"Imperial Green Mobility prides itself as being an environmentally conscious company that is passionate about providing green mobility solutions to any industries, individuals or causes that have mobility challenges," says Jonathan Cohen, managing director of Imperial Green Mobility.
"Through our long-term relationship with Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University and their electric vehicle research and development department, Uyilo, we collaboratively identified the need for small, silent, robust, electric reaction vehicles for one of their partners, Shamwari Game Reserve. With our experience in electric vehicles we were able to develop a solution for Shamwari's huge rhino poaching challenges."
Shamwari - a leading conservation group - is home to a considerable number of both black and white rhino living across 25,000ha of land. Despite a highly organised and dedicated anti-poaching unit, the reserve has fallen victim to poachers twice before. The most recent attack involved a mother and her two-year-old calf. Both rhinos were butchered for their horns, with poachers even hacking off the tiny horns of the youngster.
"One of the biggest challenges facing anti-poaching teams is increasing the ground cover of units of foot patrol in an effort to not only locate poachers, but track injured or deceased rhino. This is where Imperial Green Mobility's all-terrain vehicles assist tremendously in the war against poaching. They are highly effective in that they are silent and able to navigate the toughest terrain, in the shortest time. They can easily be camouflaged and thereafter anti-poaching scouts can proceed on foot into thicker bush," explains Cohen.
Ironically, these all-terrain vehicles were actually manufactured in America for the continent's massive hunting market. It was Imperial Green Mobility, driven by their commitment towards wildlife conservation, that saw the original intent of these vehicles 'turned on its head'.
"We decided to import these vehicles and use them in the fight for animal conservation in Africa instead," says Cohen. "Now they will be used for doing good - to assist rangers and game parks with illegal hunting, poaching and aiding wild life education and environmental tourism."
