Grants
Recent Save the Rhino grants
A huge thank you to all of our supporters and donors for making all of these grants possible. Please find below a list of grants from the last 12 months; further details can be found in our Audited Accounts and Annual Review.
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March 2013
We sent final payments totaling £1,318 for the 11th African Rhino Specialist Group meeting in Kenya, paying for equipment hire at the conference and day fees for the 16 Kenyan rhino experts who joined us for Day 3 of the meeting.
February 2013
We gave out a modest £2,923 in February, with more grants expected to go out in the next few months.
£2,087 to Save the Rhino Trust in Namibia, for its Field Patrolling and Monitoring Programme. 2,000 euros came from Krefeld Zoo in Germany, which is supporting SRT for the second time, and the other £375 was from our core funds, to reward the informer whose information led to the recovery of a pair of rhino horns and the arrest of two individuals, in connection with the rhino poaching incident in the Kunene Region just before Christmas. The information received was a vital step for the investigation.
£581 went towards the costs of the African Rhino Specialist Group meeting, held in February in Kenya.
£144 paid for the renewal of the Lowveld Rhino Trust’s domain name for its website.
The remaining £111 was for misc. items of kit donated to staff from the Maasailand Preservation Trust / Big Life Foundation in the Chyulu Hills of Kenya, the North Luangwa Conservation Programme in Zambia, the Ministry of Environment and Tourism in Namibia, and the Association of Private Land Rhino Sanctuaries in Kenya.
January 2013
We granted £38,858 as follows:
We sent a total of £11,508 – a mixture of core funds, USFWS and WWF-SA – to help pay for the African Rhino Specialist Group meeting in February in Kenya. This covered some delegates’ flights and accommodation at the meeting, as well as internal transfers from the airport to the venue.
We gave a total of £600 to the Dambari Wildlife Trust in Zimbabwe, for its ongoing work in the Matobos Hills, which still has small numbers of black and white rhinos. The funds came from our Adventure! Dinner, when we auctioned the chance to volunteer for two weeks at Dambari’s lovely field station just outside Bulawayo.
We awarded £4,850 to Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park, made up of miscellaneous donations from a range of people – Julie Mather, Bruce Simpson, Peter de Wit, Vlok and Daniel Holland – to pay for 50 gas bottles (for cooking) and the repair of the tractor, used for transporting water to outposts. Having field rangers positioned strategically around the Park is essential for good anti-poaching.
£320 went to the Lowveld Rhino Trust in Zimbabwe, as part of the USFWS grant for a series of exchange visits, enabling rhino monitors from Zimbabwe, Namibia and Kenya to visit each other in turn. The visit by the LRT to the Chyulu Hills Game scout and rhino programme in Kenya took place in February and was, by all accounts, a great success!
We sent £21,472 to the Ministry of Environment and Tourism in Namibia, for flying during annual rhino operations in the Kunene and other areas. This came from a larger grant from USFWS, which has supported rhino ops in Namibia for many years.
And finally, we paid out £108 to the North Luangwa Conservation Programme in Zambia, for its Conservation Education Programme, now called “Lolesha Luangwa”. Our partner, ZSL, is delivering 2 x teacher-training workshops in March, to introduce the schools’ Conservation Teachers to the new materials developed by ZSL at the end of 2012.
As always, our grateful thanks to all our kind and generous donors.
December 2012
We granted out a total of £77,066 as follows:
£6,227 for the core work of the African Rhino Specialist Group. Half of this came from our own core funds, the remainder from USFWS. The capacity building and coordination work of the AfRSG is a vital part of rhino conservation efforts in Africa.
We sent a total of £23,981 for the 2013 meeting of the African Rhino Specialist Group. This meeting is being funded by Save the Rhino, USFWS, WWF-SA, Defra, Ol Pejeta Conservancy (in-kind support) and participants’ own organizations. The funds are being used to pay for participants’ flights, accommodation and conference costs and internal transfers. For further information on the meeting, click here.
Knuthenborg Safari Park in Denmark raised a wonderful 19,000 Danish Krone, which translates to £2,127, for Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park. The money will be used to buy 7 x camouflage uniforms for the Anti-Poaching Unit and 15 x Landcruiser tyres for patrol vehicles.
