The All Blacks and Springboks got to visit the Care for Wild Rhino Sanctuary to meet some of the orphans left behind after poaching incidents.
Undisclosed Location (08 August 2022) – Care for Wild Rhino Sanctuary shared some fantastic photos of the Springboks and All Black visiting rhino orphans and feeding them all the snacks. The teams even got to hang out with the anti-poaching unit that protects the sanctuary.
Care for Wild’s Founder and CEO, Petronel Nieuwoudt and the Care for Wild team run the world’s largest orphaned rhino sanctuary and specialise in the rescue, rehabilitation, release, and ongoing protection of this iconic and endangered species.
Petronel and her team embraced the rugby guys and were all too happy to share the rhino’s plight with the All Blacks team. Sadly, rhino poaching is still a massive problem in South Africa. Sharing the plight with international visitors is a great way to raise awareness. The team loved their time feeding the orphans.
The rhino species is estimated to be less than ten years away from extinction, and South Africa is at the centre of the rhino poaching war. The Kruger National Park has seen a decline in white rhino populations of 75% since 2011. In 2014 SANParks joined forces with Care for Wild Rhino Sanctuary and created a Memorandum of Understanding to safeguard this heritage and the species’ future by rescuing and protecting the orphans left behind.
The All Blacks got a chance to visit the Kruger National Park before the big game day. The team loved it, but we bet they loved hanging out with the rhinos even more!
While the Bokke may have won their match against the All Blacks this weekend, it is really the orphans that won the biggest prize; they got their stories out there and raised awareness for all the rhinos we have lost in the war on poaching.
You can find out more about what the sanctuary does via its Facebook and Website pages. Take a look at some of the things the Bokke got up to with these adorable orphans.
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