My SanWild diaries

Dedicated to all those animals who gave their lives to humans

My name is Sunil Potnis, a technical recruiter by profession with huge passion for animal conservation. I am based in the United States, a PETA & HSUS member and now a lifelong SanWild supporter.

Long before I came to SanWild, I have watched Discovery Channel and Animal Planet. Besides conservation I have done private pilot training and a regular racquetball player for last 10 years. My passion for wild life was initially started watching discovery & Animal planet channel. The more I watched the more I became educated and aware of conflict between humans and wild animals.

I am a big fan of all those involved in Animal protection and conservation and to name a few of my idols, Steve Irwin, Jeff Corwin, Jane Goodall, Dave Salmoni. Now it is Louise Joubert. I learned about SanWild around 2.5 years back when Discovery Channel aired “Growing up with Zebras”. That’s when I decided I would like to meet Louise and join SanWild for Volunteering. Early this year I started planning for trip to SanWild. In the mean time I became a US citizen and after getting my US passport, I went ahead with my plans of visiting SanWild.

What is SanWild trying to do?

At SanWild; what Louise is trying to do is what every one of us with common sense should do. Make an attempt in some way to prevent destruction of Mother Nature. She has dedicated her life for this noble cause of conservation. She gets the injured AND/OR abused animals from abusive owners and rehabilitates them to give them a freedom. Many owners with lot of money to be wasted have exotic pets like lions, tiger cubs and when these cubs grow a bit old and are unable to maintain, they abuse and discard them. SanWild is heaven for these animals.
 

The most dangerous predator

Across the world, mostly wealthy people, get pleasure out of killing animals for fun. This has resulted in booming business of trophy or sports hunting for South Africa and other African states as well. For South African economy, it is estimated that $ 15 million revenue is generated thru these killings; divide this amount by average of $ 5,000 dollars per animal killed; that will give you the number of animals killed each year. Are we so blood thirsty?

1) Above figure does not account for animals killed for our taste buds OR in labs testing.
2) Now consider the number of humans killed by animals, cumulative, each year. I will be a bit generous here to say few hundreds to thousand. It is negligible considering current human population census figures.
3) There are 15 million road accidents in the United States itself each year and millions of people die across the world due to disease or accidents or natural disasters and YET we continue to have human population exploding across the globe.

Now close your eyes and think about these for a moment.

· How long ago the humans came into existence on earth. I guess in many thousands (I am not carbon dating expert). Animal life started probably many thousand more than humans and some in million years. So we are relatively later than animals but they are the first ones to be extinct.

· Industrial revolution started late 1800, and since then (within 250 years), we have almost destroyed our planet and got everyone so close to extinction in every sense. First animals, then the forests and I am darn sure we will follow.

What a human accomplishment this is?

So do we have the right to say we are more civilized? Aren’t we the most dangerous predators on earth?

Crazy flights

I had exchanged several emails with Louise earlier and October was finalized to begin volunteering at SanWild. I flew by United/South African airlines to Johannesburg via Washington D.C. Although I love being in flights, flight from Washington D.C. to Johannesburg was painfully long, 15 hours to be precise. It is way too long for me. I was relieved after landing at Johannesburg. However I had to catch connecting flight to Phalaborwa and had only an hour gap. By the time I could walk out of customs after collecting baggage, I lost my connecting flight. South African Airways arranged for an overnight stay in hotel and put me on to the first flight to Phalaborwa next morning. I must add here although flight from DC to Johannesburg was too long, airline crew was very courteous and smiling. Also the airport personnel did help me in getting the hotel and next day flight without any troubles. I found people to be very helpful thru out my journey.

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