Cape Town - SANParks Honorary Rangers is hard at work to stop rhino poaching in the Kruger National Park and all SANParks areas with assistance and collaboration from Rhino Tears, a wine brand, that donates towards the rangers with every bottle sold.
SANParks Honorary Rangers chairperson John Turner said the voluntary honorary rangers performed various projects in support of conservation efforts in the South African national parks.
However, due to a shortage of funding over the past two years of the Covid-19 pandemic, these efforts were in need of massive support.
Over the years, Turner said they concentrated on anti-poaching efforts, particularly for rhinos but now they were also working with the groups down Cape to help with abalone poaching, pangolin poaching and the problem of succulents that get poached.
“Funding has become a major problem since the outbreak of Covid-19, most of our funding dried up and corporations just do not have the kind of funding they used to. Unfortunately, the worst sector hit was tourism and because conservation relies almost totally on tourism, conservation bodies are now under dire strain,” Turner said.
To try and alleviate this strain, the SANParks Honorary Rangers, in association with Mount Vernon Wines, launched a blended red, white and rosé wine range – Rhino Tears Wine.
Rhino Tears founder and Mount Vernon MD John Hooper said R15 from every bottle of Rhino Tears bought was given to the SANParks Honorary Rangers, who in turn used 100% of the funds for anti-poaching projects within SANParks
“Rhino poaching, over the past couple of years, is out of control with very little support from government and we need to do everything we can to avoid extinction of the White and Black Rhino,
“Considering the selling price on Rhino Tears is R79.99 the R15 a bottle is a large portion of the costs. To date we have raised just short of R3 million, more than any other wine brand in the world when it comes to saving rhinos,” Hooper said.
SANParks spokesperson Isaac Phaahla said the steady decline in rhino poaching in Kruger National Park was related to the expansion of anti-poaching activities and a close working relationship between the police's endangered species unit and the SANParks Environmental Crime Investigation (ECI) unit.