In 2010 Ubizane Wildlife Reserve lost one
of the three White Rhinos, our male, on the reserve to Rhino poaching where this
magnificent animal was hunted down and gruesomely killed for its horn. In 2011 tragedy struck again when the second
White Rhino, our female, was murdered by Rhino poachers. Now all that we have left is the beautiful
offspring of the female, which we suspect was by its mother’s side when she was
killed.
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| Our male and female Rhino which were poached a year apart March 2010 and March 2011 respectively |
All that we can do as humans is to try and
protect and conserve our wildlife. The
sad thing is that the biggest threat we need to protect our animals from, is
other humans! Our last remaining Rhino had to be dehorned in 2012 in an effort
to save him from the poachers, but we knew back then that it would not be
enough to stop the terrors in the shadows.
Since the dehorning we have been constructing a plan for better
protection which will still set the animal free to roam the property but keep
him safe. It is a very delicate
situation as the poachers could at any moment return and strike again for the
last remaining piece of the horn. We
decided to find an anti-poaching task team and more security guards to help us
protect our dear precious big boy. After
months of planning and searching for the perfect team, we are proud to have a
whole anti-poaching unit and a new security head and team to help us fight
poaching!
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| Our last remaining Rhino |
Ubizane has also decided to publicly
support anti-poaching organisations to encourage support from our guests and
friends. All our vehicles are now
equipped with a RhiNose (http://rhinoseday.com/)
to support the nationwide fund for anti-poaching of Rhino’s.
We also now sell Rhino Wine in support of
Project Rhino KZN (
http://www.projectrhinokzn.org/)
with a part of the proceeds going to Project Rhino KZN to help fund the
anti-poaching units.
To us poaching is also more than just rhino-poaching. We also have bush meat poachers coming onto
the farm on a weekly basis despite our efforts to try and prevent it.
These poachers poach smaller animals such
as Nyala and Impala and sometimes even Zebra.
In the past they use to poach for food, hence they were called “pot
poachers”, but of late it has become a business and a means of income, with a
single Impala being sold for about R400 to the local community. Apart from meat, parts of certain animals are
also sold to “traditional healers” for what is called, “muti”, making this a
lucrative business, in turn increasing occurrences of poaching on a monthly
basis.
We always try to employ from the community
to provide the chance to make an honest living, where there is no need to poach
but unfortunately this has not made a major difference in the attempts to
poach. Our newly appointed anti-poaching
team has however made a remarkable change on the reserve with numbers of poaching
and attempts of poaching decreasing. The
amount of snares found on the farm has also decreased showing us that our
efforts are slowly but surely helping our fight against poaching.
Things are looking up for our anti-poaching
efforts and your support helps motivate and inspire us to conserve our
environment even better than ever before!
