South Africa's rhino-poaching crisis is horrifying, not only for its scale, but for the brutal and seemingly uncontrollable slaughter of one of our most iconic species. And now, SA's major conservation agencies warn, fraudsters are out to exploit this situation for their own profit.
"We recently counted 240 new organisations raising money for rhinos. Nobody has ever heard of them, so who knows what they're doing?" says Kirsty Brebner, Rhino Project manager at the Endangered Wildlife Trust, whose website notes that 135 rhinos have already been poached this year.
In 2011, it was 448. Ten years ago, just 25.
Conserving anything from whole ecosystems to critically endangered species since 1973, the EWT is one of SA's largest non-profit conservation organisations. Among others, its Rhino Project raises orphaned rhino calves for wild reintroduction, facilitates the training of anti-poaching units and deploys dogs to support anti-poaching and sniffer patrols.
But now it's worried about the hucksters preying on the public's good intent.
"Just recently, young girls have been going into Joburg pubs, selling teddy bears for R300 for rhinos, and people are buying them," she says. "Everybody is so horrified by the gory pictures that it's easy for people to buy a R50 teddy bear, resell it for R300, and pretend it's for rhinos."
Some organisations, Brebner says, are claiming to raise money for rhinos they don't even have.
In December 2010, a group of so-called activists staked out a corner of Sandton City shopping centre in Joburg for several days, supposedly raising rhino funds. A month later, their donors had begun to doubt their legitimacy and complained to the centre. According to centre management, they handed the matter to the police last year, and it is still under investigation.
"This is of huge concern to us - we know the public can be easily swayed to support programmes that don't add value to the poaching crisis," says DrJoseph Okori, head of the World Wide Fund for Nature's African Rhino Programme.
"If you're a member of the public and you find out you've unknowingly given to some skelm organisation, it tarnishes everyone raising money for rhinos," says Brebner.
Adds Garth Barnes, national conservation director for the Wildlife and Environment Society: "It creates a donor fatigue, where people battle to understand who they should be donating to."
Could the need for accountability and cooperation among rhino fundraisers come at a more critical time?
South Africa, as Okori puts it, holds 20715 rhino, 1915 black and 18800 white. Lose South Africa's rhino, and we lose more than 90% of the continent's rhino.
TELL US: What's a fitting punishment for a rhino fraudster? E-mail tiara.greenlife@gmail.com
WHO CAN YOU TRUST?
- . The Endangered Wildlife Trust
- .Worldwide Fund for Nature
- .Wildlife and Environment Society
- .StopRhinoPoaching.com
- .The Wilderness Foundation
- .Jacaranda 94.2
- .The Wildlands Conservation Trust
- .Project Rhino KZN
- .Woolworths My Planet
- .LeadSA. Visit LeadSA's www.rhinoactiongroup.org/Friends-and-Enemies.aspx for more.
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