Uganda
Building Homes for the Batwa Pygmies
The Rare Species Fund is helping support the Batwa pygmy tribe of western Uganda through the building of homes, education and cultural preservation.
The Batwa are one of the world’s oldest tribes. Often referred to as the forest people, the Batwa have been living in the jungles of central Africa for as much as 30,000 years. Over the millennium, they have been able to coexist with their natural environment. With the modernization of the world, the regions of untouched forests have greatly diminished. Download the PDF.
Kiweewa Petrus Kkukumba
The Rare Species Fund welcomes its first International Ambassador, Kiweewa Petrus Kkukumba. Petrus has been working with the RSF for the past several years, helping facilitate communication with some of the local project leaders in Uganda and has been helping source some of the gear that the Rare Species Fund provides to rangers, anti-poaching units and scientists in the field. Download the PDF.
Mobile Community Health Clinic Helping Uganda Gorillas
The Rare Species Fund has provided tents to help create a mobile health clinic for our partner, Conservation Through Public Health, in western Uganda. By monitoring the health of villagers living near the national parks, their livestock, and the health of the gorillas, CTPH is able to mitigate the transmission of diseases between these groups. Download the PDF.
Gorilla Conservation Coffee
The Rare Species Fund has participated in a project in conjunction with its Uganda conservation partner, Conservation Through Public Health. Funding for this project helped create product branding and educated local farmers in sustainable farming methods, increasing product quality and yield. Further, some of the coffee producers in this project were once poachers who have been given an alternative method of providing for their families. Download the PDF.
Anti-Poaching Drone
The Rare Species Fund provided the first anti-poaching drone for use in the national parks by the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA). The drone is currently being used in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest which is home to the largest population of the world’s 900 remaining mountain gorillas. The Impenetrable Forest was aptly named because the steep, mountainous terrain and the dense equatorial foliage make the park tricky to access. While this provides a modicum of safety for animals living within the park, it also makes it difficult for rangers to monitor illegal activities within the park. Download the PDF.
Chimps Saving Chimps
Over a number of years, funding raised by chimpanzees Vali and Sugriva has been used to help conserve wild populations of chimpanzees and the world’s last remaining 900 mountain gorillas. By supplying researchers and rangers with specific equipment and training needed to complete conservation tasks, the Rare Species Fund is ensuring the greatest value for every conservation dollar spent. To date, encounters that Vali and Sugriva participate in have provided nearly $100,000 for chimpanzee and mountain gorilla conservation in Uganda. Download the PDF.
Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH)
The RSF is working hand-in-hand with Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH), an organization in Uganda working to preserve some of the last remaining mountain gorillas. CTPH monitors the health of the gorillas and works to prevent the spread of disease between humans, livestock and gorillas, which share the same territory. RSF has hand-delivered vital research equipment to the CTPH Gorilla Research Clinic at the base of the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest.
KICHIDA Anti-Poaching
The Rare Species Fund happily announces the continued success of its efforts in wildlife conservation in Uganda. By supplying essential equipment to the KICHIDA anti-poaching units in the field, the RSF is helping to reduce the illegal killing of chimpanzees and other animals in the Rwenzori mountains. Although Ugandans themselves do not eat chimpanzees, poachers often snare these great apes and kill them for the bush-meat trade which is rampant in the Congo, just across the border. Download the PDF.
Kenya
International Elephant Foundation
The IEF supports elephant conservation and education, goth in managed facilities and in the wild. One example of the many projects supported with funding from the RSF is in Burkina-Faso and West Africa, where the human population will triple by 2050. IEF’s philosophy is simple: people protect what they appreciate. And we appreciate what we know intimately. More than 80% of the children who took part in the IEF educational program had never seen an elephant before. Now hundreds along with their families are involved in long-term elephant conservation. Such efforts connect local populations to their African wildlife heritage and a rapport with nature that had all but faded into history.
Zimbabwe
Victoria Falls Anti Poaching Unit (VFAPU)
The Rare Species Fund has delivered GPS and photographic equipment to help support the work of the Victoria Falls Anti Poaching Unit in the Upper Zambezi National Park in Zimbabwe. The RSF also pays the monthly salary of a VFAPU ranger which is responsible for removing snares from the park and apprehending poachers. Since its inception, the VFAPU has removed in excess of 10,000 snares and have rescued countless animals from an agonizing death. By working with and employing members of the local community, the VFAPU is helping to instill a local value for wildlife beyond the bush meat trade.
