Save the Rhinos with Mahlatini
Posted on Friday, April 1st, 2011
This morning, I got an email letting me know about the awesome project Mahlatini have embarked on to save the rhinos of Africa. As a safari blogger, I have worked with Mahlatini in the past, and am really excited to tell you about their latest initiative to stop rhino poaching and protect the rhinos of Africa for all of us.
Rhino poaching is a huge, huge problem in Africa at the moment. The rising value of rhino horns worldwide for medical use has inspired poachers of all stripes to try and harm these beautiful beasts in the quest for their rhino. This belief is ridiculous – it’s like believing that eating your toenails will cure cancer – but a lack of education and a consistent belief in these crazy ideas is severely harming rhino populations and setting us back years and years in our goal to eradicate poaching and conserve these animals. Mahlatini’s business is sending people to Africa, but they are also a company passionate about the country; many of the employees are actually South African, which gives them an essential perspective on the crisis, but since they’re based in Northern Ireland, they can use their influence to spread the word in the UK.
To this effect, the company are giving away a rhino sponsorship from the World Wildlife Foundation in addition to their own support of Amakhala Game Reserve’s conservation mission, which appears to be the backbone of the campaign. To enter, you just need to tell people about the competition online – so via your own website, Twitter, or Facebook. Best of all, if you do all three you actually get three entries, so it’s worth it to get your name in the pot more than once.
This is such an easy way to get out the word out about the very real problem that is rhino poaching. We are losing our few breeding rhinos and they are in danger of becoming even scarcer. I’ve seen people upset that they missed out on these sightings in Africa; well the problem is just going to get worse if people keep killing these poor creatures for what is essentially a worthless horn. This is a problem that education and knowledge can stop, so let’s get working on stopping it now!
