2nd January STOP PRESS
Further to receiving a generous donation of 10,000 dollars, separate to our Crowd Funding, we have now received 750 dollars in cash from friends. This combined with the devaluation of the Rand means that the plane is now within our grasp. We only need 4,400 dollars or about 3,000 pound more to fund the aircraft. The hangar and transport will be funded separately. . This is fantastic news for the elephants, as protection is within reach. Please help us by donating today. Thank you.
The Ruaha - Rungwa elephants have been heavily hit by poaching: in the last 5 years they have declined from 25,000 to ahout 10,000 today - a decline of 60%.
Working with the Southern Tanzania Elephant Program(refer STEP ), we have been providing the only eyes in the sky to protect Ruaha-Rungwa's elephants. Flying daily surveillance and monitoring in our microlite, we view the distribution of elephants in this vast landscape and report any sightings of poachers and any other illegal activity to the reserve authorities, so that the rangers on the ground can take action and save elephants. We also photograph carcasses,like the one below, to ascertain time of death.
We have voluntarily flown over 200 hours supporting conservation efforts in both Tanzania and Sth Africa. However, when the wet season began in Ruaha National park, a freak storm damaged our microlite.
All the sad details of the final days of our aircraft (pictured above)are on our site www.wingsoverafrica.org as well as the background on Charles the pilot, myself and the many missions we flew.
We now need another aircraft to continue the work that our microlight Skubie started. It is that simple really. We have found another plane in South Africa and we need funding to buy it and build the hangar to protect it. This will cost £25,000 and any amount we raise will go towards the purchase. The new plane is pictured below It is an all metal plane, unlike Skubie, and as such will be able to fly in the wet season as well, when poaching peaks due to the inaccessability of some of the park.
We do not want more orphaned baby elephants, so please consider a small donation to help us buy our new aircraft and continue the fight to defend these amazing creatures.