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ELISE SERFONTEIN
Elise is the director and founder of StopRhinoPoaching.com. She has always had a passion for wildlife, but her purpose and life goal is to stop the relentless poaching of our rhino’s and to conserve these majestic creatures for future generations.
Please share a little bit about your background. I have loved nature and wildlife as far back as I can remember, which can be attributed to my parents who spent hours with me as a little girl, teaching me the names of birds and animals. My dad passed away from leukemia when I was five years old, but from around that age my sole ambition in life was to work with birds, which I did for many years after finishing school. How did you get into anti-rhino poaching? Through a dear friend in the “bird world” I became involved in the wildlife industry, working for the Wildlife Translocation Association of South Africa. During my 4 odd years there, I was introduced to the aviation side of the wildlife industry and spent a further 8 years working for a helicopter company that specialized in wildlife work. During these years I got to understand how the industry works and grew an important network of people in private and state parks. Starting StopRhinoPoaching.com literally was a moment of waking up and being hit by what I had to do. When I became aware that helicopters were being used at the time to poach rhino it really hit a nerve and I knew that there was something I needed to be doing.
When I woke up, it was like an epitome hit me. Flashing in my mind’s eye, I had to build a website and I knew what that website needed to do. Clear as day. So I started, and that was 10 years ago. What are some your biggest challenges? Organised crime is very hard to fight. It is subtle and sinister, or glaringly blatant. It evolves and evades and takes an enormous amount of dedicated time and resources to disrupt, let alone dismantle. Our rhinos are in trouble, and 12 years down the line, the guys on the ground are genuinely exhausted. What makes stoprhinopoaching. com stand out from the crowd and different from other anti-poaching / conservation NPOs? Very deep trust relationships with the men on the ground means that we have an intimate knowledge of the evolving poaching threat. This means we can make good judgement calls with fund placement. Our donors are people, companies and other NGO’s who want to make a difference. They trust our judgment and we are the “middle-man” between the people who want to help, and those that are doing an admirable job to keep rhinos alive.
Tell us why and how you started stoprhinopoaching.com? In March, 2010, a friend called to say there had been what appeared to be another helicopter poaching. Three rhino's dead, their bodies lying next to each other in a huddle. I was dumbstruck and devastated as the flying world was relatively small and I did not understand who could be that cruel. It was a Sunday afternoon and I literally cried myself to sleep.
Why is it important to conserve the things that make South Africa unique? The rhino is a symbol for all our wild spaces and South Africa is the last stronghold. Ancient, strong, majestic yet extremely vulnerable. Whether we realise it or not, we are all connected to nature. Our survival depends on it. If we let it slip, there is no getting it back 1 www.stoprhinopoaching.com.
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Hello Pretoria • March 2020 • www.hellopretoria.co.za
Compiled by Carli Manser Images Supplied
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