R10m Redirected to African Rhino Conservation as Australian Rescue Plan Winds Up
The Australian Rhino Project (TARP) has announced it is winding up operations and redirecting A$840,000 (approximately R9.6 million) to seven rhino conservation organisations working across South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe. Launched in 2013 at the height of South Africa's rhino poaching crisis - when more than 1,000 animals were killed in a single year - the project had aimed to establish a founder population of at least 200 African rhinos in Australia as an insurance policy against extinction. South Africa's proposed restrictions on rhino exports outside African range states, combined with ongoing policy uncertainty, rendered the original mission no longer viable.
Following a competitive Request for Proposal process that drew submissions from more than 50 conservation organisations, seven beneficiaries have been selected for work spanning anti-poaching, GPS monitoring technology, orphan care, translocation and community-led conservation. Recipients include Food for Rhinos NPC, which will receive A$250,000 to sustain a Waterberg facility that has raised 46 rhino calves since 2015, and Save the Rhino Trust Namibia, which will receive A$85,000 to support community-led black rhino conservation across more than 25,000km² of communal conservancies. Funds are being released this week under executed donation deeds, with programmes running between three and 12 months, against a backdrop of significantly reduced poaching figures - South Africa recorded 352 rhino poaching deaths last year, down sharply from the peak years of the crisis.
Source: Daily Maverick
