide tangible benefits and employment opportunities for community members.

What we have achieved so far

We work with schools and children in the UK and, with the help of our partners, in communities surrounding rhino habitats as part of our Rhinocation programme.

International Education Initiatives

Whilst it is essential to provide education about rhinos and conservation within Africa itself, it is also important to raise awareness around the world and to also engage the younger generation in those countries to which rhino horn is exported.

Rhinocation aims to provide schools with a programme that is focussed on the threats facing Africa’s endangered wildlife, and in particular the rhino.  The Rhinocation team provides students with face-to-face awareness sessions that are interactive and encourage students to identify potential solutions to the rhino poaching crisis.

In 2019 we brought Rangers working to protect rhino in their natural habitat to the UK so that international students could hear directly from those people working in the field.

In the US, we are supporting a major outreach and student engagement campaign focused in south California and among communities that are primarily of Asian descent.  The demand for rhino horn globally is largely from current and former residents of East Asian countries. It is likely that only China and Vietnam import and use more rhino horn than the United States!

Community based initiatives in the field

In the field, we provide education resources for use in schools and programmes established to engage with the local adult populations. These programmes cover all conservation issues: anti-poaching, habitat loss, welfare of domestic animals, and management of water sources.

Our education work in the field includes: 

• The Black Mambas Bush Babies programme, based in schools in communities surrounding the areas where the Black Mambas patrol, works with children between the ages of 7 and 17.  Over 2000 children across ten schools have been taught about the different behaviours of wildlife, of how to protect them, and have been given an introduction to ecology and conservation.

• We work with communities in South Africa's Eastern Cape through the Kariega Foundation. Team members deliver environmental lessons at five primary schools and three high schools. These lessons include information on water conservation and drought, soil conservation and land degradation to help shine the light on the importance of wildlife conservation.

• We support the treatment of domestic animals through outreach veterinary programmes and the creation of local businness opportunities in communities surround Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya.

How your gift will allow us to sustain our community and education work

Your support will have a great benefit on those involved with education outreach programmes in the communities surround rhino habitats. It will empower and enable local people to become involved with conservation.

By increasing local community involvement in the conservation of wildlife, it will allow them to see the tangible benefits of conservation and how it can have a positive impact on their lives.

It is essential we continue to ensure that wildlife conservation translates to better education, healthcare and infrastructure for the next generation of wildlife guardians.