Rescuing Imperiled Wildlife in South Africa

Dear friends and supporters of PNHF,

We are pleased to rerport back on what the Phalaborwa Natural Heritage Foundation (PNHF) has achieved over the past couple of months. Below are some of the successes we had since our last progres report in March 2025;

1. We've conducted 44 anti-poaching Operations. 
2. Patrolled over 289,69km on foot.
3. Removed 767 illegally set poacher's snares.
4. Discovered 8 poaching camps.
5. Discovered 45 animals illegally killed in snares and poisoned by poachers, these include 1 lion,  2 elephant, 1 sable antelope, 3 nyala, 1 domestic cattle, 1 genet, 2 bushpig, 1 warthog, 1 bushbuck, 8 cape buffalo, 1 giraffe, 1 porcupine, 2 zebra, 11 impala, 2 wildebeest, 5 waterbuck, 1 southern bush duiker and 1 kudu. 
6. Taken 354 local community members and international volunteers out on anti-poaching operations.
7. Successfully rescued 3 animals. We darted and removed a snare from a spotted hyena, we were looking for this animal for three months. We assisted with the capture and relocation of a male leopard that started killing cattle. We assisted with the confiscation, treatment and release of a female South African Hedgehog, a protected species in South Africa.
8. Unfortunately not all endings are happy ones, we darted a young elephant with a snare around its left front leg and the injury and stress endured by the little elephant was too much and the veterinarians decided to humanely euthanize the animal. 
9. We managed to re-collar 1 spotted hyena and remove a non functioning collar from another hyena.
10. We apprehended one snare poacher suspected to be involved in serious poaching incidents in the area, he was caught with elephant body parts in his possession.
11. We hosted another group of international students for an environmental education workshop on snare poaching and on snakes and reptiles.
12. We hosted conservation evenings with guest speakers Lizanne Nel - State of conservation areas, Marnus Roodbol - Lion conservation, Dr, Rion Lerm - Bird populations of the Kruger National Park and Francois Meyer - Pangolin conservation. We had 219 people in total attending the talks.
13. We conducted a bird ringing outing with locals.
14. We purchased 8 4G Trail Cameras that we are successfully using to monitor wildlife, focusing mostly on predators. The camers have also proven highly effective to pick up poachers moving through hotspot areas.

The above mentioned data and statistics gathered during the past four months has contributed to the conservation of our local biodoversity in the nature reserves, parks, tribal game reserves and neighbouring communities where we conducted operations. In some areas we have noticed a decline in snaring even zero snaring in certain properties, this is a big win for us and shows that our efforts are successful. 

We would like to thank each and every one of our supporters for making this possible. 

Your continued support is greatly appreciated by us and every animal and person benefiting from our efforts.

Links:

• PNHF Website
• Live video of us removing snares
• Follow us on Facebook