We sent grants totaling £31,707 to the Lowveld Rhino Trust in Zimbabwe, which monitors important black and white rhino populations in Save Valley Conservancy and Bubye Conservancy. £17,709 of this came from Knowsley Safari Park, which has fundraised for the Lowveld over the last three years: £6,250 was used for ongoing rhino monitoring, while the remainder is being used for a community incentives scheme, whereby schools are rewarded based on a net gain in the black rhino population. Dublin Zoo gave 5,000 euros for ongoing monitoring, we gave £5,955 from our own core funds, and other people made additional donations via our website totaling another £1,966. Finally, we sent £2,043 from USFWS funding to pay for the third in a sequence of exchange visits, to pay for three trackers and the rhino monitoring coordinator to visit the Chyulu Hills Game scout and rhino programme.
We gave £1,756, from core funds and a Disney Worldwide Conservation Fund grant to pay for the costs of Paul Bamford and Kate Oliver, from the Zoological Society of London’s Learning and Discovery Department, to fly to North Luangwa in March 2013, to run a series of teacher training workshops to introduce teachers in schools surrounding North Luangwa National Park to the new curriculum developed at the end of last year by ZSL. ZSL has contributed approximately $26,000-worth of time and technical support to North Luangwa’s Conservation Education Programme, so we were pleased to be able to cover some of their costs for this return visit.
Finally, we sent over £11,268 to Save the Rhino Trust in Namibia. £10,025 was from our core funds, and will be used to help cover SRT’s finance and admin costs for the period Oct-12 to Nov-13: finance personnel salaries, telephone & ADSL line, alarm monitoring costs, water & electricity - SRT office, stationery, computer costs, insurance, cleaning, postage and courier costs, printing, garage rental x 2, consultancy fees, Trustee expenses, bank charges, payroll costs and audit fees. Another £900 was raised from an auction lot donated by Wilderness Safaris and auctioned at our annual dinner in October 2012, while £343 was donated by supporters via our website.
Thank you to everyone who made these donations possible.
November 2012
We granted a total of £30,204 to field programmes as follows:
We sent £4,825 to Big Game Parks in Swaziland, raised by the readers of Sporting Rifle magazine via an auction of donated lots. Our thanks to all the donors of the lots and to the bidders. The funds will be used to pay for bicycles in increase patrol mobility and for bullet-proof vests for the anti-poaching unit.
£3,225 went to Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park in South Africa, for rhino anti-poaching operations. This money came from the raffle we held at our Adventure! dinner in October, in which the star prize was an 8-night holiday for two people in KwaZulu-Natal, including 2 nights in the Park/
£125 went to the Kenya Wildlife Service to help cover the costs of the Cycle with Rhinos event in Lake Nakuru National Park.
We paid out £6,606 on invoices incurred by the rhino technology meeting hosted by Namibia’s Ministry of Environment and Tourism. Save the Rhino booked almost all the flights for the attendees, as well as arranging the conference venue and accommodation and organising internal transfers. The meeting costs were mainly covered by USFWS, though we also contributed funds, and Namibia Wildlife Resorts offered a generous discount on the venue.
We awarded a total of £13,905 to the North Luangwa Conservation Programme in Zambia, thanks to a series of grants / donations received, as well as our own core funds. Peter Lawrence once again donated £1,000, which paid for 5 digital cameras + cases + memory cards, as well as helping to fund pickets in the rhino sanctuary; $20,060 from USFWS for the ongoing costs of the Conservation Education Programme, now renamed “Lolesha Luangwa”, and another £969 from core funds.
£1,311 went to Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya, from the proceeds of an auction lot sold at our Adventure! dinner in October.
£650 from core funds to Save the Rhino Trust in Namibia, to help cover the costs of a small Scene-of-the-Crime training course held in Etosha National Park. The original USFWS grant paid for Advanced, Train-the-trainer and Basic courses in February 2012, and it’s great to see the learning being rolled out to other people.
Finally, we gave out various items of kit (SRI Tshirts, caps, badges etc) to many field programme staff in Kenya, Namibia and Zambia; these are often used as rewards for special achievements and are a great motivator.
October 2012
We granted a total of £45,718 to field programmes as follows:
£12,527 to a Vietnamese NGO called Education for Nature-Vietnam. This is the first time that Save the Rhino has made a grant to an NGO working in one of the rhino horn consumer countries, and is in response to the rising demand for rhino horn that is leading to poaching levels unprecedented since the late 1980s and early 1990s. The grant will pay for two projects: a public awareness campaign that will run from Dec 2012 to Sept 2013 and a law enforcement project. It involves targeting businessmen and the general public. For businessmen, ENV is contacting CEOs of companies, producing Tet postcards, printing adverts in business newspapers/magazine, running viral ads and working with corporate partnerships. For the general public, ENV is producing two PSAs that will run on TV and radio, as well as working with traditional medicine providers and drugstores to place materials in their shops, a university programme and an online viral campaign. On the law enforcement side, our grant will be used to strengthen ENV’s Wildlife Crime Unit and help to pay for the toll-free hotline for reporting of wildlife crimes and its officers who work with the local authorities to follow up on crimes.
