This year we have partnered with Animals Asia to support their work and help raise awareness about the bear bile trade in Asia. Animals Asia is devoted to ending bear bile farming and improving the welfare of animals across Asia. They have signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Vietnam Government to completely end Bear Bile Farming in Vietnam by 2022. The team has rescued over 600 bears but there are still more than 400 suffering in terrible conditions in Vietnam. Rescues can be time consuming and complex and the bears need specialist veterinary care and a long rehabilitation process...
Project Update: Tapanuli Orangutan Surveys, Sumatra
In 2019 we partnered with Ape Alliance to raise awareness about the plight of the world’s most endangered great ape – the Tapanuli Orangutan. The Tapanuli is one of three known Orangutan Species – all are critically endangered. Tapanuli Orangutans are exclusively aboreal and planning for a hydro electric dam in Batang Toru Sumatra, home to the largest population of Tapanuli would be catastrophic, fragmenting the existing population. The orangutans would be unable to navigate manmade structures such as roads and power lines serving the dam development and this would subsequently lead to inter-breeding and extinction of the species. The...
GCF Giraffe Rescues in Uganda
Last year we partnered with Giraffe Conservation Foundation (GCF) in order to help them translocate 15 critically endangered Nubian Giraffe from Murchison Falls to Pian Upe, a park in the north of Uganda. Nubian Giraffe are genetically identical to Rothschild’s Giraffe and there are estimated to be 3,000 of this sub-species of Northern Giraffe in total in Africa – mainly in Kenya and Uganda. The easiest way to identify a Nubian giraffe is to look for its white legs – there are no markings on the lower leg. The giraffe’s patches are large, rectangular and chestnut-brown. The giraffe were successfully...
Selection is under way for this year’s Sketch for Survival Introducing competition. The selection process consists of a number of phases and involves a panel of six comprising both professional artists and charity trustees. The panel is led by Gary Hodges and we are delighted to be joined this year by Sevina Yates and Alison Nicholls. Find out more about the panel: Gary Hodges Sevina Yates Alison Nicholls Over the past few weeks we have successfully catalogued all the artwork by size (A3 or A4) and category (wildlife or wild space) ready for selection. This ensures each artwork is easy...
The Impact Of Covid-19 On Africa’s Safari Industry
2020 was predicted to be a profitable year for the safari industry in Africa, boasting the second-fastest-growing tourism industry in the world at this time. There was much optimism and predictions that the tourism industry would bring in billions of dollars across the African continent, but then Covid-19 hit and things ground to a halt. Africa’s safari industry has always been reliant on travellers from around the world, but now the current climate of national and international lockdowns is leaving this industry whose focus is international wealthy tourists, hit hard. All safari holidays have been cancelled and it...
Remembering Cecil
It is five years since Cecil, a radio-collared 12-year-old male lion was shot with a crossbow by an American trophy hunter in the Gwaii Conservancy, Zimbabwe. This is an unfenced area bordering the Hwange National Park where Cecil occasionally liked to roam. There was no hunting quota for lion in the conservancy. A summary of what happened Walter Palmer, a dentist from Minnesota, reportedly paid a fee of $50,000 USD to a professional hunter/guide, Theo Bronkhorst, to ‘bow-hunt’ lion. For this fee, it is the guide’s responsibility to arrange all aspects of the trip, including any permits and licenses to...
Update: Bear Rescues
Last year during an exhibition we met some of the team from Animals Asia. We knew at once that we wanted to support their work. Founded by Jill Robinson in 1998, Animals Asia is devoted to ending bear bile farming and improving the welfare of animals across Asia. They promote compassion and respect for all animals and work to bring about long-term change. They operate award-winning sanctuaries in both China and Vietnam – they are the only organisation with a bear sanctuary in China. To find out more about bear bile farming and our partnership with Animals Asia please visit...
Rafiki’s Story
We were all shocked to read the headline that a silverback mountain gorilla, Rafiki, had been killed by hunters in Bwindi Impenetrable Forest earlier this month. Rafiki was 25 years old at the time of his death. He was the much-loved silverback of the Nkuringo gorilla group which was one of the first to be habituated for eco-tourism visits back in 2004 in the Nkuringo sector of Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, just 10 years after Bwindi was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site. Today the Nkuringo gorilla family is one of 18 gorilla families in Bwindi that can be visited...
Update: Garamba Dog Unit, DR Congo
One of the largest project we have undertaken was the construction of a six dog anti-poaching unit at Garamba National Park in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Managed by African Parks we financed the construction of the kennels, training facilities and compound and the purchase and training of two dogs. By doing so we triggered additional funding from the European Union for the additional four dogs to bring the unit up to full strength. We donated the funds at the end of 2018 and by the end of March 2019 the dogs were in the Park having finished stage...
Everest – 1953 & 2020
When the 1953 Everest Expedition members arrived in Kathmandu in early March 1953 they had already been travelling for several weeks. The majority had sailed from Tilbury in early February to Bombay, from where they travelled north by train to the Nepalese border. There were no roads into Nepal so from here they either walked or rode ponies through the steep Himalayan foothills to reach the fabled Kathmandu Valley, the heart of the Forbidden Kingdom of Nepal that had opened its borders to foreigners only a couple of years before. They found themselves in a medieval city with a population...