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May 23, 2014Namibian Photographer Profile | Anja Denker
May 28, 2014Namibian wildlife conservation organisation Naankuse last week announced their new partnership with Gobabis Toyota.
Gobabis Toyota shares Naankuse’s vision to protect and conserve Namibia’s vulnerable wildlife and have generously supplied two new Toyota Land Cruisers to support their conservation endeavours.
Director Theo Redelinghuys presented Naankuse’s Director, Marlice van Vurren, with the keys to the two vehicles in the company of Naankuse’s ambassador cheetahs Aiko, Kiki and Aisha.
The new Land Cruisers will prove vital to Naankuse’s carnivore conservation and research projects, enabling them to deliver ’conservation through innovation, which is at the heart of their work.
The vehicles are ideally suited to the tasks of running the wildlife sanctuary, which is based on their 3,200 hectare reserve 45kms outside of Windhoek.
From left: Theo Redelinghuys, Marlice van Vuuren and Hannes Engelbrecht
Naankuse’s Carnivore Conservation Research Programme aims to protect and conserve large carnivores including wild cheetah, leopard and brown hyena in Namibia. Naankuse Wine and Wildlife
Estate, Neuras, provides a further 14,000 hectares for critical research projects, and the newly acquired Kanaan Naankuse Desert Retreat offers 33,000 hectares for much needed carnivore and brown hyena conservation.
These new vehicles will help them carry out wildlife tracking and monitoring, transporting research teams to different locations throughout Namibia to undertake monitoring of collared animals which
have been fitted with GPS tracking units, moving volunteers who participate in their conservation programmes between Naankuse Foundation’s reserves, collecting orphaned and injured animals to
bring to the Sanctuary, and rushing those animals in dire need of emergency veterinary treatment to the nearest facility.
Naankuse Director, Marlice van Vuuren said, ’We work with all wild animals you can find in Namibia from snakes to lions and we need help. That’s where good friends like Gobabis Toyota come in.
Finding funding is always a challenge and it’s important to get the right partner involved. We need cars to reach everywhere in Namibia. Having local sponsors and local people’s help makes it much easier and we are really proud to have Gobabis Toyota on board’.
Theo Redelinghuys and Marlice van Vuuren.
‘We really need the Land Cruisers for the work we do. We need hard working cars which are able to go into the sand dunes and mountain areas and track cheetahs. We need to pick up large carnivores that
are in human-wildlife conflict situations and sick and injured wild animals all over Namibia and we need reliable and strong cars’.
‘Our main objective is to keep the wild in the wild. We will always get animals in that are sick or injured and those animals will stay at the Sanctuary, but the ones that come in that are fully grown and healthy
will go back into the wild immediately. We will always have exceptions and those animals will be used as ambassador animals to educate people about the importance of conserving wildlife. If you expose
people to animals and you get public awareness of any kind of species, there’s a value to it and suddenly people will try to protect it’.
The addition of these two Toyota Land Cruisers to Naankuse will strengthen their efforts to carry out their essential work to protect and conserve Namibia’s vulnerable wildlife.
For further information about Naankuse’s work please visit their website at: www.naankuse.com
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