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10 January 2019 | Story Leonie Bolleurs
Animal Conservation
A giraffe after a successful immobilisation capture being prepared for safe relocation.

From 2007 to 2014, the country experienced an exponential rise in rhino poaching – a growth of over 9,000%. Most illegal activities occur in the Kruger National Park.

 

Contributing to fight this battle is a group of five former students and colleagues from the UFS Department of Chemistry, now in the employment of Wildlife Pharmaceuticals. Situated in the Nelspruit area, Dr Inus Janse van Rensburg, Head of Research and Development; Lizette Janse van Rensburg, Head of Operations; Leo Kirsten, API expert; Dr Rikus Peens, API chemist; and Dr Chris Joubert, Laboratory Specialist, are working at this pharmaceutical manufacturing facility. The company specialises in the development, manufacturing, and end use of wildlife medicines.

 

With the medicines they develop, they are able to immobilise animals. Prof André Roodt, Discipline Head of the UFS Division of Inorganic Chemistry, who attended Indaba 9 with members of his research team in Skukuza, Kruger National Park, said wildlife species are being chemically immobilised for different reasons.

 

Prosecution of poachers

 

One example is of a rhino which was immobilised after a successful dehorning procedure by veterinarians and personnel of Wildlife Pharmaceuticals. As part of a programme to discourage poaching, selective DNA data collection is also conducted by some veterinarian groups for future use in the possible prosecution of individuals who are dealing with rhino horn. As soon as a rhino that was killed during poaching has been discovered, samples of the animal are obtained for a full analysis.

 

These samples are then stored on a database. Wherever rhino horn is confiscated (even internationally), the DNA is analysed, and the database may be consulted to see where the specific rhino was killed. The person in possession of the rhino horn may then be charged with the ‘killing’ of the original rhino.

 

Prof Roodt explained that the foundation of all medicines is based on active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) present in the finished pharmaceutical product, be it tablets, capsules, a syrup or a sterile injectable liquid. In accordance with local and international regulations and guidelines, chemists at API facilities are manufacturing these APIs globally.

 

Wildlife conservation

 

The APIs are respectively incorporated into registered finished pharmaceutical products, which are then used by registered veterinarians for chemical immobilisation and reversal of immobilisation in wildlife species.

 

According to Prof Roodt, the importance of developing appropriate chemical agents and the role of chemical manufacturing are crucial for animal conservation, with a scope far beyond the field of animal immobilisation, thus extending it to animal health, treatments, and vaccinations.

 

Besides saving our rhinos, wildlife species require immobilisation for different reasons. This can include, for example, wound treatment, relocation, and surgical procedures. “It is critical that the animals be immobilised to ensure limitation of stress to the animal, mitigate self-harm, allow safe handling of the animal, and for operator safety. These activities will be impossible to execute without chemical immobilisation of the animal,” said Prof Roodt.

 

Dr Janse van Rensburg, who received his PhD in the UFS Department of Chemistry in 2008, said the department, through exposing its students to, among others, complex equipment in labs as well as work in international labs to critically assess and benchmark their work against others, contributed to the success of his career at Wildlife Pharmaceuticals.
5 Giraffe
5 Giraffe
4 Lab Visit
4 Lab Visit
3 Wild dog Surgery
3 Wild dog Surgery
2 Group Skukuza
2 Group Skukuza
1 Rhino Immobilized
1 Rhino Immobilized

News Archive

Sites of memory. Sites of trauma. Sites of healing.
2015-04-01

Judge Albie Sachs – human rights activist and co-creator of South Africa’s constitution – presented the first Vice Chancellor’s Lecture on Trauma, Memory, and Representations of the Past on 26 March 2015 on the Bloemfontein Campus.

His lecture, ‘Sites of memory, sites of conscience’, forms part of a series of lectures that will focus on how the creative arts represent trauma and memory – and how these representations may ultimately pave the way to healing historical wounds. This series is incorporated into the five-year research project, led by Prof Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, and funded by the Mellon Foundation.

Sites of memory and conscience – and healing

“Deep in solitary confinement, I read in the Bible: ‘the lion lay down with the lamb … swords will be beaten into ploughshares.’” And with these opening words, Judge Sachs took the audience on a wistful journey to the places in our country that ache from the past but are reaching for a better future at the same time.

Some of the sites of memory and conscience Judge Sachs discussed included the Apartheid Museum, Liliesleaf, District Six Museum, and the Red Location Museum. But perhaps most powerful of them all is Robben Island.

Robben Island

“The strength of Robben Island,” Judge Sachs said, “comes from its isolation. Its quietness speaks”. Former prisoners of the island now accompany visitors on their tours of the site, retelling their personal experiences. It was found that, the quieter the ex-prisoners imparted their stories, “the gentler and softer their memories; the more powerful the impact,” Judge Sachs remarked. Instead of anger and denouncement, this reverence provides a space for visitors’ own emotions to emerge. This intense and powerful site has become a living memory elevated into a place of healing.

After Judge Sachs visited the National Women’s Memorial in Bloemfontein some years ago, he came to an acute realisation as he read the stories, experienced the grief, and saw the small relics that imprisoned commandoes from Ceylon and St Helena sculpted. “It’s so like us,” he thought, “our people on Robben Island making a saxophone out of seaweed, our people carving little things. It was so like us. It was another form of inhumanity to human beings in another period.”

The Constitutional Court

The Constitutional Court next to the Old Fort Prison is also a profound site of trauma and healing. Bricks from the awaiting trial lock-up were built into the court chambers. “We don’t suppress it, we don’t say let’s move on. We acknowledge the pain of the past. We live in it, but we are not trapped in it. We South Africans are capable of transcending, of getting beyond it,” Judge Sachs said.

Transforming swords into ploughshares

Judge Sachs had great praise for Prof Gobodo-Madikizela’s research project on Trauma, Memory, and Representations of the Past. “You convert and transform the very swords, the very instruments, the very metal in our country. In a sense, you almost transform the very people and thoughts and dreams and fears and terrors into the ploughshares; into positivity.”

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