There is one thing that the Captured In Africa Foundation and Pit-Track Anti-Poaching Initiative have in common - the goal to protect and preserve South Africa’s vulnerable and at risk animals.
The Captured In Africa Foundation is a registered non-profit organisation, established to support ongoing efforts for the protection, relocation or rescue of vulnerable and at risk big cats, both in the wild and exploited captive situations.
The foundation was established out of the necessity to help legitimate ‘on the ground’ organisations that the Captured In Africa Foundation work with throughout Africa, for them to have the solid back up of a highly ethical team.
The Captured In Africa Foundation also supports the ongoing efforts of lion rescues and relocations, both captive and wild, which forms the basis of its conservation goal.
Founder of the Captured In Africa Foundation, Drew Abrahamson, says her goal is to protect.
“We rescue and relocate captive cats that are bred for hunting industries in South Africa,” Drew said.
“A lot of volunteers that come into the country are conned that they are helping these cubs when in fact all they are doing is habituating the cubs to people to make it easier for them to hunt five years down the line.
“The Captured In Africa Foundation has then progressed onto the rescue and relocation of wild lions.
“Lions in the last 50 years have gone from 450,000 lions to 20,000, which is losing 96 per cent of the population.
“We’ve got a dwindling four per cent left in Africa.”
Pit-Track is a specialised K9 conservation and anti-poaching unit made up of highly skilled, passionate and dedicated, operators, members and corporate affiliates, who have devoted their lives to the preservation of all water, flora, fauna and animals with prioritisation to endangered species.
Founder of Pit-Track, Carl Thornton, says PitTrack’s goal is to be “never out of the fight”.
“We are a K9 anti-poaching unit, which uses dogs in the field to assist us with all the anti-poaching functions,” Carl said.
“We’ve trained the dogs to track and find animals, then we have others that track people such as the poachers that are poaching the rhinos.
“We track them either from entry into the game reserve or from a dead rhino out of the reserve.
“Than we have the detection dogs, which are very specialised to find firearms, rhino horns and ivory that we use at entry and exit control points and cargo points where it can be shipped in and out of the country, such as airports and harbours.
“We came together in 2004 when we started seeing quite a big problem with the poaching in the country with our key species.
“We have got heavily armed personnel on both sides, one trying to protect the animals, the other trying to poach them for key products like ivory and rhino horn. It has escalated completely out of control.
“There are around six rhinos being poached a day and it’s a lot of people from across the border or neighbouring countries. Our country is rotten with corruption and we’ve got a serious problem.
“We’ve already lost two of our four rhino species in Africa, we are down to the last two.
“The second last species is down to about 1600 individuals of which they are shooting two a day. We are expecting complete extinction in the next two years.
“Our biggest holding of rhinos, which is the white rhino, is at around 13,000 individuals with roughly four a day being shot and extinction within the next decade for all the rhino species in Africa.
“This is a bigger problem than a South Africa problem, it is a global problem.
“It’s a big reason why we are here trying to spread the word.
“We need everyone’ s support and it’ s time to grab what we have left and start focusing on how we are going to sustain these animals for the future.”
The two organisations joined forces to form K9’s For Big Cats with the aim to help the remaining big cats.
“It’s really difficult to track a lion when it escapes a reserve, they go into a stealth mode,” Drew said.
“You need to be able to assess the fence line and see where they came out of and then you have to track them on foot and by vehicle. It’s a bit of a guessing game but that’ s where Carl’ s specialised K9s come in.
“Carl identified that I was having a problem in regards to tracking and locating and that’s where we came up with the initiative of K9s For Big Cats.
“The dogs track the lions by scent.”
Tonight, the Bairnsdale Sporting and Convention Centre is hosting a Lions Roar Dinner and Australian ambassador for the Captured In Africa Foundation and Pit-Track, Miranda Paech, says she is looking forward to spreading the word.
“The main aim of the dinner is to get the word out and promote the two organisations,” Miranda said.
“Drew and Carl will both be speaking and there will be a slideshow and video presentation to go along with that.
“On Thursday we had a telephone link with Jason Wood, Member for La Trobe, who was instrumental in getting the banning of importation of lion trophy from hunting banned in Australia five years ago.
“He is now working to stop the importation of rhino horn into Australia through our ports back to Asia as well as ivory.
“Eighty-five people are attending the dinner and there will be an auction of donated items that people will be able to purchase and all the funds from the dinner will go back to both organisations to continue their work.
“Drew and Carl will also be doing presentations at Orbost Secondary College and Bairnsdale, Paynesville and Clifton Creek primary schools.
“We feel that education is one of the most important parts of their work and to educate children here to have the next generation coming through knowing that this is a world wide issue.
“We need to join together to support the preservation of these animals for our children and their children in the future.
“A personal motto for me is that the love for animals has no borders.
“The future of the wildlife is in the hands of the children.”
PICTURED: Drew and Carl formed K9’s For Big Cats to help preserve Africa’s dwindling lion population.
