100,000 pounds to be raised every year for rhino conservation

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Rhino conservationist to raise £100k a year

 

By Paul Eccleston

Last Updated: 1:01pm GMT 12/03/2008

 

An architect who witnessed the slaughter of rhinos in Africa is raising

funds to help guarantee their survival.

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David Back worked for six years as a safari guide in Zambia in the early

1980s during which the whole rhino population of South Luangwa Park was

poached.

A black rhino in Luangwa Park, Zambia in 1982 (left) and Indian rhinos

in Kaziranga National Park (right)

 

To mark his 50th birthday in 2009 Back has undertaken to raise £100,000 for

three successive years with the money going to rhino conservation work.

 

To date his Horny@50 campaign has raised £55,000 in support of an

international translocation project moving black rhinos from South Africa,

where they are plentiful, to Zambia.

 

The scheme is being co-ordinated by the Frankfurt Zoological Society and

Zambia's North Luangwa Park and 15 rhinos have been successfully moved to

the Luangwa valley in Zambia. A further five animals are due to arrive in

May.

The Hecules aircraft (left), unloading the black rhinos in Zambia

(middle) and moving them to 'bomas'

 

So far £35,000 has been donated to help fund the transportation of the

rhinos in a huge specially chartered Hercules aircraft.

 

The animals spent 10 days in the security of a 'bomas' to help them to

recover from the stress of the journey and to adapt to a change in diet.

They were then released into a protected area.

 

So far four calves have been born to the animals - a tribute to the

adaptabilty of the rhinos and the work put in by park authorities to protect

them.

 

Back, managing director of London-based Artillery Architecture and Interior

Design, said: " Within the time I spent in Zambia, the healthy population of

black rhinos was totally exterminated.

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" Most of the killings were by poachers for the lucrative Yemen and Oriental

markets where horn is used for dagger handles and Chinese medicine

respectively.

 

" One year we found 17 skulls within a few kilometres of camp - an area where

previously some 3,000 rhinos had flourished. These animals have existed for

40m years on Earth and it was devastating. "

 

This year money raised from donations, sporting dinners, safari auctions and

sports and celebrity memorabilia sales will go towards saving the Indian

rhino and next year the Sumatran rhino.

 

Indian rhinos are concentrated in wetlands in Kaziranga National Park where

they are prone to flooding and the pressures of over population as well as

poaching.

David Back, founder of Horny@50 (left) and a black rhino is released

onto Zambian soil (right)

 

Back hopes to buy two boats at a cost of £50,000 each allowing Forest

Department scouts to patrol for poachers.

 

The Sumatran rhino is the rarest of the five rhinoceros species and lives in

deep Indonesian jungle where it is threatened by loss of habitat and the

spread of human settlements.

 

Back plans to travel to Sumatra this year to identify suitable conservation

projects.

 

For further information, to attend an event or to make a donation please see

*www.artillery.co.uk/horny@50*