Background
Our History
The threats to the future of wildlife in Africa are significant, with habitat loss and poaching probably the most devastating. Elephant, rhino, great apes, pangolin and vultures are all rapidly declining as their ranges shrink and they are harvested for their meat and other high value products, such as rhino horn, pangolin scales and ivory.
While considerable effort is being invested in a variety of projects to stem the loss, there remains an urgent need for these current widespread and diverse efforts to conserve the ecosystems and the wildlife of Africa to coalesce, firstly, into a singularity of purpose and, secondly, into a fusion of strategy that will achieve the common aim.
The African Rhino Community Centre (ARCC) aims to bring about the intensity and strength of endeavour that such a singularity of purpose could bring to solving the universal conservation and rural development issues facing Africa. It is doing so by creating a framework within which collaboration and cooperation can lead to more cohesive and effective action.
Located in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, the ARCC Project is establishing a facility from which to develop an holistic conservation programme that brings together protection, awareness, wildlife management, community participation and law enforcement in a coordinated collaboration of individuals, rural communities, organisations and government to ensure the future of rhino and other wildlife in the wild.
In 1800 there were probably hundreds of thousands of black and white rhino in Africa. Today the western black rhino is extinct and the northern white rhino is represented by three individuals. Less than 6000 black rhino and 18000 southern white rhino remain. In 2015 over 1300 of Africa’s rhino were lost to poaching. The indications are that the wild populations of rhino may have passed the “tipping point” and are now in decline. Deaths surpass births.
The ARCC project believes that it is possible, within the Eastern Cape region, to reverse that trend. By providing a vehicle to bring all the stakeholders - state, private and community - involved in the conservation of wildlife, and specifically the rhino, together in a collaborative effort to implement a common strategy, the ARCC can make a substantial contribution to the future of wild rhino and to the conservation of the habitats they, and all other wildlife species, require.
Conservation is a house divided, especially when it comes to the strategy for ensuring the future, particularly of the rhino and the elephant. It all revolves around the issues of what constitutes sustainable utilisation and of whether to fully legalise the trade in rhino horn and ivory, or not.
ARCC has not entered the debate nor does it take a stance on either position. The role of ARCC is to provide protection; to enhance the breeding and, thus, grow the populations of rhino; to create awareness and educate people as to the plight of the rhino and to the ramifications of poaching and, ultimately, the loss of the species. It is also to use the conservation of the rhino to further the socio-economic aspirations of the rural people of Africa, and to do so by recruiting the active participation of those communities in wildlife conservation, and soliciting investment from private enterprise, international institutions and Governments
“The only way to save a rhinoceros is to save the environment in which it lives, because there's a mutual dependency between it and millions of other species of both animals and plants”
— David Attenborough