Q2 IMPACT REPORT | APRIL – JUNE 2022
Dispatch from Zimbabwe
As I stop by the HQ of the source location of animals in our Project Rewild Zambezi initiative to send you this week’s Watch Wednesday, it follows a morning tracking rhinos with expert rangers and trackers.
Once again, I can only tip my hat at the great work, so many dedicated rangers are doing. Without them, I do not doubt at all that there would not be a single animal left in the wild.
This week, following World Ranger Day, I want to share our Great Plains Foundation quarterly report because it includes our work and success with Project Ranger, a project you have helped with your support.
Conservation today is a wide range of things, a menu of solutions that include boots on the ground and lobbying in the halls of justice. It includes communities, education and future generations while it fights corruption and organised crime. At times it is overwhelming.
But at other times, it is heart-warming, like today, when the armed ranger Beverly and I were with turned to us in silence but the broadest of smiles. Behind him, a female white rhino and her calf stood still in the thick bush. A black rhino bull, head up, sniffed his way past. Totally unaware of any of us. A special moment indeed.
Three protected souls, under his guard, all unaware of his efforts. Unlike us. We know what he does, and we thank him.
Thank you for supporting our Great Plains Foundation initiatives and our long-term vision of wildlife conservation and community upliftment across Africa.
THE HIGHLIGHTS
- Project Rewild Zambezi relocation preparations are complete and ready to start safely relocating 3,000 animals to Sapi.
- 7 Female Rangers were hired, trained and equipped to start work monitoring in the Okavango Delta
- 8 Antipoaching units supported across 4 countries under Project Ranger
- A 3rd bridge was built for communities in the Masai Mara to safely cross for access to medical support, schools and more.
- 23 teachers’ salaries supported in the Amboseli, directly impacting 6,490 school children’s education.
- 4,450kg of safari camp waste composted for community projects.
