Imagine this thousands of animals migrating through africa! In numbers far greater than you can imagine! Wildebeest, Zebra, Buffalo, Springboks and many more!
This is what Africa was like! It was a continent filled with all the glories of nature, a place animals could raom as they pleased! UNTIL!!! Until humans discovered it! It all started in 1652 when the first Dutch settlers arrived in the Cape of good Hope!
Jan van Riebeek, the man famous for setting foot on the african continent! Humans just couldn’t stay away from this wonderfull place. It had everything they desired, game in plentifull numbers, great water sources and some of the most spectacular coastlines!
Jan van Riebeek was the first person to rekord a Black Rhino, more than one in fact! Around the area of table mountain he managed to rekord over 1600 Black Rhino’s!
In no time humans realized that these animals are great for recreation! And the hunting industry started! Humans shot what ever they could, Black Rhino’s, Lion’s, Leopard, Elephant you name it. All in the name of SPORT????
Towns started forming and turned into cities! Great rivalries between countries and cultures stemmed from this! Wildlife was under huge pressure, from both hunting and habitat distruction!
People soon noticed the changes happening and that is where conservation started!
Areas got fenced off for the protection of wildlife! And yet another problem arose! Migration patterns were destroyed animal numbers were going up and down reaching critical low’s in dry periods, and numbers of animals got much higher than the carring capacity of the parks, in periods of good rain!
Disseases started breaking out causing death in many spiecies!
Spiescies went extinct!
The worst part of it all is that this is an ongoing prosses! We do not realize the effect that we have on wildlife, we have destroyed the habitat of so many orginisms that can’t speek for themself!
Yes there are many wildlife conservation areas, but think of it in this way! When the shop nearest to you don’t have any milk you drive to the next shop! Now imagine this Kruger National Park has a drought? Yes it is a 2 million hectare area and extending which is awesome but animals can’t migrate! They are fenced in, cut out from the vast open plains of Kenya, the rich water sources of the Botswana delta! These are all areas that animals would see!
I wrote this to make people realize what effect we have on wildlife, and our surrounding’s! And I could go on, and on about it! I take my hat off to those who have
dedicated their lives to conservation!
Let’s protect our wonderfull wildlife so that our children, and great grand children
can have the oppertunity to see what their country is all about!
Kind Regard from Tswalu Kalahari Reserve- South Africa
Frank Solomon and team
Excuse the spelling I have never been the best at it!
RichardV
Well said Frank. At least when you shoot an animal, it is with your camera..
jaide
Mabe you should set up a group for this? its really good. It could move people to make the right choices. like helping.
jules / Missy ...
What beautiful work,and an awesome thing you are doing !!
FrankSolomon
Just to add on the above! A great phrase I got from a good friend! " There are two certainties in a conservationist’s life, one you will never be wealthy (as salaries suck) and secondly and by far the best is that you will be able to give back what we have taken from nature and experience things so many people dream of experiencing"