Motoring reporter
NAMIBIAN wildlife conservation organisation N/a’an ku sê announced their new partnership with Gobabis Toyota, who have generously supplied two new Toyota Land Cruisers to support their conservation endeavours.
Gobabis Toyota shares N/a’an ku sê’s vision to protect and conserve Namibia’s vulnerable wildlife and last week, Director Theo Redelinghuys presented N/a’an ku sê’s Director, Marlice van Vurren, with the keys to the two vehicles in the company of N/a’an ku ê’s ambassador cheetahs Aiko, Kiki and Aisha.
The new Land Cruisers will prove vital to N/a’an ku sê’s carnivore conservation and research projects, enabling them to deliver ’conservation through innovation’, which is at the heart of their work.
The vehicles are ideally suited to the tasks of running the wildlife sanctuary, which is based on their 3,200 hectare reserve 45kms outside of Windhoek, and without such generous support from Gobabis Toyota, N/a’an ku sê conservation efforts would not be possible.
N/a’an ku sê’s Carnivore Conservation Research Programme aims to protect and conserve large carnivores including wild cheetah, leopard and brown hyena in Namibia. N/a’an ku sê Wine and Wildlife Estate, Neuras, provides a further 14,000 hectares for critical research projects, and the newly acquired Kanaan N/a’an ku sê Desert Retreat offers 33,000 hectares for much needed carnivore and brown hyena conservation
These new vehicles will help them carry out wildlife tracking and monitoring, transporting research teams to different locations throughout Namibia to undertake monitoring of collared animals which have been fitted with GPS tracking units, moving volunteers who participate in their conservation programmes between N/a’an ku sê Foundation’s reserves, collecting orphaned and injured animals to bring to the Sanctuary, and rushing those animals in dire need of emergency veterinary treatment to the nearest facility.
N/a’an ku sê Director, Marlice van Vuuren said, ’We work with all wild animals you can find in Namibia from snakes to lions and we need help. That’s where good friends like Gobabis Toyota come in. Finding funding is always a challenge and it’s important to get the right partner involved. We need cars to reach everywhere in Namibia. Having local sponsors and local people’s help makes it much easier and we are really proud to have Gobabis Toyota on board’.
‘We really need the Land Cruisers for the work we do. We need hard working cars which are able to go into the sand dunes and mountain areas and track cheetahs. We need to pick up large carnivores that are in human-wildlife conflict situations and sick and injured wild animals all over Namibia and we need reliable and strong cars’.
‘Our main objective is to keep the wild in the wild. We will always get animals in that are sick or injured and those animals will stay at the Sanctuary, but the ones that come in that are fully grown and healthy will go back into the wild immediately. We will always have exceptions and those animals will be used as ambassador animals to educate people about the importance of conserving wildlife. If you expose people to animals and you get public awareness of any kind of species, there’s a value to it and suddenly people will try to protect it’.
The addition of these two Toyota Land Cruisers to N/a’an ku sê will strengthen their efforts to carry out their essential work to protect and conserve Namibia’s vulnerable wildlife.
For further information about N/a’an ku sê’s work please visit their website at: www.naankuse.com