Raoul du Toit Wins the Prestigious Goldman Evironmental Prize

  

During the twentieth century, rhinoceros populations were decimated by the demand for rhino horn. The black rhino, Diceros bicornis, once occurred throughout the savannah belt of sub-Saharan Africa, with historic estimates exceeding several hundred thousand animals.  By 1970, about 65,000 black rhinos remained. Ruthlessly hunted for their horns (for use as ceremonial dagger handles in the Middle East and traditional medicines in Asia), rhino numbers dropped 96% by 1992, to fewer than 2,600 animals continent-wide.  Between 1980 and 2008, they were hunted to extinction in Angola, Botswana, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, Uganda, and Zambia.

 

In Zimbabwe, only 370 black rhinos survived in 1993. With intensive anti-poaching efforts, populations began to recover, reaching 435 individuals in 2000 and growing to nearly 500 in 2008 - a phenomenal recovery in light of Zimbabwe’s current political and economic crisis. 

 

As Mugabe’s “Fast Track” resettlement program was initiated, urban people moved outward from cities to settle in wildlife areas, turning to poaching to supplement their nutrition and their income. Simultaneously, the “Look East” policy was instituted to attract foreign exchange. Zimbabwe allocated several coal mines to Chinese companies near, and sometimes directly underneath, key rhino populations. Mining causes immediate habitat degradation and disturbance to the rhinos, brings unregulated, poorly paid workers to remote areas, and opens roads through which illegally obtained wildlife products freely flow. The country’s infrastructure and law enforcement capacity have collapsed, and with it, the incentive to enforce laws.

 

In the first few years of Zimbabwe’s decline, poaching was initially a matter of survival and subsistence. In the past year, however, poaching has become a high stakes, organized endeavor. Government officials, foreign workers and diplomats, and organized criminals have been implicated in illegal wildlife trade: soldiers hunting in the national parks for meat rations, diplomats and criminals smuggling untold quantities of contraband out of the country’s porous borders. Most egregiously, recent tactics have included shooting from helicopters in conservation areas and poisoning waterholes and collecting horn from dead and dying rhinos days later. Rhinos, with their multi-million dollar horns, are in high demand. 

 

Since 1986, Raoul du Toit has worked tirelessly to save his country’s wildlife. Since 1991, he has spearheaded the Lowveld Rhino Project and recently founded the Lowveld Rhino Trust to safeguard wildlife on private and communal lands in Zimbabwe’s southeastern lowveld region. The Lowveld region was formerly degraded land, overgrazed by a century of high cattle densities and largely depauperate of wildlife. In the 1980s, Raoul and fellow visionaries initiated amalgamation of privately-owned and communal lands into tracts large enough to host rhino populations. As a result of reinvigorated anti-poaching patrols, reintroductions of mammals, and cooperation between neighbors, the Lowveld Conservancies came into existence and now rival national parks in their acreage and their splendor: Bubiana Conservancy (500 square miles), Chiredzi River (350 square miles), and Save Valley (1,300 square miles). To further empower rural communities, Raoul initiated the Community Wildlife Endowment, whereby communities adjacent to the Save Valley Conservancy were allotted shares and, by so doing, became direct participants in (and beneficiaries of) the wildlife industry. 

 

The importance and security of the region has not been lost on the government: Raoul is often asked to relocate rhinos from insecure national parks and unprotected areas into safer areas in the Lowveld. With Raoul’s care and the local people’s custodianship, the newly established conservancies achieved some of the fastest growth rates ever recorded for black rhino populations throughout the 1990s. The region is now home to 400 black rhinos, 80% of the national total. Prey species recovered and their predators soon followed, including cheetah, leopard, and wild dog. Ecotourism blossomed and wildlife became central to the Lowveld’s economy. 

 

However, since 2000, the crisis in Zimbabwe has jeopardized conservation. Local people have been displaced, existing infrastructure has been dismantled or undermined, and poaching has surged upwards. On land where communities were already included and participating in Conservancies, local residents successfully turned squatters away and wildlife populations remained relatively intact. 

 

On those areas taken over via land reform, Raoul’s rhino teams work non-stop to keep tabs on their rhinos and keep them alive, in spite of hostile settlers and rapidly changing land uses. When rhinos wander into insecure areas, Raoul literally moves them out of harm’s way: darting and then driving them from high-risk areas to ‘safer’ locations. Since 2005, Raoul has treated more than 100 injured rhinos per year for gunshot, snare and other wounds, and returned them to the wild. 

 

 

Raoul has devoted himself wholeheartedly to saving the rhinos, and to encouraging, mentoring and supporting African conservationists. His teams of trackers and monitors work under unfathomably difficult conditions; picking their way around hostile settlers, and often losing their own accommodations to them. Today, thanks to their inherent nature and Raoul’s example, these trackers continue working and maintain a level of enthusiasm rarely seen among people who have lost everything. School teachers, policemen, and other unemployed (or unpaid) professionals regularly turn up on Raoul’s doorstep or wave down his vehicle to ask to join the rhino teams.

 

In spite of the daily setbacks inherent in today’s Zimbabwe, the constant need for triage veterinary care, and the sadness that accompanies each rhino loss, Raoul remains undeterred in his mission, his enthusiasm, and his vision. He works tirelessly and selflessly, and plans for the future: readying himself and his employees for the day when Zimbabwe is liberated. He has formulated an integrated development approach that will restore the most productive land uses within the Lowveld landscape – using mixed-use mosaics to maximize productivity and food security, and wildlife-based economies to create income-earning opportunities.

 

Raoul du Toit is a Zimbabwean. He commenced his professional career in the field of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), having undertaken post-graduate training at the University of Cape Town. He has been particularly involved in EIAs of large hydro-electric schemes, on the Zambezi and Cunene Rivers. He diverted into rhino conservation work through his appointment in 1985 to the IUCN African Elephant and Rhino Specialist Group, as Program Officer. For three years, he coordinated the conservation efforts of this group within Africa. In 1988, du Toit developed a WWF project to survey the status of black rhinos in the Zambezi Valley and then joined WWF as a Project Executant. 

 

In 1990, du Toit was seconded from WWF to the Zimbabwean Department of National Parks and Wildlife Management, where he worked for seven years to initiate and implement the Rhino Conservancy Project in Zimbabwe. This entailed establishing viable rhino breeding groups in semi-arid areas of Zimbabwe, amalgamating game ranches into large conservancies to provide adequate habitat, setting up protection and monitoring systems, and helping to deal with the ongoing economic and political challenges to these private sector projects. He also helped to establish the regional rhino conservation program of the Southern African Development Community. He currently acts as Coordinator for this regional program. He joined IRF as its African Rhino Coordinator in 2005, and founded the Lowveld Rhino Trust in 2008, to maximize the effectiveness of scientifically- and community-based wildlife management in the Lowveld.