Today, seven brave women are embarking on a gruelling 5-day Wilderness Trail in the iMfolozi Game Reserve to highlight the ongoing rhino poaching crisis and also in memory of the late Dr Ian Player, who founded the iMfolozi Wilderness Area that is now under threat from the Ibutho Coal mining application.
The group includes three women deeply involved in conservation and anti-poaching efforts, and three teenagers – one from Mozambique – who attended the World Youth Rhino Summit in September last year: Sheelagh Antrobus (head of Project Rhino KZN), Micah van Schalkwyk (World Youth Rhino Summit coordinator), Bronwyn Laing (Rhino Art ‘Let our Voices Be Heard’ campaign leader), Gwendolyn Isaacs from Ashton College in Ballito (who turns 18 whilst on the Wilderness Trail), Jacomé Pretorius (16) from Glenwood House in George, Western Cape, Kelly Dramos (16) from the American International School of Mozambique in Maputo, and Penny Parker, from outdoor equipment retail group, Cape Union Mart.
Lead by a single guide, the ‘Women in the Wilderness’ group will walk through Big 5 territory for 5 days, carrying all their supplies in backpacks, sleeping in the open and taking turns on night-watch to guard the single fire on which their nightly meal will be cooked. With no cell communications or contact with the outside world, they will pass through the hills and valleys where a handful of southern white rhino was rediscovered and saved from extinction by Ian Player and other iMfolozi game rangers in Operation Rhino’s relocation effort of the 1960’s, which reintroduced this rhino species to game reserves throughout southern Africa, including the Kruger National Park.
Rhino poaching shows no signs of abating at the start of 2015, with unofficial reports putting the national tally at 183. KwaZulu-Natal has lost 18 rhino this year and every game reserve in the province is on constant high alert for rhino poaching incursions.
KwaZulu-Natal possesses the rhino population with the farthest reaching genetic pool and the Imfolozi Wilderness Area forms part of the greater Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Park, which has one of the highest concentrations of rhino in the world and is a constant target for rhino poaching syndicates.