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WHY SAVE THE RHINO TRUST?
We protect the last truly wild, free-roaming population of desert-adapted black rhinos on unfenced communal land in the Kunene and northern Erongo regions. These animals are critically endangered. If they vanish, Namibia loses not only a unique subspecies but also heritage, tracking work and tourism income that rural communities rely on. That is why our work still matters: we defend rhinos that move freely, not only those behind park fences.
We have done this since 1982 and remain the only conservation NGO mandated by the Namibian government to monitor and research black rhinos in the north-west. Our local trackers and conservancy rhino rangers patrol on foot across a vast, harsh landscape and feed the longest-running black rhino database in existence. We work with communities so that rhinos are more valuable alive through jobs, tourism and shared decisions, than they are to poachers.
We cannot do it alone. Without financial backing, four decades of recovery in one of the last wild rhino landscapes would be far harder to hold.
DONATE OPTIONS
Rhino Guardianship Certificate
In 2023 we worked hard to develop an innovative and sustainable financing solution. Working with Wadappt – a Cape Town based tech firm – we have produced the ‘Rhino Guardianship Certificate’. This is a first of its kind, performance-based certificate using trusted, verified data taken directly by our rangers during patrol. We are working on getting funding directly from the funder to the grassroots and this is a major step to help us achieve this goal. The data used to ‘mint’ the certificates is verified using a block-chain type technology.
Buyers are absolutely guaranteed that the field days, rhino sightings and foot kilometers which make up the certificate actually happened, and that the effort is linked to the specific ranger whose certificate you are buying.
Save the Rhino Trust is shifting the way conservation is funded, opening the possibility of reimbursement for verified conservation performance.
We have demonstrated over 40 years that local boots on the ground are a deterrent to would-be poachers.
THE B2GOLD GOLD BAR INITIATIVE
B2Gold donated 1,000 ounces of gold from its Otjikoto Mine in Namibia to produce 1,000 limited-edition Namibian Rhino Gold Bars. Proceeds from sales are intended to provide lasting funding for community-led protection of Namibia’s last large population of free-roaming black rhinos, which are critically endangered.
The campaign has generated around US$1.7 million, with US$230,000 disbursed in 2020. An advisory committee of partners invests a share of the proceeds so the fund can grow and support trackers, rangers and rural communities, rather than acting as a one-off gift.
B2Gold presents the project as using a mined resource to prevent extinction and its knock-on effects: lost heritage, fewer jobs in tracking and tourism, and reduced rural incomes. The company frames it as a longer-term model of conservation finance rather than a conventional donation.
Partners
The B2Gold Gold Bar Initiative
In early 2020, Canadian miner B2Gold did something unusual with metal from its Otjikoto Mine in north-central Namibia. Instead of selling 1,000 ounces of gold into the ordinary market, it minted the metal into a limited run of Namibian Rhino Gold Bars and sold them to raise money for the