We sent £4,825 to Mkhuze Game Reserve in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, raised by the readers of Sporting Rifle magazine via an auction of donated lots. Our thanks to all the donors of the lots and to the bidders. The funds will be used to pay for geysers to provide hot water at remote camps: this will really help raise the morale of the rangers deployed on long patrols.
We granted £2,690 to Ol Pejeta Conservancy In Kenya, the majority of which was raised by OPC’s CEO, Richard Vigne, who took part on the Gold Challenge to run / walk / row 2,012 kms as part of the 2012 Olympic celebrations. The money will be put towards the construction of a new KPR (Kenya Police Reservist) camp on the Conservancy.
We sent $40,000 from Save Our Species to Save the Rhino Trust in Namibia for its ongoing Field patrolling and monitoring programme. In total, SOS awarded $100,000 to SRT, and the funding has been immensely helpful for covering these recurring costs. Our very grateful thanks to Save Our Species.
Finally, we received surprise (and slightly late, though the team had already exceeded their fundraising target) sponsorship for the Peaks Foundation, raised by one of the participants in the January 2012 3 Peaks 3 Weeks challenge. The £771 was nonetheless very welcome
September 2012
We sent out a total of £59,819 to field programmes as follows:
The IUCN African Rhino Specialist Group received a total of £4,333. $5,000 of this was the first of two installments from USFWS towards the ongoing Secretariat costs for the period July 2012-June 2013; while the remainder was to cover the cost of the Chair, Dr Mike Knight, attending the annual EAZA conference in Innsbruck. The European Association of Zoos and Aquaria has approx. 75 rhino-holding zoos as members, and this was an excellent opportunity for Mike, and for SRI’s Director Cathy Dean who also attended, to try to build closer links between in situ and ex situ rhino conservation programmes.
We awarded a total of £4,500 to the Association of Private Land Rhino Sanctuaries in Kenya, for its Emergency Fund for the period April 2012-March 2013. This fund is used to cover 50% of the costs of any emergency work / veterinary treatment for black rhinos on APLRS members’ land, whether from in-fighting or poaching attempts. Based on 2011-12 actual costs, this grant should be enough to cover the whole 12-month period, though that will depend on the number of incidents that require support.
We sent $49,500 from USFWS to the Chyulu Hills Game scout and rhino programme in Kenya. These funds will help pay for Game scouts’ wages, rations, the Enforcement and Intelligence Officer’s wages and overnight allowance, vehicle fuel and maintenance, radios and communications equipment, camping equipment and uniforms
We paid out £3,177 on invoices incurred by the rhino technology meeting hosted by Namibia’s Ministry of Environment and Tourism. Save the Rhino booked almost all the flights for the attendees, as well as arranging the conference venue and accommodation and organising internal transfers. The meeting costs were mainly covered by USFWS, though we also contributed funds, and Namibia Wildlife Resorts offered a generous discount on the venue.
Finally, we were able to send a tremendous £17,019 to the International Rhino Foundation for the Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary in Indonesia, thanks to: a grant of £8,000 from Chester Zoo; 5,000 euros from Wilhelma Zoologischer-Botanischer Garten in Stuttgart in response to our I Will Survive appeal; and £5,000 from our own core funds. This money will help to cover the ongoing running costs at the SRS, which saw the first birth in captivity of a Sumatran rhino in Indonesia.
August 2012
We sent out a total of £18,017 as to field programmes as follows:
£4,086 to the Ministry of Environment and Tourism in Namibia, to pay for satellite bracelet collars (collars that fit round a rhino’s leg, with a transmitter in it) for rhino operations in Etosha National Park. These will provide an extra level of security for rhinos straying out of the Park. $5,143 of this came from USFWS RTCF, while 1,000 euros was donated by Opel Zoo, which first began supporting MET’s work in 2005. We gave another £4,575 from our own core funds to pay for RFIDs – tags that are inserted into the rhinos’ horns and which send an alarm signal if the horn passes a boundary or checkpoint.
£9,356 to the Mkomazi Rhino Sanctuary in Tanzania, for its Rafiki wa Faru environmental education programme, which has been running since 2007. $11,120 of this came from USFWS RTCF, in its fourth year of funding for this programme; the remainder from anonymous individuals and our own core funds.
We are deeply grateful to all our supporters who make these grants possible.