Matabeleland World Wildlife Heritage Site
RSF has funded the Matabeleland leopard and Cheetah Project, founded in Zimbabwe in 2001 in cooperation with Viv Wilson and staff at the Chipangali Wildlife Trust. The Project creates wildlife conservation strategies for Zimbabwe ’s National Parks with emphasis on monitoring the home range, movements, and behavior of leopards and cheetahs.
Namibia
Cheetah Conservation Fund
The world’s fastest land animal, the cheetah, can reach speeds of 70 miles per hour. The cheetah also is the most endangered cat in Africa. Funding from RSF supports the Cheetah Conservation Fund in its efforts to provide a knowledge base that will encourage and assist local farmers in conservation initiatives, assure that predator conservation issues are included in formal education curricula and textbooks, and develop partnerships with institutions of higher learning to help train and guide future scientists and decision-makers in their wildlife conservation policies. RSF also provides on-the-ground training, sharing its 30 years of wildlife conservation experience with local staff.
South Africa
Raptor Research Foundation
The Raptor Research Foundation (RRF) is the world’s largest professional society for raptor researchers and conservationists. Founded in 1966, the RRF accumulates and disseminates scientific information about raptors, organizes annual scientific conferences, provides grants for student researchers and conservationists, and serves as a key source of information for governments, wildlife agencies, zoos, and non-profit conservation agencies. RSF funding supports RRF’s work among its members in 50 countries on six continents.
Cheetah Outreach
At the turn of the 20th century, an estimated 100,000 cheetahs lived throughout Africa and in parts of the Middle East and Central Asia. Today there are just 7,500 cheetahs left and South Africa is home to fewer than 1,000 of these majestic cats. RSF provides funding for the work of Cheetah Outreach, an education and community-based program created to raise awareness of the plight of the cheetah and to campaign for its survival. Launched in January 1997 by founder Annie Beckhelling with just one hectare of land and two cheetahs, Cheetah Outreach has grown to be one of the most respected cheetah preservation agencies in the world.
Black-Footed Cat Working Group
The black-footed cat is Africa’s smallest wild cat species. A fully grown male weighs five pounds on average and reaches a body length of only two feet. This secretive and retiring cat is the rarest of the African fields. RSF assists in funding for radio transmitter collars, field research, and breeding studies.
Endangered Wildlife Trust
The RSF has contributed annual funding to the Endangered Wildlife Trust, focusing heavily on the breeding and distribution of livestock guarding dogs to farmers and ranchers throughout southern Africa. Once the dogs are placed on farms, their constant presence within sheep and goat herds deters predators from preying on livestock, thereby avoiding potential conflict between predator and farmer. RSF funds also help relocate predators off of farm lands, where they are likely to be killed, into protected wildlife management areas.
Leopard Relocation
The Rare Species Fund recently participated in the relocation of a young wild leopard in northeastern South Africa. Working with long time partners, Cheetah Outreach, the RSF helped move the leopard to a temporary holding facility where it will be cared for and allowed to develop necessary survival skills before being returned to the wild in approximately one year’s time. The leopard was trapped by a famer because he thought the cub was killing some of his valuable game animals. While the more likely suspect would have been this leopard’s mother, the farmer ended up trapping this less wary and less experienced juvenile leopard. While live-trapping a leopard is not strictly legal in South Africa, at least this young leopard was not injured or killed. Extermination is far too often the fate of wild predators that come into contact with humans. Download the PDF.
Mozambique
Niassa Carnivore Project
The RSF supports the Niassa Carnivore Project, conducted by the PCT inside Niassa National Reserve, located in northern Mozambique on the border with Tanzania, one of the largest and least developed places in Africa. Despite decades of war and neglect, this extensive wilderness has survived largely intact and is home to large concentrations of African lions, African wild dogs, leopards and spotted hyenas. With assistance from the RSF, the Niassa Reserve provides protection to these precious natural wildlife resources via educational programs, political outreach and radio tracking of individual animals.