Inspired - Full issue

Natasha Anderson
Fighting for a cause you believe in is one thing but
risking your life to do so is quite another. What drives
this Australian woman to risk her life to save rhinos amid
achingly beautiful Zimbabwean bush?
It was August 2008 and Natasha Anderson received
a call from the field. Poachers had shot a mother
black rhino in the shoulder. The rhino was injured
but likely to survive. She had a two-month-old calf
at foot.
Natasha and her team leapt into land cruisers and
sped to the site. They captured the duo and put them
in pens. While not mortally wounded, the mother
wasn’t producing enough milk to sustain her calf. So
Natasha embarked on a mission to save him. For 10
to 12 hours a day she’d sit just outside their enclosure
wooing and attempting to bottle-feed the infant.
As if sensing that Natasha was trying to help, the
mother rhino, Teressa, positioned her enormous form
in a way that forced the calf towards Natasha and
the bottle. The hungry calf, reassured by his mother,
took to the bottle and regained strength. Over three
weeks Teressa’s wound healed and the duo was
returned to freedom in the vast African bush.
Natasha watched the calf grow over the years like
a proud mother herself. She delighted in seeing new
offspring Teressa produced. Here was a good news
story in the intense battle to save black rhinos from
the poaching menace that is threatening their very
survival.
Today only 5000 black rhinos remain, their
populations decimated to provide horn as status
symbols, herbal medicine, even hangover cures,
especially in Vietnam and China. Natasha and the
team at Lowveld Rhino Trust are endangering their
own lives to save the rhinos, dodging bullets in gun
battles with machine-gun wielding poachers, dealing
with enormous and incredibly agile wild animals and
operating under challenging political and economic
circumstances.
So how is it that an Aussie lass from Melbourne finds
herself in shootouts in the Zimbabwean bush for the
sake of a wild African animal?
FALLING IN LOVE
Natasha was fresh out of university when she
applied to join Australian Volunteers Abroad in Africa.
She ventured to Zimbabwe to work with communities
on resource and catchment management programs.
However, given the volatile politics in the early 2000s,
Natasha’s work in the rural communities became too
dangerous to continue.
While friends from the villages risked their own lives
to warn Natasha of planned youth militia attacks,
she knew she had to be careful. She had to avoid
taking the same approach and exit routes to reduce
the chance of being attacked. At the same time,
funding support for her projects dried up.
As her opportunity to work on community
development declined, a new need arose – helping to
monitor critically endangered black rhinos helplessly
caught in the politics of the time. New clearing of
land for subsistence farming spread through roughly
Above Poachers hack
off only the horn from a
rhino’s face, leaving the
rest of the body behind.
Opposite page Only
5000 black rhinos
survive today, their
populations decimated
by poachers.
NATASHA ANDERSON 19