It has taken a lot of thought to make the decision to publish this plea on our travel website. I have decided to place this request here in an effort to reach as many people in far off lands who might be thinking of or using Rhino and other wild animal products and in particular Rhino horn derived products. These products are sourced from once living, breathing, breeding, eating, sleeping, peaceful Rhinos at rest, at play or simply just being ancient behemoths wallowing in a deep, cool mud wallow in some private glade in a beautiful, protected area in Africa.
More Rhinos live in and are protected in South Africa than in the rest of the world put together.
But all is not well. Ruthless syndicates from around the globe convince poor people in mostly primitive villages to take up powerful, high powered guns and lethal chemicals and poisons to cruelly slaughter or disable these huge peaceful giants. The slaughter of Rhinos is not a new scourge in this world of ours and great numbers of these peaceful giants have been killed for their horns in lands far from the African shores to supply traditional and medicinal remedies and ornaments.
Rhinos have become locally extinct in most of Asia and the Far East because of the trade in their horns, skins and or bones and the sights have now been firmly trained on the world’s last remaining viable populations of endangered Rhinos in Africa.
In South Africa our Rhinos are being slaughtered, shot and killed or drugged with immobilizing darts and hacked to pieces with huge knives, chopping their horns off their heads while these giants are immobilized but still alive causing them to die, suffocating in their own blood leaking into their nasal passages which have been violently hacked open with sharpened knives and axes. Not a pretty picture but true.
There is a war out there driven by unscrupulous syndicates who have a business plan designed to supply Rhino horn to people, people bound by misguided traditions and medicinal myths, perpetuated to keep these gangsters in business. Horns are brutally hacked from the still living, immobilized Rhinos, proud bulls, pregnant and nursing cows are brutalized and slashed, cutting through the spinal columns of the babies squealing in agony trying to drive off the thugs to help their fallen mothers.
South Africans are proud of their long tradition in the conservation of our natural resources in a country with the 3rd highest incidence of in biodiversity in the world, we have an excellent track record of preserving this rich heritage but cracks are widening and the hemorrhaging of our natural resources is increasing as foreign syndicates target our plants, insects, reptiles, mammals and sea life in the lucrative trade in wildlife and marine resources.
I have had the good fortune to have lived and worked in South Africa for a lifetime where I have spent my entire career and life, working alongside and together with nature. I am shocked at the carnage being perpetrated against our resources by greedy unscrupulous syndicates who steal our rich heritage for the wealth they generate for themselves and leaving Africa still poorer.
During this time, I have enjoyed every moment where I and those who work with us have provided countless hours of enthralling entertainment to many people from around the world while showcasing the magnificence of Africa, enlightening and educating our guests to the joys and at times the sorrows of our protected heritage.
To be able to continue to show our guests the mystical Big 5 it is now time that we reach out to you, to ask you, to plead with you, too deeply consider the implications of purchasing any animal product that has caused some far off, foreign creature, a cruel, painful and untimely death to satisfy some belief in its ability to cure or help you at the expense of the life of the animal upon which it has proudly grown. Our Rhinos, the world’s Rhinos for that matter are under immense threat of becoming extinct.
Please help us to save these special animals by not purchasing their horns powdered in packets of medicine, that powdered horn has been the cause of a cruel death of a Rhino.
Help us to defend and protect our Rhinos, the same Rhinos we would love to be able to show you, alive and well, in secret places in this beautiful land of ours when next you decide to visit us here in South Africa.
Alan Fogarty