July 2012:
We sent out a total of £47,217, which broke down as follows:
£26,430 to the Ministry of Environment and Tourism in Namibia, to pay for a rhino security and technology workshop for rhino field programme managers from African rhino range states and India, to examine different modern technologies than can assist with rhino monitoring and anti-poaching. £25,733 of this came from USFWS RTCF, while the remaining £697 was from our core funds; these grants paid for the venue costs for the meeting as well as for the flights of some of the delegates. This November meeting will be extremely practical and helpful we believe.
We sent £4,387 to the North Luangwa Conservation Programme in Zambia. £2,000 of this came from the Mackintosh Foundation, to pay for exchange visits for ZAWA scouts in North Luangwa to visit the Lowveld Conservancies in Zimbabwe, to see how the Lowveld Rhino Trust’s rhino monitors operate. A return visit will take place later this year. The remaining, restricted donations from David James, Peter Lawrence and others will be spent on miscellaneous equipment and on the Conservation Education Programme.
We awarded a total of £6,375 from our core funds to Save the Rhino Trust in Namibia, which will be used to help cover ongoing costs in their financial year 2011-12, as well as to cover flying time for an emergency operation.
Lastly, we sent £10,025 to the Zambezi Society in Zimbabwe, from a restricted donation for its ongoing leopard survey.
As ever, our thanks to all the donors who made these grants possible.
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June 2012:
We sent $5,000, the first half of a $10,000 commitment from our core funds, to the African Rhino Specialist Group, to help cover its core costs, primarily salaries and travel and subsistence fees for the Chair and Scientific Officer.
We transferred £3,430 (a third of the funds raised by the Rhino Trek South Africa team) to Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park. R20,000 went to the construction of the hangar for the Bantam microlight; R5,500 for the purchase of a brush-cutter, needed to cut grass for firebreaks and in camps and outposts; R6,000 for a chainsaw, used to remove trees that fall on the fenceline or trees pushed into the roads by elephants; R9,000 on 6 x Landcruiser tyres; and R1,500 for an industrial drill used for installing safes, drilling fence poles and general work in the Park. We also sent over a US$23,105 grant from USFWS Rhino and Tiger Conservation Fund, to pay for Private Pilots’ Licence renewals, microlight fuel, maintenance and insurance costs and various equipment items.
Chester Zoo very kindly gave us £6,800, to which we added £5,000 from our own core funds, to pay for the purchase of a new rhino monitoring vehicle for Manas National Park in Assam, India. Rhinos have been reintroduced to Manas as part of the Indian Rhino Vision 2020 masterplan, but having lost two rhinos to poachers in the last 12 months, it’s essential to keep patrol teams mobile and out in the field.
We sent £939 towards the creation of the Javan Rhino Study and Conservation Area in Gunung Honje, in the eastern tip of Java. £900 of this came from Blair Drummond Safari Park, which is also supporting a particular Javan rhino project, “Building leadership capacity in Indonesia”. The other £39 came from a donation to our Operation Javan Rhino appeal of two years ago.
The team behind Going Down South – an expedition from London to Cape Town – have raised £2,000, which is being split equally between two programmes: the Mkomazi Rhino Sanctuary in Tanzania and the Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary in Uganda. Andre and his friends will visit both sites during their travels.
Peter Lawrence, a long-time supporter, recently donated £1,000 for the North Luangwa Conservation Programme in Zambia: we used the first £463 to buy 4 camera cases and 6 pairs of binoculars for the scouts. Deputy Director Susie Offord will deliver these when she visits the programme in July / August 2012.
We transferred £15,000 for the Rhino Protection Unit programme in Indonesia: £10,000 of this came from the BBC Wildlife Fund – sadly the last grant it’ll make, as it’s being shut down at the end of this year – and the other £5,000 was from our own core funds. These grants will help pay for RPU salaries in Way Kambas and Bukit Barisan Selatan National Parks.
We sent £50,618 to Save the Rhino Trust in Namibia, thanks to another grant from the wonderful USFWS Rhino and Tiger Conservation Fund. These funds will be put towards the Field Patrolling and monitoring programme run by SRT in the Kunene Region of northwest Namibia, where the world’s largest population of rhino on land that is not formally protected (i.e. it is not a national park or game reserve) survives.
Finally, we sent two grants to other charities with whom we'd worked on joint events: £3,430 to Wildlands Conservation Trust in South Africa, and ££3,448 to the Peaks Foundation.
