Winning the Battle for Africa
Just consider the following:
Every nine hours, a rhino is killed in South Africa
Five elephants an hour are lost across Africa
In the last 50 years 95% of the lion and leopard population in Africa has been lost
The single greatest threat to all of these and other big game species in Africa is illegal poaching
Statistics such as these speak for themselves, and what they are saying quite clearly is that, at current rates of loss, the extinction of some of the world’s most beloved species is imminent—in some cases perhaps as soon as the next five years. This is what filmmaker and activist Dereck Joubert calls the “Battle for Africa,” and his Great Plains Foundation, launched late last year, is gearing up now to win the war on Africa’s wildlife.
Great Plains Foundation is an offshoot of Great Plains Conservation, a commercial entity that works to conserve land in Africa by strategically acquiring areas under threat (often next to national parks and reserves) and by creating protected zones for carrying out sustainable economic initiatives like eco safaris or photo tourism. While preserving land in this way is an important first step to saving Africa's natural ecosystems—and while profits from these endeavors are in many cases invested back into the local communities that inhabit the land—the amount of acreage and resources in play is often not enough to protect resident wildlife. This is where Great Plains Foundation comes in.
Operating on all lands owned and managed by Great Plains Conservation, the Great Plains Foundation will work to identify initiatives and best practices for replenishing local wildlife and protecting species under threat from poaching. While Conservation will continue to expand its holdings (GPC has set a goal of increasing the amount of land under management from 1 million to 5 million acres in the next decade) and run educational safaris for the public, the Foundation will concern itself with aggressive conservation initiatives that are expected to include species re-location and the creation of safe havens and breeding grounds for endangered animal populations; micro-chipping rhinos and elephants to track their horns; installing state-of-the-art security and anti-poaching monitoring systems in protected areas; and grassroots education campaigns to ensure that all members of Great Plains communities and beyond understand the unique threat facing each of Afria’s big species at this moment in time, and what they can do to help.
But the Foundation is still new, and their work has just started. To show your support and to make a donation, please visit their website to learn more about how you can help, and keep checking back on Epic Road's blog to follow future developments!
