Strauss & co - WWF Art Auction

10 Saving Africa’s rhino I t’s hard to imagine that in Kenya in the mid- 40s, rhino were considered vermin. 1 This was at a time when Kenya had over 18 000 rhino compared to their total of only 1 000 today. It is also interesting to know that WWF actually started its African rhino work in Kenya a few years before, in 1964. By 1990, WWF International agreed that a more coordinated rhino approach was needed. Following many discussions and planning sessions, the WWF rhino strategic plan was launched seven years later. This was largely in response to the change in rhino population patterns and threats to their existence. Up until the 90s, rhino populations were mostly affected by hunting but after 1990 poaching became a bigger factor and heavily influenced the increasing decline. The strategic plan of 1997 was also the start of WWF’s coordinated continental efforts in the African Rhino Programme which, while hosted in Zimbabwe, was focused on growing rhinos in historical rhino range states across Africa. These include South Africa, Namibia and Kenya – which have the most rhino – as well as other areas that have some rhino such as Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana, Swaziland, Mozambique, Malawi, Tanzania and Uganda. There are also long-term plans to re-introduce rhinos into historic range states, if seen as viable, where they once roamed in Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo, southern Sudan and Cameroon, where a sub-species was declared extinct in 2011. In 2009, the African Rhino Programme shifted to South Africa, withWWF-SA as its host, and was steered by new leadership under Joseph Okori ( pictured centre ), who moved from his home country of Uganda. As the head of the African Rhino Programme, Joseph identifies key issues impacting rhino survival, guides rhino investment on behalf of WWF in Africa and oversees rhino activity in key rhino countries, or range states. But back to the mid-1960s whenWWF was starting its rhino work in Kenya, Uganda was emerging with its newly found independence, and Joseph was born. With a vet for a father, Joseph grew up among animals from cats and dogs to cows and goats. For three months a year, Joseph would also herd goats across unfenced land. He moved among wild game, an experience that he recalls gave him a sense of harmony in his younger years, a sense of coexistence with nature and the association of valuing the goats and the wildlife, and how they provided sustenance. In his formative years, young Joseph had a fascination with wild animals and noticed that it was the vets who were in charge of wildlife © Martin Harvey /WWF-Canon ©WWF ©WWF-Canon / Green Renaissance