WALK FOR WILDLIFE
About
The Walk for Wildlife initiative
Wildlife ACT
Me
In the first 6 months of 2022, 259 rhinos were poached in South Africa. I am walking 259km for these rhinos over a series of events to raise awareness of this issue and also of the threats facing other threatened and endangered species. These walks will include those with local communities surrounding game reserves and walks inside of protected areas. I will be finishing my distance on World Wildlife Day on 3 March 2023 with the Global Walk for Wildlife where people around the world will be joining me in walking the final 1km of my distance. All proceeds will go towards the charity Wildlife ACT who do amazing work to monitor and conserve wildlife.
Their ultimate goal is to save our endangered species and wild places from extinction. To achieve this goal, Wildlife ACT focuses on 3 main areas: endangered and priority species monitoring, anti-poaching measures and technology, and community education and empowerment.
Wildlife ACT has been able to provide sustained, free professional monitoring services to more than ten Zululand protected areas for over twelve years. Their tech company, Wild Innovations, continues to develop tracking and anti-poaching collars and units. Their educational Kids Camps, in-school conservation lessons, conservation ambassador club programme and community game drives, have reached over 82,000 local children and adults – inspiring a new generation of conservationists. Despite being a small organisation only founded in 2008, they, with the support of their partners, have achieved a huge amount in that time. Take a look at their impact report and progress video below to find out more about how they are saving endangered and threatened species from extinction.
I’m Lucy, I’m 25 and I’m from Cambridge in the UK, just north of London. I am currently an intern with Wildlife ACT based at Somkhanda Game Reserve in northern KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. It’s a very different lifestyle to the UK where you don’t often wake up with a giraffe outside your window and it’s quite a bit hotter than home although when it does rain it could give the UK a run for its money!
Before I came out here I loved watching wildlife documentaries but found them quite depressing seeing the things that people have done and continue to do to wildlife like poaching and habitat destruction. But being out here you also see the incredible work that so many people, such as those at Wildlife ACT, do to try to protect wildlife. And for many of these people it is their life – it is long hours isolated from friends and family with low salaries but they do it because they are passionate about it. And that restores my faith in humanity and it is for them and the wildlife they work so hard to protect, that I am taking on this challenge.
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