Thursday 7 October 2010

Endangered wildlife of Zimbabwe

Keith and Lisa founded ‘The Aware Trust’ to help the endangered wildlife of Zimbabwe – rendered even more threatened by the political crises of the last few years and the poverty and unemployment that ensued.
Rhino horn used to be poached for dagger handles in Yemen, but now it’s taken for Chinese medicine – and worth fifteen thousand US dollars a kilo in-country. That’s a hell of a temptation for hungry men.
There are stories of angry poachers killing dehorned rhinos out of spite or to avoid wasting a night tracking a worthless beast – but the current feeling is that if a whole population in an area is dehorned, the poachers will leave them alone and search further afield,
Here in the Matopos Hills, near Bulawayo, there is a healthy population of some fifty white rhinos and about fifteen of the smaller black species.
When we started on Sunday, there were twenty two to do, and in two days we managed eleven.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

So how does that come under the remit of helping working animals?

SPANA (Society for the Protection of Animals Abroad) said...

Right from the start SPANA has always had a policy of never turning any animals away. we've treated injured owls, stalks, eagles, a lion, not to mention chickens goats and live stock.

Cleary Rhinos are not our major role, but we were asked to help by providing our vehicle for a few days as we work with our vets on our project with donkeys, were not providing any finical help, just our muscles and our vehicle.