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May 2012:
We sent a total of £6,833 to the Chyulu Hills Game scout and rhino programme in Kenya, made up of £500 from the Dischma Charitable Trust, £8 from Chester Zoo (left over from the purchase of camera traps at the end of last year!) and £6,325 from our own core funds, as part-match funding for a USFWS grant we hope to receive. This money will help pay for ongoing costs of the Game scout and rhino programme: salaries, vehicle running costs, rations, etc.
We gave a repeat grant of £900 to the Rhino Resource Center, for its annual running costs. The RRC is an excellent resource, particularly for MSc and PhD students.
We gave a total of £12,781 to the North Luangwa Conservation Programme in Zambia, made up as follows: $11,800 from the Disney Worldwide Conservation Fund for NLCP's Conservation Education Programme; $2,000 from our core funds to pay for emergency vet treatment after the sudden deaths of six animals in late 2011; and £4,000 from core funds for the repositioning of sanctuary fences, to enable the animals to reach better browse and water sources throughout the year.
Finally, we sent £12,109 to Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park in South Africa: 2,000 euros from Safari de Peaugres towards construction costs of the Bantam microlight hangar; £4,443 from Colchester Zoo's Action for the Wild fund for the purchase of 10 new digitial 2-way radios and spare batteries; and another £6,000 from core funds and misc. donations received for Bantam running costs and items of rhino monitoring equipment.
As always, our thanks to all the donors who made these grants possible.
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April 2012:
We sent £7,000 to the Environmental Investigation Agency and another £7,000 to the Gorilla Organization, at the rest of Douglas Adams's family, following the great success of Douglas Adams The Party on Sunday 11 March. Douglas was involved with both of these charities as well as with Save the Rhino, and we were pleased to be able to support them.
We sent £2,525 from our own core funds to Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park in South Africa, to help pay for the construction costs of the hangar for the Bantam microlight, acquired last year for aerial surveillance of the Park.
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March 2012:
Thanks to Amnéville Zoo in France, we were able to send 10,000 euros to the Chyulu Hills game scout and rhino programme in Kenya. The Zoo has supported the Chyulus’ rhinos for several years now, helping to pay for game scout salaries, vehicle running costs, and for field and monitoring equipment.
We sent a total of £4,899 to the Lowveld Rhino Trust in Zimbabwe ($2,750 from USFWS, the rest from our own core funds), to pay for ongoing running costs of the new vehicle we bought for Chap Masterson, the Rhino Veterinarian for Africa employed by the LRT and the IRF. With planned operations in Save Valley Conservancy and in Bubye Valley Conservancy, as well as any emergency responses that come up, the vehicle is going to be in heavy demand this year.
Finally, we sent over the first, $50,000 installment of a grant received from Save Our Species for Save the Rhino Trust in Namibia’s Field patrolling and monitoring programme. Save Our Species is a joint initiative of the Global Environment Facility, the IUCN and the World Bank. A fundamental goal is to ensure the long-term survival and well being of threatened species and their critical habitats for biodiversity conservation.
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February 2012:
$2,500 to pay for Namibian veterinarian Carl Heinz Moeller’s participation in the Dangerous Drugs course held at Malilangwe in Zimbabwe. Carl Heinz went on to become the top student in the class. We’re really grateful to Opel Zoo in Kronberg, who has helped the Ministry of Environment and Tourism’s rhino conservation work in Namibia ever since the EAZA Rhino Campaign 2005-6. Thanks to Opel Zoo, and congratulations to Carl Heinz!
£5,000 from the BBC Wildlife Fund to help pay for a floating Rhino Protection Unit station in Way Kambas National Park in Indonesia. This floating base will give the RPU teams more flexibility as they work on a number of fronts to protect the Critically Endangered Sumatran rhino; encroachment into the Park, using logging roads and the seashore, is a particular problem, threatening not just rhinos but other megafauna in Way Kambas. Our thanks to the BBC Wildlife Fund for its continued support.
January 2012:
£4,184 (5,000 euros) to the Lowveld Rhino Trust in Zimbabwe, thanks to Dublin Zoo. This money will go towards ongoing rhino monitoring costs. The LRT’s scouts monitor rhinos in Save Valley and Bubye Valley Conservancies, which still have important populations of black and white rhinos, despite the poaching crisis.
£1,050 to the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in the Laikipia District of Kenya, which has Southern white, black and 4 Northern white rhinos. Ol Pejeta donated a safari holiday to be auctioned at our PechaKucha Wild dinner last November, and 50% of the proceeds from the lot have been awarded back to OPC.
