Sanwild:

A Sanctuary for Wildlife

The Murry Foundation works closely with other non-profit, non-salary taking wildlife organizations. The Foundation has been instrumental in providing funds to purchase land for endangered and hunted wildlife and has worked closely with Sanwild, enabling the reserve to continue and increase their ability to care for a myriad of fantastic creatures. The following is a brief history of Sanwild.

In 1989 a South African based conservation organization, the Rhino & Elephant Foundation, launched a fundraising campaign for black rhinos under the name of Project Rhino.

The campaign received considerable media coverage and it caught the imagination and attention of Louise Joubert, an account executive for a major advertising agency in Cape Town. She contacted the Rhino & Elephant Foundation and suggested that they run a telethon to raise funds. This was an entirely new concept in fundraising at the time, but Louise’s initiative and dedication resulted in National Rhino Pledge Day on 29 October 1989.

The telethon, which was televised throughout the day, raised R1,78 million and much of the funding was used to buy land to extend the Addo Elephant National Park, which has a significant population of black rhino. Funds were also used to purchase much needed anti-poaching equipment and to translocate black rhinos from danger zones.

Louise’s brush with wildlife conservation and its personalities throughout the run-up to Pledge Day changed her life and in 1990 she decided to leave Cape Town and her career behind and went to live in the Limpopo Province in order to work with wild animals. However, she inadvertently found herself involved in a component of a then fledgling wildlife industry - game capture.

Over the ten years that followed, Louise saw many things that did not sit well with her, but the game-and-wildlife trade industry has a persuasive way of justifying its activities and as Louise herself says, “if you silence your conscience for long enough, it eventually stops speaking to you”.

It was especially the young unweaned animals suffering as a result of mass game relocation that prompted her into action and she began taking in orphaned and injured animals for hand raising - particularly plains game species such as zebra, kudu and blue wildebeest. This one on one close contact with young wild animals and the success of her efforts to rehabilitate them to become independent, free-ranging wild animals - exactly as they should be - awoke her silenced conscience. She became increasingly empathic to the animals caught up in South Africa’s wildlife industry and more and more she became an outspoken critic of the industry’s unethical and inhumane operators.

Soon the 21-hectare property on which Louise was hand raising and treating injured, traumatized and orphaned animals became too small to accommodate the increasing number of wild animals, which by now had diversified to include a wide range of species.

On the 30th November 1998 Louise and her husband Andre purchased a 1014-hectare piece of land that was used predominantly for cattle grazing. After they occupied the land the old cattle fences were removed and the wild animals on the 21-hectare property were moved to the new, larger property in September 2000.

The couple wanted to ensure that the SanWild Wildlife Sanctuary would continue even after they had gone and that same year the SanWild Wildlife Trust was formed to ensure protection for the sanctuary and the rehabilitated animals so that they did not inadvertently find themselves back in the very industry and trade from which they had been rescued. For the first time in South African history a wildlife reserve was being established that indeed belonged to the wild animals themselves.

Although the new property - the SanWild Wildlife Sanctuary - could accommodate many more wild animals, it was acknowledged by the trustees that it was too small to be viable in the long term so Louise continued her efforts to increase the size of the sanctuary. Despite many failed efforts, perseverance finally paid off and on the 1st July 2002 the deposit to purchase an adjoining 1016-hectare farm was paid with a substantial donation received from France.

Bulldozers moved in and soon old cattle fences were removed and the work to fence in the new land started. This would allow the fences between the two pieces of land to be taken down. Full environmental impact studies were done in order to assist SanWild’s management team to address the bush encroachment and soil erosion as a result of previous overgrazing with cattle. Continued efforts to restore the land to its original state are progressing well.

In November 2005 the SanWild Wildlife Trust became an affiliated partner of The Murry Foundation in the United Kingdom. Both organisations knew that the SanWild Wildlife Sanctuary and the valuable work of the trust was being threatened as a result of a legal dispute for the title deeds to the land. In addition to this problem, the land size was simply getting too small for the number of animals already rescued and rehabilitated. Adam Murry, the chairman intervened to help SanWild increase the sanctuary land size to more than 5000 hectares that would ensure complete safety of the more than 4500 wild animals that now live in the reserve..

During 2006 the Murry Foundation entered into a sales agreement with the owner of an adjoining hunting farm, that would increase the SanWild Wildlife Sanctuary’s size with more than 120%, but now the project necessary to house the ‘Big 5’ has became threatened by a lack of funding and urgent help is needed to complete the land repayment.

After Adam Murry had initiated the process to purchase the additional land the Foundation’s efforts fortunately did not go unnoticed. It has attracted interest across the media. Gail Porter, a patron of the charity, appeared on the Sharon Osborne show to discuss the work The Murry Foundation and SanWild was undertaking in South Africa after she and her daughter had visited the reserve in October 2006.

Gail Porter was one of the first visitors to the new reserve which will be funded by A True Experience project that will allow members of the public to visit the animals in their natural habitat whilst staying in 5star luxury.

True Experience, a fully fledged conservation tourism initiative will launched fully in 2007 as the reserve continues to grow, providing sanctuary for many more rescued and endangered animals.