Rockin' rhino man to spend 30 days in marquee above Montecasino

An environmental campaigner will spend a month in a tent suspended over northern Johannesburg, trying to persuade you to spend between R5,000 and R10,000 to join him for an hour.

Gareth Putter will have all the mod cons, from WiFi to free vegan food, in the fairly well-insulated marquee that has been erected on scaffolding 16 metres above the ground at Montecasino in Fourways.  

Founder of the organisation Rocking For Rhinos, he is braving the autumn weather and risk of boredom in a bid to raise R3m for the conservation of rhinos in South Africa.

The organisation was established following the surge in rhino poaching a few years ago.

"We are losing a species and it is happening very quickly. We are losing about two to three rhinos every day in South Africa," he said on Friday.

Putter hopes to receive support for his "hour up the tower" initiative, during which corporate South Africans will be challenged through radio drives and social media to spend time with him. They will be charged a minimum of R10,000.

Putter said anyone else who wants to spend an hour up the tower with him has to donate R5,000.

The marquee is fitted with a flushing toilet, table and chair, a small food tray and a sleeping bag and blankets.

"It is going to be a very difficult challenge, because the top surface is not big at all," said Putter.

"I am going to have to stay up there for a full month, so I will try and keep myself busy with a bit of exercise and drawing, whatever it takes to keep myself sane."

Putter, of Nelspruit in Mpumalanga, said a team of volunteers is donating time to assist with the "rhino tower".

"Nature, wildlife, is my passion and I am a qualified guide - that is what I've wanted to do since I was a kid."

Yet his young son made him realise that more needed to be done to look after the planet.

"We are all concerned about having good jobs and material possessions, but if we don't have an Earth to live on, we have nothing."

Meanwhile, Lester Lindsay, from Flying for Rhino in Hoedspruit, Limpopo, said his organisation was launched five years ago with "a passion to save the wildlife".

"Our mission is to supply free air support to any rhino or protected species. That is only doable through donor funding. We still need all the help that we can get, because Hoedspruit is the hotspot in Limpopo for the moment."

He appealed to South Africans to come on board to support the cause, saying most donations currently come from overseas.

Lindsay said it was "heartbreaking" growing up around the animals and monitoring them daily.

"The tragedy is always finding that carcass after monitoring the animals over the past five years, because you get to know the animals.

"Coming across that animal that has been poached, you take it to heart, you take it personally. You have mixed emotions, sad in one way, angry in another."

The Founder of Pit-Track NPC K9 Conservation and Anti-Poaching Unit, Carl Thornton, said: "From a global aspect, rhinos have been on this planet, Earth, for 40 million years and at the turn of the 20th century we had half a million rhinos on the planet. Today, we are looking at 20,000 rhinos left. That's four percent left of our rhino population. We can expect complete extinction of rhinos as a species (in) the next 50 years."

Thornton said the "time is now" to save the species from extinction.