$5,000 to the International Rhino Foundation for the work of the Rhino Protection Units in Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park in Indonesia, thanks to a repeat grant from the Taiwan Forestry Bureau. This Park is home to one of Indonesia’s three Sumatran rhino populations, and the RPUs look for signs of rhinos and other large mammals, as well as picking up snares, dealing with illegal logging and any other infringements in the Park.
$22,350 from USFWS Rhino and Tiger Conservation Fund went to Save the Rhino Trust in Namibia, for a Scene-of-the-crime training course, that took place in late February and early March. Rod Potter and Wayne Evans of Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife, taught 20 people from the Ministry of Environment and Tourism, NGOs, community conservancies and private custodians the Advanced course; 10 of those went on to do the Train-the-trainer course; and a further 60 people were given the Basic Scene-of-the-crime course: what to do if you’re the first person to find a crime scene, how to collect and record evidence, and how to present the case in court. A full write-up will be published in the spring 2012 issue of our magazine, The Horn, and will also be put up on our website.
Finally, we sent £475 to the International Rhino Keepers’ Association, from the proceeds of the IRKA calendars we sold on their behalf. The funds will be granted on to the International Rhino Foundation, for our shared Operation Stop Poaching Now appeal.
December 2011:
December was a busy month, with a bit of a Christmas giveaway bonanza, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. Please find below details of the many grants we made.
$5,000 to the African Rhino Specialist Group, from Save the Rhino’s core funds, for the ongoing work of the Chair and Scientific Officer, which includes a range of tasks, such as: CITES / IUCN compliance: Compiling the continental data that feeds in to Red List; CITES (report to CoP, report to TRAFFIC, attendance at CoP and occasional other meetings / proactive work now with South Africa and Zimbabwe); Range state support: Assisting national plans; Advice (email / letter) to range states; Support EAC / RMG / SADC RMG / RESG; Expert witness / provide testimony on prosecution cases; Endorsement of priority projects; Donor liaison: Comment on fundraising proposals sent to donors; Donor relationship management (timely and helpful applications and financial reporting); and Communications coordination: Coordinating proactive group positions on emerging issues and emergencies; Communications, awareness and networking to members and public (list serve, regularly updated website, more strategic publication of papers on website); Liaison with other IUCN specialist groups / TRAFFIC / ex situ rhino community as necessary; Determine date and country for next AfRSG meeting. We’re delighted to be able to support such valuable work.
£10,500 to the Association of Private Land Rhino Sanctuaries in Kenya, for its intelligence and informer network. This was made possible by a grant of £7,000 from Chester Zoo, and a donation of £3,500 from Ian Anderson. Our thanks to both. APLRS members have agreed on a standard compensation to be rewarded to sanctuaries’ security personnel once they apprehend poachers or recovered firearms targeting rhinos. Secondly, informers who supply credible information leading to arrest of poachers are also compensated through the same system but channelled through the concerned sanctuary. All rewards have to be thoroughly vetted against set criteria by all members during the quarterly meetings.
£1,730 to Borana Conservancy in Kenya, for the planned introduction of black rhinos, raised via the auction at our Pecha Kucha Wild! event held in November.
A grand total of £12,438 to the Maasailand Preservation Trust for the Chyulu Hills Game scout and rhino programme in Kenya. This included £5,000 from the Ernest Kleinwort Charitable Trust, £4,796 from Chester Zoo for the renovation of Simba camp, where key programme personnel are based, and £795 from Chester Zoo for the purchase of six camera traps, as well as numerous smaller donations from individuals. The new Kenya Wildlife Service strategy for black rhino conservation identifies the Chyulus’ population as a priority area for the next five years.
£950 for the Dambari Wildlife Trust in Zimbabwe, made up of a donation from our former member of staff, Cath Lawson, and via the auction at our Pecha Kucha Wild! event held in November.
£4,677 for the Javan Rhino Conservation and Study Area in Indonesia, primarily from Stuttgart Zoo’s grant of 5,000 euros, but also from donors to our Operation Javan Rhino appeal.
£3,958 for the Lowveld Rhino Trust in Zimbabwe, made up of £2,000 from the Marjorie Coote Animal Charities Trust, misc. donations and raised via the auction at our Pecha Kucha Wild! Event held in November.
£3,522 for the North Luangwa Conservation Programme in Zambia, from our core funds, to pay any shortfall on the new rhino monitoring vehicle, and / or for rations for the Zambia Wildlife Authority scouts who patrol the Park.
