CONSULTANTS TO RAGES.
RHINO CONSULTANTS:
Dr. WILLIAM FOWLDS RHINO
Dr Will Fowlds qualified from Faculty of Veterinary Science at Onderstepoort in 1997. After practicing in small animals and exotics in the UK for five years, returned to South Africa to pursue his passion as a wildlife vet the Eastern Cape.
His conservation experience is rooted is the conversion of a fifth generation family-owned domestic farm, along with neighbouring properties into what is now known as the Amakhala Game Reserve. One of the privileges in Will’s professional life is to work with rhino around the Eastern Cape reserves and to get to know them as individuals.
Will spends much of his time documenting and sharing his personal testimony of the brutal reality of poaching from the coalface. These emotional accounts have prompted media from around the world to convey this tragedy befalling the magnificent rhino. Dr Fowlds has partnered with Medivet UK and Saving the Survivors to enable him to increase his work in rescue and creating awareness of the plight of rhino.
Will spends part of his time facilitating courses which connect veterinary students from around the world with the diversity of African wildlife. These Vets go Wild courses aired around the world as the Safari Vet School series, via ITV and Animal Planet.
BRENT COOK RHINO
Brent Cook Chipembere Rhino Foundation
After witnessing the senseless slaughter of their two Rhino breeding bulls in 2010, Brent and Chantelle Cook, owners of HillsNek Safari Camp in South Africa decided to step up their conservation efforts. Along with their business partners, Paul & Debbie Naudé and Derek Cook, the Chipembere Rhino Foundation was established in 2010. Their stellar efforts were later reinforced with the addition of renowned wildlife veterinarian, Dr. William Fowlds, as a trustee of the foundation after a third Rhino they owned was poached in 2011.
To ensure the suffering and senseless slaughter of Chippy, Isipho and Geza was not in vain, the Chipembere Rhino Foundation (CRF),a local registered non-profit and public benefit organisation, was established in 2010 to protect and preserve the diminishing number of Rhino in Southern Africa. With the assistance of an amazing team of volunteers, the technical and practical experience acquired by the trustees over the past 10 years, as well as our partnerships with Rhino custodians and the support from donors, we have been able to make a significant contribution to the efforts to protect and preserve our heritage.
You can down load a face to face interview here with Brent Cook:
ELEPHANT CONSULTANT: DR PAULA KAHUMBU
Dr. Paula Kahumbu
Paula Kahumbu received her PhD in Ecology at Princeton University where she studied elephants in coastal Kenya. She is one of Africa’s best known wildlife conservationists. She is the CEO of WildlifeDirect and brainchild of the HANDS OFF OUR ELEPHANTS campaign with Her Excellency Margaret Kenyatta the First Lady of the Republic of Kenya.
The campaign is widely recognized for its singular successes in advocacy and the engagement of the people of Kenya to support the protection of elephants. At a popular level this never has been experienced before in Kenya or any other elephant range state. Paula is the winner of the Whitley Award 2014, National Geographic Howard Buffet Award for conservation leadership in Africa in 2010 and is a National Geographic Emerging Explorer.
She received a special commendation at the United Nations Person of the Year celebrations for her critical role in creating awareness and mobilizing action around the crisis facing elephants in Kenya. She is recognized as a Kenyan conservation ambassador by Brand Kenya and in 2015 received the presidential award and title of Order of the Grand Warrior (OGW) .