TALKING POINT

West Coast National Park flower season

It is my pleasure to welcome you to our Go Wild Magazine July/August edition.

We are excited to be bringing you the latest and exciting updates on activities within our organisation. Time is flying by and it’s hard to believe that we are three months away from the end of the year.

World Ranger Day is commemorated every year on 31 July. Our rangers play a very significant role day-to-day in keeping our national parks and our iconic species safe. In celebration of this year’s World Ranger Day, we embarked on a month long social media campaign whereby we profiled some of our rangers and the work they do. The Minister of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment celebrated the day by reporting back on rhino poaching statistics in South Africa. This year, the International Mandela Day came at a time when our country was under strict lockdown regulations and the Covid-19 pandemic was at its peak. In response to Mandela Day, a number of our national parks commemorated the day by giving back to communities through volunteering and community service.

I also want to take this opportunity to wish Addo Elephant National Park a happy 90th birthday. Addo was proclaimed in 1931 with the purpose of protecting the Eastern Cape’s last eleven remaining elephants.

Finally, the month of August marks Women’s Month and in celebrating the women of SANParks, we are profiling one of the inspirational women in conservation, Dr Nicola van Wilgen-Bredenkamp Read Nicola’s inspirational story on pages 10 and 11.