Protecting Rhinos in South Africa and Namibia

Preserving and protecting the environmental integrity of its property has been MalaMala's rasion d'être for over sixty years. Its unyielding focus on the environment has resulted in one of the most beautiful and bountiful tracts of land in Africa, internationally renowned for offering some of the finest "Big-5" game viewing on the continent.

One of the great advantages of having an unfenced boundary with almost 5 million acres of the Kruger National Park is that the wildlife is free to live and move in a natural, unconstrained environment with minimal need for human intervention and interference.

 However, even with these natural defenses, the increase in rhino poaching during this time of COVID-19 has become MalaMala's greatest conservation challenge to date, prompting the Reserve to spend millions of Rands in the fight for the rhino. In response to the current threat, the reserve has significantly increased its team of anti-poaching field rangers and added multiple high-tech cameras with cellular functionality for real-time poacher identification.

Similarly, Wilderness Safaris, through its COVID Relief Project is also increasing anti-poaching and wildlife monitoring to combat rhino poaching in Namibia. Utilizing two helicopters and a fixed-wing aircraft, the most recent operation saw the dehorning of nearly 50 rhinos – a deliberate strategy to deter poachers.

Ongoing surveys and patrols have given the conservation team the opportunity to not only document and closely observe Namibia's wildlife populations, but have significantly contributed to the steep drop in rhino poaching from these protected areas, even during the COVID crisis.