THE HISTORY OF SANWILD: 

 

In 1989, a South African based conservation organization, the Rhino & Elephant Foundation, launched a fundraising campaign for black rhinos under the name of Project Rhino. The campaign received considerable media coverage and it caught the imagination and attention of Louise Joubert, an account executive for a major advertising agency in Cape Town. She contacted the Rhino & Elephant Foundation and suggested that they run a telethon to raise funds. This was an entirely new concept in fundraising at the time, but Louise’s initiative and dedication resulted in National Rhino Pledge Day on 29 October 1989.

The telethon, which was televised throughout the day, raised R1.78 million and much of the funding was used to buy land to extend the Addo Elephant National Park, which has a significant population of black rhino. Funds were also used to purchase much needed anti-poaching equipment and to translocate black rhinos from danger zones.

Louise's brush with wildlife conservation and its personalities throughout the run-up to Pledge Day changed her life and in 1990, she decided to leave Cape Town and leave her career behind and went to live in the Limpopo Province in order to work with wild animals. However, she inadvertently found herself involved in a component of a then fledgling wildlife industry - game capture.

Over the ten years that followed, Louise saw many things that did not sit well with her, but the game-and-wildlife trade industry has a persuasive way of justifying its activities and as Louise herself says, “If you silence your conscience for long enough, it eventually stops speaking to you”. It was especially the young un-weaned animals suffering as a result of mass game relocation that prompted her into action and she began taking in orphaned and injured animals for hand raising - particularly plains game species such as zebra, kudu and blue wildebeest. This one on one close contact with young wild animals and the success of her efforts to rehabilitate them to become independent, free-ranging wild animals awoke her silenced conscience.

Louise became increasingly empathetic to the animals caught up in South Africa’s wildlife industry and more and more she became an outspoken critic of the industry’s unethical and inhumane operators.

While still working for a game relocation company, she started taking in orphaned and injured animals for hand raising and veterinary care for which she paid privately. Rescued animals were treated and hand raised on a small 21-hectare property. The intake of animals slowly increased and also diversified to include all species of wild animals: birds, small mammals, reptiles and smaller predators. There was a great need for a formal rehabilitation centre and emergency response when wild animals found themselves in trouble.

One of the biggest challenges facing the small centre was a desperate need for a safe and protected release area. National Parks and Provincial Game Reserves were simply not interested in taking in rehabilitated or hand raised animals for release. This left Louise with only one option: privately owned game farms. Sadly, many of the privately owned game farms are being used a hunting farms and this most definitely did not present a safe option as a release site.

In a bold attempt in 1998 to secure the animals’ future that she had already saved, Louise signed a lease contract for a 960-hectare piece of land with the option to purchase it at a later stage. The small property on which the rehabilitation centre started was sold and the funds used to establish a small rehab centre on the larger property. In 2000, she founded the SanWild Wildlife Trust, a non-profit organisation whose main objective would be to raise funds to pay for the land, rescue injured and orphaned wild animals and to secure the animals’ long-term welfare and safety. For the first time in South African history, a wildlife reserve was being established that belonged to the wild animals themselves.