Home Species We Protect Rhinos How DSWF is protecting Rhinos
Andrew Hawrylyszyn
David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation

How DSWF is protecting Rhinos

Rhino populations have decreased dramatically throughout Africa and Asia due to the devastating demand for their horn as an ingredient in Traditional Chinese Medicine and have never been in greater need of protection. 

How DSWF is protecting Rhinos

David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation (DSWF) have been proud protectors of rhinos since our inception in 1984.

By providing funding for monitoring, anti-poaching, and species protection operations across both Africa and Asia, we provide a boots-on-the-ground solution to rhino protection.

We also actively engage with government and international policy conventions (such as CITES), to ensure the toughest legislation is enacted and implemented to protect rhinos in the wild, and we continue to fight for an end to all trade in rhino horn.

Save the Rhino Trust
David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation
David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation
Anti-Poaching

Anti-Poaching

 

David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation
Funding research and monitoring programmes

Funding research and monitoring programmes

 

David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation
Rapid action wildlife emergency initiatives

Rapid action wildlife emergency initiatives

Aimed at protecting both wildlife and communities. Many of these emergencies often take place in rhino bearing areas or involve key rhino populations in need of help to ensure their survival.

Fight. Protect. Engage. Fight. Protect. Engage.
David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation

Protecting desert-adapted black rhino in Namibia

For nearly four decades, DSWF funding has gone towards protecting the world’s last remaining stronghold population of desert-adapted black rhinos, in Namibia. We focus on direct ground-based support, through ranger patrols who spend thousands of hours each year patrolling this arid and difficult terrain on foot, in search of poachers. This approach has been extremely successful in protecting rhinos, despite the extensive poaching in other parts of Namibia and across southern Africa.  

As well as supporting anti-poaching teams, DSWF also fund research and monitoring programmes in Namibia to collate vital data on the remaining populations, which is imperative to their survival and in helping inform government and conservation protection strategies.

The majority of the rhino populations in the areas of operation DSWF support are outside of National Parks so vital work is carried out to proactively engage local communities who share the land and to establish positive and well-coordinated, understood conservation practices. 

Protecting the greater one-horned rhino in India

In Assam, northern India, our front-line conservation partners extensively protect three National Parks and one Wildlife Sanctuary that collectively are home to around 2,885 greater one horned rhino, out of a global population of less than 4,000. The recovery of the rhinos in this area has been a conservation success story that DSWF is proud to support, as we have for over two decades.

In addition to anti-poaching patrols, village defence teams and K9 units, our funding in India also goes towards undercover investigations into the trafficking of rhino and tiger parts, as well as training workshops for local police, forest, and judicial officials. Our hugely popular ‘Rhino Goes to School’ education activities teach local children to love rhinos and help them learn more about environmental issues, as well as giving them important transferable skills.  Nature orientation camps, funded by DSWF are also hugely popular ways of engaging the local youth in the importance of conservation. 

Across Asia, DSWF also support rapid action wildlife emergency initiatives in many forms, aimed at protecting both wildlife and communities. Many of these emergencies often take place in rhino bearing areas or involve key rhino populations in need of help to ensure their survival.

Will Fortescue
David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation
Lawrence Avery
David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation

With your donations DSWF will continue to support

  • Anti-poaching and anti-trafficking ranger patrols to ensure key rhino habitats are protected from poaching and illegal wildlife activity
  • Wildlife Ranger training and welfare programmes supporting the brave men and women on the front line across Africa and Asia
  • Demand reduction campaigns around the consumptive use of rhino horn
  • De-horning and other anti-poaching mitigation techniques aimed at protecting vanishing rhino populations
  • Monitoring and research patrols to better inform rhino conservation strategies and behaviour patterns in Namibia
  • K-9 anti-poaching dog patrols to help avert and detect poaching incidences in India
  • Translocation activities to ensure rhino populations are safe and thriving
  • Educational workshops for communities in rhino bearing areas to foster interest and awareness in rhino conservation
  • Legal and judicial workshops to ensure poaching and trafficking suspects are successfully detained and prosecuted
  • Intelligence networking to report on illegal trade routes being used for rhino horn
  • Equipping front line staff with field equipment including raincoats and boots.

You can support our work to save endangered animals from extinction by adopting today.

David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation

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All donations will help us continue our vital work conservation work to protect endangered species and turn the tide on extinction.

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