DEHORN RHINOS AND THEIR CLIENTS. So reads the sticker that will be available at two action points for Rhino Week from 14-18 May to raise awareness around illegal poaching.
It was the original distribution of the sticker that led six like-minded staff and students to set up a task team for organising the first-time event on campus.
“It happened organically,” says task team member and SRC Environmental Councillor Ruth Krüger about the motley crew. “It’s not a society thing. It’s a passion thing.”
Action points at the Kaif and Drostdy Arch aim to attract Rhodes students and members of the Grahamstown community alike. T-shirts, hats, black ribbons and raffle tickets for a trip to the Kariega Game Reserve will be sold. Free stickers will be handed out with a request to donate.
A major objective of the event is to raise money to help rhinos in crisis. This includes funding medication for Thandi, the rhino who is battling to survive a brutal attack at Kariega in early March, during which two other rhinos were killed for their horns.
RU Green task team member Sarah Mitchell says that many people know about rhino poaching. “However, the question is whether they know about the serious effects, the pain the rhino endures and death that will likely occur.” In the first 128 days of this year, 210 rhinos lost their lives. It is expected that 600 rhinos will be killed by the end of the year, compared to 448 in 2011.
Krüger believes that awareness is fundamental. Together with the task team, she hopes to create a mind-set in people where it is “not actually even possible to do these things. For people to reject poaching outright and not allow it to happen.”
According to Safety, Health and Environment officer Nikky Köhly, who is also on the team, some people may respond to the weeklong focus on rhinos by asking, ‘What about all the other animals that also suffer at the hands of humans?’
“We feel strongly about all these too,” she says, “but we want to focus specifically on rhinos this week. It is a crisis because they are once again being threatened with extinction, and their suffering is so unnecessary. We must find solutions…FAST!”
Rhino Week events that are looking at the situation on the ground include an update on Thandi’s situation by her vet, Dr William Fowlds on Tuesday, and a panel discussion on Wednesday looking at the issue from four different perspectives. The weeklong event will culminate in a candlelight vigil on the Union lawns on Friday evening.
Krüger says it is an opportunity for people to speak to each other about how the situation makes them feel. “Particularly here in the Eastern Cape, so close to Kariega, people have been traumatised by this. And we do need to talk about it. We need to mourn the rhinos that are gone.”
Asked about the importance of holding events such as these on campus, Krüger regrets that so many students are unaware of the crisis. “It’s an understandable situation – students are busy; we live in a bubble separated from the rest of the world. But because you have the ability to help, you also have the responsibility to help,” she concludes.
By Ruth Woudstra
Rhino Week task team leader Ruth Kruger sports one of the t-shirts to be sold at the Kaif and Drostdy Arch action points this week.