Linton Park Estate near Wellington once again raised a substantial amount, R100 000, for rhino conservation in South and Southern Africa.
At a special World Rhino Day celebration held at the V&A Waterfront Amphitheatre in Cape Town on Saturday 15 September the estate’s donation was handed to Les Carlisle, the Group Conservation Manager of the AndBeyond Group and Project Manager of Rhinos Without Borders (RWB). This is the third year running that Linton Park supported the RWB campaign for rhino conservation in cooperation with the Wellington Hugo Rust Primary School with their own fundraising drives.
From a modest beginning in 2016, with a total donation of R55 000, the estate and Hugo Rust Primary jointly raised R282 000 in the three-year period 2016-’18. The school’s fundraising for 2018 is still underway.
Linton Park, with a founder’s history dating back to 1699, is part of the multinational Camellia business group with its head office in London. Camellia bought Linton Park in 1995, and started with an extensive restoration programme, returning the estate to its former glory, which was completed in early 2017.
Herman le Roux, Linton Park’s Commercial Director, explained the estate’s support for rhino conservation in the following words: “At Linton Park, we fully endorse Camellia’s global philosophy of environmental and nature conservation wherever possible. In view of the fact that we have a sensitive and threatened ecosystem on the estate, which is a distinctively rare South African type of veld – historically and commonly known as ‘Renosterveld’ in Afrikaans – we decided to commit ourselves to conservation on a wider scale and also specifically to saving rhinos as a precious part of South Africa’s unique cultural heritage.”
He elaborated: “It is unfortunate that the continued existence of rhino on the African continent and in our country is in serious jeopardy and very much under financial pressure. We make our donation to contribute to this special saving rhinos cause. We also want to show our support for the invaluable work that champions such as Les Carlisle, his colleagues, the Rhinos-Without-Borders teams and others do in this regard.”
Local Hugo Rust Primary School in Wellington, with its 600 pupils, have since 2016 joined forces with Linton Park in the fight to save rhinos. Under the inspirational leadership of Ronel Saayman, project leader and teacher at Hugo Rust Primary, the school’s learners, teachers and parents raised about R42 000 during 2016 and 2017 through various imaginative fundraising initiatives. A range of colourful hand-produced rhino icons by the pupils attracted wide public interest and support.
Le Roux added that the estate’s donation was made possible by the sales of the Linton Park “Rhino” wine range during the previous financial year. Consequently R100 000 was accumulated by one rand per bottle sold.