£14,259 for the Rhino Protection Unit programme in Indonesia, made up of several smaller donations, as well as £8,000 from Chester Zoo and £6,196 from David Back’s fundraising efforts to mark his 50th birthday. These funds will pay for RPU salaries and vehicle support costs in Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park and will also help to refurbish a patrol boat for Way Kambas National Park (with additional support coming from the BBC Wildlife Fund).
£15,142 for Save the Rhino Trust in Namibia. This came from several grants and donations: $1,000 from the Paulson family; $12,490 from Save the Rhino’s own core funds; 2,000 euros from Krefeld Zoo; £4,376 raised via the auction at our Pecha Kucha Wild! event, thanks to the donation of a fabulous 6-night safari by Wilderness Safaris; and other small-but-nice donations!
And £31,852 for Wildlands Conservation Trust in South Africa, the majority of which was raised at a joint event we held at Christie’s South Kensington last June.
That makes over £102,000 given out in December – what a bumper month! Thank you so much to all our donors.
November 2011:
We sent £4,570 to Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park in South Africa to pay for much needed replacement solar panels at two field ranger camps to ensure proper radio communications. This was made possible with a grant from Colchester Zoo’s Action for the Wild, we are very grateful for their continuing support of this project.
Other miscellaneous field programme gifts included vehicle stickers for North Luangwa Conservation Programme in Zambia and Chyulu Hills Game scout and rhino programme in Kenya. Pin and embroidered badges, caps and T-shirts were given to Mkomazi Rhino Sanctuary in Tanzania during a staff visit.
October 2011:
We sent £34,337 to Toyota Gibraltar to pay for a new field patrol vehicle for the North Luangwa Conservation Programme in Zambia. This purchase was made possible with very generous grants from the Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund, The Martin Wills Fund, the Simon Gibson Charitable Trust, donations from Peter Lawrence and from Save the Rhino core funds.
£17,775 was sent to the Zambezi Society in Zimbabwe for its Leopard project made possible by a grant from WildCRU.
In September 2011:
The Aspinall Foundation gave an extremely generous donation of £20,000 to the Javan Rhino Conservation and Study Area via the International Rhino Foundation, a very important grant considering the recent news of Javan rhino now extinct in Vietnam.
$68,997 was sent to the Chyulu Hills Game scout and rhino programme in Kenya, thanks to a grant from US Fish and Wildlife Service’s Rhino and Tiger Conservation Fund (USFWS). The grant will be put towards ongoing running costs of the game scouts, towards the purchase of another field patrol vehicle and towards the purchase of a new tracker dog. Chester Zoo also provided a grant of £8,030 which will go towards the game scouts, GIS software and GPS tracksticks and networking of the project’s office computers.
USFWS also made repeat grants to the three Environmental Education Programmes: $21,145 to North Luangwa Conservation Programme’s Conservation Education Programme in Zambia; $15,142 to Mkomazi Rhino Sanctuary’s Rafiki wa Faru (“friends of rhino”) in Tanzania; and $20,611 to the Environmental Education and Ecoliteracy Programme run by the Laikipia Wildlife Forum in Kenya, the grants will be used towards the running costs for the period July 2011 – June 2012.
We sent $10,000 to the IUCN African Rhino Specialist Group made possible by a grant from USFWS, which will be used towards the running costs of the Secretariat.
$47,250 was sent to Toyota in order to purchase a new veterinarian field vehicle for the Lowveld Rhino Trust in Zimbabwe, again made possible by a generous grant from USFWS.
£1,800 was sent to Dambari Wildlife Trust in Zimbabwe (formerly known as Marwell Zimbabwe Trust), made possible by a personal donation by Cathy Dean and Kenneth Donaldson.
And finally we sent £7,000 to Borana Conservancy in Laikipia District, Kenya, which is due to receive black rhinos for the first time very soon, from neighbouring ranch Lewa Wildlife Conservancy. The grant will be used in preparation of the rhino’s arrivals, including the purchase of digital tracking radios. This grant was made possible due to a very kind donation from long-time supporter, Ian Anderson, who has also provided an unrestricted donation which will be put towards our newly designed website (in progress –watch this space for launch early in 2012!)
August 2011:
We sent £3,055 to IUCN African Rhino Specialist Group from core funds. The first of two installments which will be used towards the core running costs of the Secretariat, support which is as vital as ever during the current rhino poaching crisis.
£1,839 went to the Lowveld Rhino Trust in Zimbabwe. The funds went towards locally incurred costs during the most recent exchange visits, where field teams from both Chyulu Hills Game scout and rhino programme in Kenya, and from the Ministry of Environment and Tourism in Namibia, visited the Lowveld Rhino Trust in order to share best practice and information on rhino monitoring and anti-poaching measures. This was made possible by a grant from US Fish & Wildlife Service.
