Attack by Land and Sea…

Seems like a lot of gloomy news coming from the world of wildlife this year and its only March! Three quarters of the year still left though…

It’s been a bad year for Dolphins and Rhinos… These are innocent creatures caught up in the relentless pursuit of money.  The terrible part is that the Rhino is killed for its horn and the body left for the carrion eaters.  For the Dolphin, it’s even worse; killed for greed…an innocent bystander accidentally trapped in fishing nets and discarded.

Black Rhino - Mother and Child

In confirmed figures recently released, a hundred rhinos were killed by poachers in the first two months of 2012, in South Africa alone. That's more than one Rhino a day...

Maui's Dolphins

The extremely endangered, New Zealand dolphin is the Maui's dolphin; the world's smallest and rarest dolphin has seen its population fall by half in the last seven years. Barely more than 20 breeding females survive, according to the NABU International Foundation for Nature.

Benguela Dolphins - Africa's Own

This Dolphin is cousin to our local Benguela Dolphins, I wrote about here. 
There are only two other species in the genus; The Chilean Dolphin, also known as the Black Dolphin, is only found off the coast of Chile and the Commerson's Dolphin, also known as the Skunk Dolphin, Piebald Dolphin or Panda Dolphin, off the southern coast of South America and the waters near the Kerguelen Islands. All four of these Dolphins have an extremely limited habitats close to shore making accidental killing in gill-nets a common occurrence.

“Animals give me more pleasure through the viewfinder of a camera than they ever did in the cross-hairs of a gun-sight.  And after I've finished "shooting," my unharmed victims are still around for others to enjoy.  I have developed a deep respect for animals.  I consider them fellow living creatures with certain rights that should not be violated any more than those of humans.” 

 ~ Jimmy Stewart