Du Toit was named on April 11, among six recipients of this year’s Goldman Environmental Prize, the most prestigious international award for environmental activists, citing them as “fearless emerging leaders working against all odds to protect the environment and their communities.”
Mr. Toit heads a rhino conservation project in southern Zimbabwe that has helped rebuild and maintain the highest population of rhino in the southern African nation.
Years of political and economic turmoil and a breakdown in law and order has seen a surge in poaching not only of rhino but of all species of Zimbabwe’s wildlife.
But in the massive southern district where du Toit’s Lowveldt Rhino Trust operates, headway is being made -- 21 rhinos were killed for their horn there last year, compared to 71 in 2009.
The powdered rhino horn is used in centuries-old healing remedies in China and elsewhere in Asia. The new worry, Mr. Toit told the Associated Press, is rapidly increasing demand in Vietnam where it is now believed to be a cure for cancer.
The Lowveldt Rhino Trust has launched community programs to protect the 530 rhino surviving in the southern district. They encourage villagers to report suspicious movements of strangers. In return, teaching aids are given to local schools that include conservation themes in geography, English and infants’ math class.
The trust will use the $150,000 Goldman prize money to develop these programs to build “protective community screens” around rhino habitats that will encourage natural breeding. Impoverished community schools are rewarded for every calf born in the wild nearby with additional materials, funding and even scholarships for deserving pupils.
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