The Ministry of Environment and Tourism in Namibia received £1,164 which went towards accessories for an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), including wing items, fuselage items, landing gear, engine cowling, engine temperate sensors, protective case for wings, flight stand, and flight simulator. This was made possible with the remaining funds of a grant from Opel Zoo.
Finally £2,000 was sent to Silver Jungle which was made possible with a grant from the Simon Gibson Charitable Trust.
July 2011:
We sent a total of £2,133 to the Ministry of Environment and Tourism in Namibia, of which £1,815 from Opel Zoo-Kronfeld in Germany went on a top-of-the-range metal detector, to be used in the event of a rhino carcass being found, in order to locate any munitions; with the remainder used to buy fuel for a team from MET who were visiting the Lowveld Rhino Trust in Zimbabwe, to discuss shared interests in rhino monitoring and anti-poaching measures, from a grant by USFWS. Opel Zoo has supported MET since 2005, when it made its first grant via the EAZA Rhino Campaign that we helped coordinate, and has continued to do so every year since then, despite having no rhinos in its collection. Thank you Opel Zoo and USFWS!
We transferred £5,537 to the Mkomazi Rhino Sanctuary in Tanzania, to help cover the running costs of Rafiki wa Faru, the wonderful environmental education programmes that has been going for three years now. £4,500 of this came from our fantastic 2011 Mt Kilimanjaro climbers, led by Mark Worsfold, and the remainder came from a BBC Radio 4 appeal, broadcast a couple of years ago. The funds had been held over until now as we’d managed to secure other funding for Rafiki wa Faru.
Finally, we sent £500 to the Surrey Amphibian and Reptile Group, at the request of one of the Kili climbers, who so exceeded his initial fundraising target that we felt obliged to honour one of his other passions!
June 2011:
We sent £5,280 to the Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya which will be used to increase security and to purchase much needed monitoring and surveillance equipment. This grant came from the fantastic fundraising efforts of Tim Holmes and friends who climbed Mount Kenya in February.
We also sent a phenomenal $91,415 to the Peaks Foundation. This grant was made possible from the fantastic 3 Peaks 3 Weeks 2011 Team. The grant will be split between the Laikipia Wildlife Forum in Kenya for its Community Conservation Programme, Support for International Change (an HIV / AIDs organisation) and the School of St Jude’s (both organisations are in Tanzania).
£45 of SRI kit was given to Dambari Wildlife Trust in Zimbabwe and £5 worth of kit to the members of the recent exchange visits hosted by Lowveld Rhino Trust in Zimbabwe.
May 2011:
£3,690 was sent to the Environmental Investigation Agency, which was their share of proceeds from the most recent Douglas Adam’s Memorial Lecture.
We sent £6,960 to the Zambezi Society in Zimbabwe for its rhino monitoring and other conservation work.
Finally, £125 was granted towards the “Cycle With Rhino” event held in Lake Nakuru in Kenya.
April 2011:
We sent $25,589 to Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Park in South Africa to pay for running costs of their new microlight. (A huge congratulations to Section Rangers Dirk Swart and Lawrence Munro for recently completing their Private Pilot Licence training). This grant was made by US Fish & Wildlife Service’s Rhino and Tiger Conservation Fund. We also granted £1,650 from core funds to the same project to enable the purchase of a much needed microchip scanner for law-enforcement.
We were delighted to send a fantastic £30,000 via the International Rhino Foundation to the Rhino Protection Unit programme in both Bukit Barisan and Way Kambas National Parks in Indonesia. This fantastic grant came from the BBC Wildlife Fund who have committed £40,000 over two years.
We also sent some additional funds of £423 raised from our Javan Rhino Appeal for the Javan Rhino Study and Conservation Area in Java, Indonesia via the International Rhino Foundation and £29 from sales of the book “Silver Jungle” to the Sumatran Rhino Sanctuary in Indonesia.
We sent a whopping $82,740 to Save the Rhino Trust in Namibia. Another grant from US Fish & Wildlife Service’s Rhino and Tiger Conservation Fund which will help to enhance security and monitoring capabilities in Kunene Region in Namibia.
We also provided £48 worth of embroidered SRI badges and caps for Ministry of Environment and Tourism in Namibia.
From core funds, we provided a grant of £900 to the Rhino Resource Center for running costs.
We assisted with a new website for the Lowveld Rhino Trust in Zimbabwe, luckily with minimal costs of £11 and bought a new camera memory card costing £5 for North Luangwa Conservation Programme in Zambia.